Much Ado About Nothing

I'm not an atheist. I'm not an Agnostic. I do believe in spirituality, I do believe in Karma, I do believe in religion. But I believe in the religion called humanity... where all humans are considered equal, irrespective of the many criteria we've come up with to help in classifying them. I believe in everyone being treated equal and according to me, it's our duty to help in the same.

One thing I don't really like these days is the glamorization of festivals that has taken place. I agree festivals are meant to be celebrated but there's always a nice way to do it. My friends often complain that I do not "enjoy" festivals.... My reply to them is that, if "enjoying" means what everyone today is doing, I'm happy in my non enjoy state.

Let's take Diwali first. I don't get the point in spending thousands of rupees in buying crackers and then eventually burning them.... for what?? Please tell me why. What is the need of increasing air and noise pollution when the festival, traditionally is only about spreading joy and happiness and beginning life afresh.... Where the hell do the crackers fit in? And please don't give me the you-are-a-Jain-hence-you're-talking-like-one theory. I'd rather spend the same amount of money by helping the people in need and help them regain a grip over their lives than burn them up. There are so many people who need help, just try going to a Govt. hospital once and see how people lose their loved ones due to paucity of just a few grands, which we spend without thinking twice.

Holi. Farmers are committing suicide all over the country, the Vidharba belt in Maharashtra to be particular due to water scarcity...... why....? Due the the extra couple of million litres that has to be pumped in your house so that you could "enjoy" a festival. Never mind the death an entire family has to die because of your "enjoyment". Sorry, I cannot and will not indulge in anything so obscenely heinous. Even though this makes me just one amongst a billion people in the country... so be it.... I'd also like to tell Raj Thackeray that his love for fellow Maharashtrians would be justified not be kicking non-Maharashtrians out, but by fighting for his own Maharashtrian brothers by not letting them commit suicide, by proposing and implementing the construction of dams and ensuring a regualr water supply to the farmers all year round. Mr. Thackeray, this issue needs a higher priority.... it's about life and death here.

One festival I don't celebrate for personal reasons is Raksha Bandhan.... I mean due to social obligations and formalities I do have to tie rakhis to my cousins.... but somewhere down the line, I often wonder... does this piece of thread mean anything to anybody? My aloofness with RB is due to the fact that I don't have a brother and for people who say that doesn't make a difference, I beg to differ.... That makes a humongous difference. The bond is missing. The feeling is missing. The assurance that an elder brother's hand on your head gives is missing. I know I have lots in life to complain about the few little things that I don' t have. But this time of the year makes me feel really lonely... and this time it's not because of the lack of 'someone special', but because the absence of a brother and the presence of cousins who are either too busy to come to get a rakhi tied or are too small to understand what the piece of thread means. All I know is that when I needed a brother figure on whose shoulders I could cry on, I didn't have one. When I need a brother to kick people's asses when someone spoke shit about me, I had to silently pray that if not a brother maybe a friend would do the needful. When I needed someone to want to break the bones of the guy whom I liked but cried for, I had to make do with the pillow. I feel so jealous of my friends who have brothers who call them 1000 times if it's raining too heavily, who take them out to shopping with his own money, who are possessive of their sisters to the point of claustrophobia, who can see everything in the world but just not tears in his sister's eyes. I don't have a brother, agreed, but then I do have friends who care for me.... and I'm happy about that, but just not at this time of the year.

About Friendship's Day and Valentine's Day.... All I can say is that do we really need a special day to celebrate the presence of special people in our lives?? I think it's just a lovely way to have Archie's and Hallmark owners' kids spend a couple of lakhs more every month. You can't celebrate FD by tying bands one day only to have them strewn on the floor the next... This is the reason I never get bands, and not the 'Gujju' genes of saving money. But I do reply to people's messages regarding the same, but this year I didn't....had fought with all my best friends for the first time just 2 days prior to FD.... I felt like throwing my phone outta window with every ensuing message that I received. FD and VD, I think, should be celebrated in reality by finding time for your friend/lover who need you even if you're totally submerged in the sea of your problems.....for I do the same, and hence advocate it.

I really feel that rather than making a show of emotions just on one day, why can't we rather show it as empathy for others? One thing I know for sure is that the day I start earning, after I send my parents on the Europe tour that I want to, I will give away some amount of it back to the society. Life is all about making other's lives worth living as well na. If you can please help anyone you can, even your friend who's down just before your exam. Trust me, if that person is a true friend, he/she will never forget the gesture.

Hypocrisies, Ironies and Paradoxes!!!

Although I'm preparing for CAT which is only going to further confirm my "Loser" status, I'm trying not to leave any stone unturned for it(I mean I WILL START TRYING NOW!) This includes mugging up a lot of words and knowing the subtle difference between two close sounding ones. I'm still,after analysing the definitions thrown up by www.dictionary.com for almost 30 minutes, confused between irony and paradox! I know this is High School Grammar, but you can't expect one to retain all this, years(5, to be precise) after finishing school!

Coming back to the title I've put up for this write, "Hypocrisies, Ironies and Paradoxes!" aren't we all fed up with them already, with just about 19 years invested in life? To me hypocrisies irritate the most, maybe because of the fact that I, for one don't lie and can't stand liars. But yet this world is full of hypocrites and howmuchever I hate them, they won't just go... maybe they're inspired from cockroaches!

Irony, dictionary.com, defines as "the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning". After reading this bit, you may ask me, what's so abtruse in this? Well, trust me, there will be times in life when you'll get bamboozled! The most common irony one encounters would be "The paper was a f***ing piece of s**t" and a month later we find that person's pic in the paper with a tag line "Topped the university"!! You just bloody well had to tell the truth, if the paper was good... why the dissimulation?

Paradox is "a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. " by definition. After much rumination, I think I've somewhat understood it.... Sample this, the paradox in life is that only person who can stop you from crying, is the only person who makes you cry in the first place". This was an SMS I recieved. Thanks to SMSes, dukhi,bechare aashiqs have got a new job....creating them!

But someone pray tell me what to feel/say/think when one opens the paper the first thing in the morning to find a full page report (with pictures of malnourished kids)on the Govt's initiative to form a Nutrition Committee to combat the hunger wave caused due to the rising inflation on one page and a report on the contiguous page with pictures of a quintal of fruits, mountain sized ladoos, and many more food items in front of an overstuffed with food, Karunanidhi. (Pardon me for not reading the article and providing you with the reason for the feast, as the picture was nauseating enough). What do we call this..... Oxymoron??

Time we wake up to the harsh reality surrounding our protected cocoon.... Time we start asking pertinent questions to the people responsible... Time to bring a change, and not merely be a part of one....Time we get some REAL answers....

Six Degrees of Separtion

I was wikipedia-ing a few days back to look for Six Degrees, a book on Global Warming by Mark Lyans when I came across this theory which is called as the "Six Degrees of Separation" theory. It refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person he or she knows and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people he or she knows, then everyone is an average of six "steps" away from each person on Earth. Simply put, it means that you know any person on this planet with a distance of 6 other people between the two of you!

This theory was widely popular in the early 1990's. One of the earliest social networking sites was called "Six Degrees" to highlight the closeness between us Earthlings! There have been a lot of plays, TV shows, films with the same name showing how close we are despite the distance between us!

Just to check how true this theory holds in my case I tried to calculate how do I know Irfan (Pathan ofcourse, you sillies!). Lets see... hmm... I know Shraddha, my school friend, she knows her Dad(obviously!), her Dad knows SRK(the former is the ACP of Mumbai), SRK knows Priet Zinta and Priety definitely knows Irfan!!That's precisely 6 people! Bingo!! And yeah by bingo, Binga(Brett Lee) comes to mind and I know him the same way! I know Shaun Marsh too! Wow!! I'm loving this theory! This is wonderful! Maybe I should get behind Shraddha to introduce me to the string of people who'd finally get me to Irfan! Wow, I love Wikipedia!!

Here I am....

Ok.... Here I am, blogging for the first time in life(my "Why......" story wasn't exactly a blog). The whole world is going gaga about blogging and everybody seems on the blogworld so i thought, why not try this as well..... in any case I'm not doing anything worthwhile this summer besides preparing for CAT ofcourse. The CAT has turned out to be such a nasty animal!! Ouch!! Never thought it could bite this hard!! They say a cat has nine lives....... lets see how many lives my CAT has!!(According to my five-year-plan I assure myself it won't go beyond FIVE!!)

Ok so moving away from CAT, other activity that I could possibly be doing(apart from sleeping almost 17 1/2 hours and watching TV) would be writing my yet untitled story!! Never knew it was so difficult to name a story!5 years and still on the hunt for a name!Suggestions welcome! On second thoughts... why am I even looking for a title when I'm not going to publish my work(ah it pains to see my 5 years worth of khoon pasina going in the drains but its too personal to get published and besides I don't want to be spanked by my friends for washing their dirty linen in public!!!!).But then one doesn't always do something looking at the future results...... certain things are better done by following your instincts..... So here I am,writing my story for my creative satisfaction and not for the world to ponder over!

Enough of rants about my unfinished story..... I'll talk about it later when it gets finished....(Amen!!) Let's now come to umm.....well.... Holi!! Its all about Holi these days..... from news channels to TV shows.With the "exclusive" Holi coverage on news channels, I'm left to wonder how on earth is Holi NEWS??? I mean ok, its a festival but the 24*7 coverage on Holi makes it banal....But the most intriguing part on the Holi coverage was one presentation on India TV,I presume with a heavily bearded guy with long hair in black robes giving out astrological colour advice!!! Simply put,he was mentioning which sun sign people should play with which sun sign and with which colour!! Now this was unheard of!!! So the next time you are about to smear somebody's face..... or whicever body part you please with colour, make sure you know his/her star sign and have the write colour...... you obviously don't want to face the wrath of whatever by not doing so!!! We can get so superstitous sometimes!!

Speaking of superstitions,how can we forget (K)Ekta Kapoor and Karan Johaaaaaar??!!The Johaaaaaaaar wasn't due to a typing error or some stupid numerology gimmick, it wasn't even vaguely related to my love of the movie Jodhaaaaaa Akbar..... it was simply the way Mr.Johaaaaar pronounces his name! But i feel bad for the two of them..... i mean whenever it comes to talking about the K factor, people only talk about these two stalwarts..... why do the forget Akbar's Daddy dear..... not Humayun,you history freakos,Rakesh Roshan....... he too has the K philia(Its just the Word Power Made Easy talking!!!!) Ms.Kapoor, I belive was remaking Sholay in Bhojpuri with Ravi Kisen in the lead(the Lords will have to descend down to Earth to save the humankind now as some people just don't learn from other's mistakes!) But if this Sholay ever does gets made(God forbid!!) what would it be called,considering Ekta's K philia..... Kholay or Ksholay or K..... wateva........ lets leave the permuations and combinations to Ms.Kapoor and her partner in crime, Sheetal Menon. There'll be more of K-bashing later on,I promise(no pun intended all you SY Biotech smarty pants!!!)

Speaking of puns, the King of puns is back!Yeah the King is back......SRK "King" Khan is back with Kya aap pachvi pass se tej hain...... a desi version of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader..... it looks promising..... it would've looked more promising had Vodafone been their telecom partner...... atleast my SMSes would have been delivered!! But Vodafone and Airtel are both forgiven for doling out such wonderful ads..... the Pehla Nasha(vodafone) and the Two-kids-at-the-border ad(Airtel) were WOW! But me thinks the smartest of them all is the I'm -not-interested-in-guys-so-i-wont-go-to-Goa ad(Virgin mobile).... obviously with Richard....oops Sir Richard Branson at the helm,things had to be done with panache! And his earn-10paise-for-every-minute-you-talk scheme is sure gonna be something!!There's sure a very good method to Mr.Branson's madness!!

Ah! 11.30........ Sarabhai vs Sarabhai time...... catch up with you later buddies!!!