Why is it so difficult to be ordinary?

Recent comment by one of my friend upsetted me for one full day. You must be thinking that the comment must had been real bad, but naa it was just a passing statement ‘You girls are all same’. I retaliated to this statement by not talking to him for some time but now when I have forgiven the sinner, by restarting the conversation, I thought what the big deal about it was. Is it really that bad to be counted as one of the millions of girls or I should say is it really bad to be counted as ordinary. I have met so many people in last couple of years and sometimes to increase my listening power I make people speak about themselves and just hear them, their thoughts about themselves, as per my experience if you give one chance to people to talk about themselves, 90% of them will try to tell the quality that they poses that is different from others. Is this single quality help us stand out the crowd or the just imagination of standing out the crowd make us develop this habit. I remember in my childhood I used to wear watch in my right hand and when all others wore it in left, why?, just to show I am different. Although I stopped wearing watch in right side, not because I stopped thinking myself different but because it was far more comfortable to have it in left rather then on the right side, but I still want to do something that makes me different. Why is the human mind wants to prove infact the question should be, what is it that human mind wants to prove to others. Its ironical that its more painful to see yourself being able to sustain in day-to-day life like an ordinary person and being able to feed your family and kids like an ordinary person does. Sometimes I think that either I should be on the top or should be out of this rat race. I think it is easier and satisfying to fight to be different then being ordinary. In this short span of our lives we fight to be different, to do something ‘alag’ but forget the moments that we miss in between. This fight is unending; I wanted to work in ‘different’ city so landed in Mumbai, once I am here then I am an ‘ordinary’ Mumbaite, to get rid of this ordinary tag I fight to purchase a house and once I am a proud owner of a house in a costly city like Mumbai, then I realize that I have entered the category of ‘ordinary house owner’ in Mumbai and so I fight to purchase a car and the fight continues. I think its Ambani-level or SRK-level we are fighting for and only one or two in millions make it to this level so rest 999998 people land in category called ordinary. Is it really that bad to be in this category? I still don’t have a ‘satisfying’ answer to this question but today as I close another yearly chapter and say bye-bye to 2009, I hope that 2010 will bring new answers to ever increasing and unending hunger of human mind.

Whats all this ho halla about??

So now we have another big celebrity being engulfed in the flames of sex and scandals. Tiger Woods, whose couple of extra marital affairs have surfaced recently, had been center of all media attention, putting his professional as well as personal life in daamadol situation. So that means whatever he earned from his sports for so many years has gone down the drain. Now even a kid with 0% knowledge of golf knows 100% about Tiger Woods, might not be about his golf skills but about his number of affairs and all those minute details. Mr Woods is not the first celebrity to go through this, we have a long list. But the most important thing to be thought about in all this is, what is this hoo halla about. Is it because it involves the richest sportsman of the world, or is it because that affair number is too high to add spices to it, or is it because it involves love, sex and betrayal. Whatever it may be but one thing is quiet sure, the main culprit is sex, the three letter word that can bring a high-up to the lowest level. But why??? Why is this word such a taboo. Why is that even refer of this word outside your marriage can shatter your whole family. Quiet a sensitive topic to discuss……phew. But if we think little deep into the problem instead of its consequences we might something more important, something more reasonable to this problem, if I can call it the same.
Recently I was reading in a newspaper where a judge of a Supreme court said that we all know that prostitution is the oldest surviving profession and the one which we are not able to curb, then why to fight against it, why not legalize it. Now you must be thinking that from where the hell prostitution came into picture in between the spicy Tiger Woods story. Once thought deeply we will realize that these things are all related to one thing and that is sex. We all human beings, animals, bacteria, mammals everybody who have life have requirements like we eat because the body needs food, we drink because body needs water, similarily we have sex because body needs it. Different bodies have diff requirements for everything including physical intercourse. But I think we haven’t reached the phase where we take sex as one of the body requirement, its still one thing that should be hidden from outer world, should only be discussed in closed doors, if discussed/experimented outside your home’s bedroom can lead to rocky relationships. Tiger is one of the live example who is sacrifised because of this thought process, but I think that its high time that we open our windows and change our view point towards this. We need to see it with different angle. I am not in favour of betrayal but you betray only when you know the other person is not going to see sex the way you see it. If we change the overall viewpoint we might have better relationships, lesser rapes, less people who get forcefully involved in flesh trade. Rampant nature of anything is bad including eating, drinking or sex and we need rules everywhere. Better rules can help society to have lesser divorces, STDs etc. The rules that were made earlier were applicable for those times. Everything is undergoing change so should our thought process and the rules of society to make it a better and more peaceful place to live in.

God of Big Things.

Bombay is a big city, covering area of 600 square kilometer and having a population of more then 19 million people. It is second largest city in world and I think the only city in India with a blend of flavors from all over India. Economically it generates 5% of India’s GDP. What do all these big figures mean to me. All these big figures mean a lot infact. It means after you come to this city you realize that a sq feet of area means so much, money and time are two most important things in life, being a girl doesn’t mean sitting at home, decision of having second kid depends on pay package, life is not about waiting for opportunities to happen but to make them happen and so many things. You get stuck by Mumbai virus the moment you step on this soil. High rises, slums, footpaths, 5 stars, red light areas, bars, pubs anything you ask for (or not ask for) and you have it. It doesn’t mean that none other big cities provide this but Bombay obviously has an undisputed edge over all other metros.
What drives mumbaites, how they have so much of energy to take a local in morning where even breathing is an effort and then come back on same by evening, how they manage to come up from a breakup so soon and start afresh next very day, how they make there living by selling a 2 buck comb in locals for years and continue doing it for rest of their life. What is the driving nerve of this place that we call as Mumbai. It is the God of all small and big things – Dreams. This is a place that sells dreams to all small, medium or big people. It gives new dreams to the eyes, providing all the opportunities for the wings to expand that make you can fly till whatever height or fall till whatever depth. Such a variety of public you can find here, from beggars to business owners, from auto driver to merc owner, from common man to the biggest actor, from laborer to a politician, from an atheist to the most religious person, from a person staying in a slum to a nariman point resident, in brief from nobody to everybody to somebody. This means at whatever level you are at, you always have somebody to look upto till you reach highest level, which again is an undefined line in this city.
When I came in this city, I hardly had any idea about the life other then that I am going to join my husband here in a new company with 50% hike in salary. But this is the city which gave my mind more horizon to think. Life is not just about job, salary hike, marriage, kids, its far more than that. I don’t say that I have got the clarity of what I want to do, but I think it is a better situation then being ignorant. I am also one of the customers of this Mumbai dreams and hope to fulfill them in this city only one day.

Is being unprofessional is good way to retaliate in professional life….

There is always a time in office when we come across the situation when office life starts sucking and you end up thinking that what exactly you did for the full year. Year ends are specially those kind of times. You are evaluated for the things that you did from January till that moment. I had never been believer of marks system and always used to think that these marks doesn’t reflect intelligence of a person but I think that this is applicable to student life only when marks means only marks that you earn on the basis of the things you write on a sheet and it doesn’t matter that you understand what you are writing or you have rattofied that, it just answer the query that has been asked in exam paper. After working for 7 years in industry I don’t feel the same for the’ year end rating system’. These are just not marks based on the code you wrote for full year. It’s a combination of that code (for which you are paid salary), your PR skills, your connections, your ‘Yes Sir’ attitude, way you look or dress up, your maturity level, your professional or in that matter the unprofessional attitude, luck, intelligence of your superior and God knows what all. I have never done such evaluation for any person, I think I had always been junior most, so can only guess what a person expects from his subordinate and I think the above aspects cover all. I work in software industry and that too in India. India is nucleus of IT for the whole world and it is but obvious that the number of IT professionals is immense. I am also one of the member in this huge IT factory trying to make some difference in this pool of people so that the end of year can give some mental and monetary satisfaction. This year had not been good in this sense. I also got lost in this swirl of people who hardly could make a difference for the full year. This year reviews started and ended in same note ‘What else you did other then work’. Because of lack of good PR skills I couldn’t convince the person on other side of table that I am better then my peers with good intelligence level and attitude. I think these things take a little back seat once you go high up. They need some differentiating point, although I am never able to find it, I think nobody has, its only the way you befool the person by making him feel that he is wrong and you are right. Anyways I couldn’t do that this year and here I am sitting dissatisfied and thinking of following ‘No work’ attitude. I think this is the best reward for the company / project / mentor for granting ‘just average’ rating. The moment the feeling gets little pacified and lo you come across a junior passing by with much better rating and much better post, that too only because he is more smart then me as he can befool the company which I couldn’t. So I rejoin the black badge group who only sits and do nothing and show the management that its finally them who will be suffering and not me. This silent retaliation is best way to pacify yourself. No work, delays in deliveries, wear jeans on Monday, talk out loud on office floor, etc. But after working for so many years in industry, is this what is expected of me. By doing this, am I punishing my company, of which I am part, or myself? What’s the differentiating point between me and a person who is new to industry? There should be a difference between one-year-experience-holder-average-IT-professional and seven-year-experience-holder-average-IT-professional. I think this is the time to show this maturity. Sometimes the idealist solutions are better the practical solutions and only difficulty is the application of these solutions.

Globalization – Blessing or a curse??

I was going through the definition of word ‘globalization’ in encyclopedia, the tool that’s the lifeline for my net life. The term ‘Globalization’ started in somewhere around 1960s when different countries started thinking in terms of integrated network, where they can do trade, make investment, use labor by surpassing the boundaries and moving ahead in terms of internationalizing the nations.
Globalization started in economic arena but later on expanded to social and cultural areas also. So we can say we are trying to reach a place where we have global rules to do trade, global language, global culture and society…….but wait a minute, is the picture is as rosy as it appears from outside. Is globalization really a boom or a curse?
Today its very easy for a country, which is rich in some resource and poor in another, to do trade with the other, which has the opposite balance. A company from one nation can go ahead and do investments in the other one with far less barriers as compared to pre-globalization era. We hear so much of production happening in China/Indonesia/India/Philippines for US brands. People are getting employment because of this globalised market. Per capita of these nations have improved, less number of people fall under poverty line now, literacy rate has improved. But wait, is this kind of structure helping a nation or just an individual or a brand name in that matter. Is the brand or the person growing on the expense of under-developed nations. In today’s world we have so many poor and under developed nations like Guinea, Somalia which are rich in resources but are counted in world’s one of the most poor countries. When we go into thought process of globalised world, don’t we see that the rich nations taking due advantage of these countries in terms of resources, labor. In recent few decades we have heard much about term ‘outsourcing’.
Post globalization we have seen varied exchange of various culture. We can have Japanese food in any part of the world. Every kid loves burger, thanx to McDonalds which has brought burger on global platform. When I am walking down a street in interior of Lyon I see a india handicraft store. This all happened because of globalization. Cultural globalization has brought human beings closer, in which a person in one part of the world understand the roots and culture of the another person in other part. But is our society ready for this kind of change. When I see the history of human being, all the wars that has been fought since thousands of years and as a matter of fact are still continuing, it is quiet obvious that all these previous and present wars are fought for the sustain the individuality of an individual, a tribe, a religion or a nation. Our past and our present shows that mixing of two cultures is not as easy as it looks and people have fought and will fight for years to keep it intact. Under these circumstances globalization would not only be difficult to implement but also worth giving a thought that if ‘globalization with limits’ is better answer for world’s problem then ‘globalizations with no limits’. And if we want to put limits then what would be them? We can put limit on economics, trade, investment but can we put limit to cultural exchange which is bound to happen in wake of previous exchange. I just hope that globalization brings solution to the existing human problems and not become a new problem for the human existence.

Are we competing with China?

If we do a survey of Indian people regarding the country that they most follow, I think it would turn out to be China and Pakistan. To validate this fact I just typed ‘India Vs China‘ in google and realized that I am not the only one searching this text, there are 206,000,000 more people who want to know that which nation is stronger. I once was reading a news paper which said that the mindset of people in India towards China is one of "awe, vexation, envy and jealousy". This made me think if it was actually true, do I want to think of China because it is my neighbor or because it my competitor. Whenever I come across figures related to our literacy rate, the per capita income, GDP, etc the next question that pops up in my mind is ‘What about China, what are its numbers, are they higher then us or lower’. After thinking all this, I am sure that we Indian take China more as a competitor then as a friendly neighbor and I think the feeling is same on the other side of the fence. When I was thinking all this, my mind wandered an extra mile and started thinking that why China is apple of everybody’s eye even when it has so many controversies related. Let me put some in this article (you may say that I am trying to soothen my Indian soul and I might agree with you J ).
China is today accused of human rights violation. It doesn’t provide right to free speech for an individual or press. China govt has blocked lots of international news websites like BBC. When China hosted Olympics in 2008 it allowed these news sites to be unblocked only to be blocked again after the event. During the Olympics as Beijing came under immense criticism because of its pollution level, the govt ordered factory closures to bring down the pollution level. China today is the second biggest contributor of the green house gases yet it is not ready to take steps to curb its emission till something is done by the west. Lots of ‘Made In China’ products are made by labors who are forced to work under sub standard working conditions and wages. China today has border disputes with Taiwan, Tibet and India,
China recently completed its 60 years of communist rule and it had reason to celebrate. Despite of all the above mentioned points, China is one country which has developed the most in recent times. Today China’s population growth is at 0.6% and that of India is 1.2%. Its GDP growth is again greater than that of India. It has already become the first Asian nation to have hosted Olympics, I think India is far from that. China has extensive FDI as compared to India. Today China own more than $300 billion in US govt issued debt. China is investing heavily in African nations.
I think China’s ‘not so open & communist society’ has been able to achieve India’s ‘open & democratic society’ could not. This has inspired me for my next article – Is Communism better then Democracy?

Is religion a solution or a problem?

Religion is one word that baffles not only me but lot of individuals in this world. I remember that when I was a kid my parents used to take me to the gurudwara in our town and they taught me the evening prayers and the meaning of those prayers. Festivals used to be special occasions and going to a religious place used to be a must do activity in the family rule book. I grew up in such kind of environment where religious beliefs were inculcated in my mind through my parents acts, seeing them doing the prayers, seeing them visiting gurudwara every week and lighting candles there on diwali. In my growing years I kept on following the same path, although with a little deviation, and would have kept following it till date if this question wont have arisen in my mind – Does religion really provides the solution to all our problems or religion itself is a biggest problem to be handled by mankind. I will go back to the reason of this question. During my growing up years I came across variety of people and their varied beliefs and sometimes conflicts. Then came the news related to religious conflicts happening in some part of the world, sometimes in some part of country and sometimes in vicinity. All this made my mind think why this is happening, why can’t people of one religion live in harmony with that of other. Is this because of intrusion of one religion in another or if the mere presence of people of other religion pose a threat to existence of the other. All these things take you to the definition of religion and in that matter the reason of it.
India has been originator of few of world’s big religion namely Hinduism, Bhudhism and Jainism. Muslim and Christianity religion came from outside, then we have few newly developed ones like Sikhism. So now the next question, why so many? Starting of every new religion happened with one line – There is only one God. If there is one God then why do we have so many ways to worship Him. Infact religion has changed the definition of God so much that today I sometimes doubt in his mere existence. I cannot deny the fact that there is somebody who takes care of all the things that happen here or anywhere (might be because of my upbringing I cannot agree to His non-existence). But the question arises that if we need a religion to worship that one big person sitting somewhere up there. Is religion the means of reaching that person. Do we need some means to reach Him. What does religion teaches us. 1. There is a God. 2. We should always worship Him. 3. We should follow some set of rules to stay in the religion. I totally agree with point 1 although it is very personalized choice that if an individual wants to believe in the existence of God or if he doesn’t want to believe in that. Second point is again upto one’s perception. One may want to worship Him always and one may just want to bow to his mere presence that . All religions teach you different ways of praying. If we are praying to one God only then why do I need 100 different ways to do that. And then the 3rd point for which I am not sure. Today’s world is more religion centric instead of being God centric. We have books/epics/sculptures which teach the similar thing in different way. The means of conveying is different but the things that are conveyed are same. Why don’t we leave this point to be decided by an individual rather than a religion doing it. Does an individual always need a mentor who can set the rules for him, who tells him what to do and what not to and how to do it. In our case I think religion is doing the same. Older the religion gets more difficult it becomes to follow those rules. Any amendments in the rules give birth to new religion and then new set of rules. But can a human survive without being mentored. Would he become a spoil brat in absence of these rules? As an individual I will say no but as member of society I really don’t know the answer and don’t know if someday something would come that would replace the word religion with some globalized term and practice?

Too much of news is injurious to health.

When you are in a job you always dream of time when you need not wake up early in morning to get to the same office, when you need not plan the grocery shopping for the weekend as your weekdays had been damn busy, when you take an afternoon nap etc etc. This are called ‘Working class hallucination syndrome’ . A short break from work cannot help you in getting rid of this syndrome as the time between starting of the vacation and the end of it is so small that by the time you think of getting over this syndrome its time to join the work back.
Recently I had been lucky enough to get five weeks off from my office to visit my husband in France and this was the perfect time for me to do whatever I wanted to do and couldn’t do because of office. TV is always a part of this dream. TV is not always the idiot box and there are few good things that I wanted to see on TV, so I switched on BBC. I had been one ardent fan of this news channel and so it was proper time to show my gratitude by tuning into the news channel for whole day. It gave me immense pleasure to listen to news for whole day even when it is getting repeated. Days passed with me switching between BBC / CNN / France 24. With days it got more interesting as I had option of changing from one channel to other and then to next. It got me so much engrossed that I didn’t relaise that the only things that I am watching is earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, economic recession, nuclear armament, wars, militant attacks, elections…there is no end to it. And as we all know 1 bad + 1 Bad = double bad and so repetition of these news had more depressing effect on me. Every morning I woke up in good mood but by afternoon it started getting depressing. I couldn’t figure out the reason as I was doing what I wanted to do then why this depression by evening. I attributed this to my long stays at home, to which I am not used to of. One day out of curiosity I turned the TV off and shifted to this online news. Good point about online news is that it is totally dependent on you that is you read what you want to read and not like TV that you have to see what they are showing and that too in same chronology. Then I realized that (bad) news and there repetition is making me depressed. Have we run out of good news or the good has stopped happening to our planet earth. Or there can be one more viewpoint, good is not covered the way bad is covered. All these thought process made me sick that I had to turn off the TV, or atleast the news channel .
We always want to know what is happening in my neighbor, in my city, in my country or overall in world. But it should be kept in limits so that it doesn’t make us forget that despite of all the bad things happening in world, it is still a wonderful place to live in.