It happens only in..... Goa!

I first visited Goa in January 1999. I absolutely loved every thing about it, and promised myself to come back for as many new year vacations as I possibly could. Little did I know then that I'd be spending the next 3 New Year's in a row here! With time I've realized that Goa is a funny place. Funny when you compare it to most of the rest of India. Little 'isms' that I've realized over the months. This blog post is an attempt to capture them, no matter how silly or trivial they may seem, with the hope that reading them years later would trigger happy memories of this place I've come to love.

1. Any night of the year, you look up towards the sky, and you see stars!

2. You, a woman, can walk down a deserted road, where 2 men are standing by a scooter and chatting, and they don't stare at you. They don't start singing or whistling. They don't pass any comment towards you. They simply ignore you as if you don't exist, and carry on in their conversation.

3. Travelling on a 2-way highway, when you lower your dipper at night, the on coming car actually lowers his dipper at night.

4. A cop stops you at 2am in the morning, and finding nothing to catch me or book me for, simply reminds me that my friend is smoking and that that's not good for my health.

5. You can talk to your house help in English. The bakery owner talks to you in english.

6. The older women wear western outfits. Dresses, skirts, gowns.

Happy Diwali

Ours is not a very religious family. In our own funny traditions, we celebrate two festivals in the year. Diwali and Christmas. While Christmas is generally a slightly subdued affair, Diwali is the festival that attracts all the fanfare. Sweets, candles, diyas, new clothes, good food, crackers. But most importantly, Diwali has always been about being together, as a family. No matter where each one of us was living at the time, we'd make the effort to get back to the family home at this time of the year. And that's what would make Diwali special.

For the first time in my life, I'm spending Diwali alone without a family member. First time in well over 30 years! While I would have definitely wanted them to be here with me, strangely, I am not too disappointed. Infact, if anything, I'm a little glad about it. They are healthy, happy, able to do what they want, and be where they want on this day. I'll take that any day of the year.

The house is lit, the candles are put up, sweets have been put out on the table, crackers have been unpacked and kept ready, and i'm about to go get decked up. It's time to celebrate the good in our lives!

Happy Diwali, guys!

My experience in the Delhi Metro

1. High school students in their smart uniforms

2. Mothers with their tots

3. Salesmen, in their suits and briefcases

4. Girls in their late teens or early twenties, dressed like models off the pages of a Cosmopolitan

5. Office workers

6. College students

6. Ordinary citizens going about their daily lives

What i liked

1. People willingly offering their seats to others.

2. A sense of pride in people's eyes

3. People taking care to see that others are not trying to deface the metro in any way.

Jade Goody

So Jade Goody died today….

I’d never heard of her until about a year ago, or so. She shot to fame in this part of the world because of this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPew_SyG6As

For those who don’t know, Shilpa Shetty is an Indian actress, who’d never made it to the A-list, inspite of being in the industry for over 10 years. The fact that she’d chosen to participate in Big Brother, is itself an indication of how far down she was in the pecking order.

I’d vaguely heard that Shilpa Shetty had gone to the UK to take part in this, but that was about it. I didn’t know who the other contestants were, what the show was all about, and how she was faring. Until this happened. It kicked up a HUGE storm here. And that’s just putting it mildly. Every newspaper, every magazine, every news channel was flooded with this. Analysis, arguments, counter arguments, you name it, it was there. Claims of racism surfaced. These british women had ganged up on an Indian lady. And look how well she’d handled it. The spirit of the Indian woman was at its finest display. Blah Blah. God knows what all was said in the media here.

I remember that I still hadn’t paid too much attention to what was happening then. I did see the so-called controversial clip, and though I didn’t buy too much of that racism, British vs. Indian thing, I have to admit that I too had formed an opinion. So Shilpa did come out as the more dignified, classy lady of the two. And Jade? She came across as vile, crass, crude, classless, ugly, fat, and despicable. If I was in the same room as her, I wouldn’t wish to say even one sentence to here. That’s how much time I would be willing to spend on her. Zilch.

So in the days and months that went by, Shilpa went on to win Big Brother, Jade realized what had happened, and she tried to make amends for it by coming here to India and apologizing in public. For me, it was like water rolling off a duck’s back. Cut to a few month’s later, and Jade comes over to India to participate in the Indian equivalent of the Big Brother, which Shilpa Shetty is hosting. I think it was about 2 days into the show, when Jade heard from her doctor that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and she returned back to the UK to begin her treatment. Again, cut to about a month ago, where TV channels were again flooded with news about how she only had weeks to live, about how she was going to get married, and about how she was going to air her last breaths on TV. I remember thinking “there she goes again”, until I read that she had two small sons, and she wanted to do it to leave as much money behind for them as she could. That was the first time I felt a little sympathy her. Something touched me inside, and I started watching the news about her with a little more interest.

As I watched her on TV in the last few days of her life, I found my heart slowly, yet steadily thawing. She was completely bald, much thinner, and definitely looked quite sick. But yet, in my opinion, she’d never looked prettier. She seemed to be happy and she seemed to be at peace. She looked more dignified and graceful than ever. Was it all staged for the cameras? Probably. Was it another money making thing for her? Maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t think that anyone can fake the kind of calmness she exuded in the last few days. And the sight of her in her wedding dress, her IV drips covered in bandages, is something I wish I hadn’t seen.

So last Sunday, infact, exactly a week ago, I googled here. I read up about her, and saw quite a few clips of her on youtube. And this is what I concluded. At the end of the day, she was just like any of us. She was like you and me. A person trying to make it in this world. With hopes and fears and faults. Time and circumstances change you, and cause your bad side to come out, but at the end of the day, people are still good at heart. And so was she.

Will I be thinking about her a week from now? Probably not. Then why have I bothered writing this whole thing down? I really don’t know. But to me, she showed more character, more class, more beauty, and more dignity in her death than she did that one day in that TV episode, and that’s what I’d like to remember her by.

Sleep Well...

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

I did it today!

For the first time ever, I watched an international cricket match in a stadium! It was awesome! I went with preconceived notions about having to sit in a dirty, filthy seat, dealing with pathetic, reeky restrooms, getting pushed around in the crowd, and not being able to enjoy the match because of the lack of commentary. How wrong I was! The weather was beautiful, the company was good, the crowds were disciplined and by-and-large orderly, the rest rooms were spotless, arrangements for food and clean water were quite good, and the atmosphere was energetic! It was perfect!

It was the 3rd day of a test match, India was batting, Sehwag took two wickets. I saw all the Indian cricketers, and even some oldies like Shastri and Srikanth. Saw a few of the Australian cricketers as well. Not being able to see Bret Lee was a teeny bit of a disappointment, but ah, well!

All in all, a nice experience, and a nice day!

The doors of our lives...

I have been inspired to join the world of blogging by quite a few of my close friends, The person by whom I have been inspired the most, perhaps, is my brother. I've taken the liberty here to blatantly plagarize from his blog, and copy word for word, his very first blog entry.... He's a die hard fan of the The Doors, and this is his tribute to them...Beautifully worded....

There are things we can see, and there are things we cannot...and in between are the DOORS.The Doors of perception. The Doors that corrupt us all. The Doors that fail to discriminate. The Doors that cloud our minds and our souls. As I go through life, one of my eternal aims will remain the opening of these doors, so I can see the end of the night. See The End free of my perception, free of fear.

I'm still working on finding the key to the first door..... Hopefully, I too will get there someday...

It's a good world out there....

"Hi Mona. Hope life is wonderful and interesting for you. Life is how we view it. It's a good world out there, only thing is we don't always notice."

My dad, like parents of many Indians my age, was born before the partition, grew up in a large middle class family in a small town, and had very simple ideologies in life. The world I've grown up in is a lot different than the one he had experienced in his childhood days. A large part of that is because of him, and the sacrifices he made for our family. Ofcourse, modern day ameneties such as cell phones, computers, the internet, cable television, etc, etc have also contributed significantly to this difference. Things that my dad would probably never have heard of while growing up. Things that my dad could never fully accustom himself to in his lifetime. Things that I can't imagine my life without. It took him more than a couple of months to be able to use the contact list to find someone's number, and then make a call from his gifted cell phone. Cable TV, to him, meant being able to watch more than one news channel. Inspite of numerous coaching classes repeated over several years, he was never able to successfully type and send out an email, never able to take a printout of a document on his own. Which is why I was both surprised and ecstatic to receive an sms from him one day. Not a 3 syllable message like "where.r.u." or "com3.hom3.sooom" but 4 whole sentences, in words perfectly separated by single spaces, each sentence ending with a dot, each new sentence starting with a capital letter. More than the message itself being so beautiful, what touched me most was the amount of time and effort he would have put into typing, losing, again typing, erasing and retyping out that entire sms, just to be able to reach out and communicate with me.

As always, you were right, dad. It sure is a good world out there, but its not nearly as wonderful with you no longer in it.