Pop!

Its been two days since i am back in Hyderabad... and the first thing that strikes me here is.... OMG! This is where I have lived all my life! The absolute chaos of the traffic, the hundreds ( and hundreds) of 'loving' relatives who will give u advice about everything under the sun (whether you want it or not ;) )... the maddeningly huge variety of foods to eat that leave you stumped as in what to eat... the frustatingly slow internet that makes you wish you could throw a brick at it .... the glorious sunshine makin u feel so warm all the time :)... the girl in the telefax shop giving u a shy smile ;) .... i guess that the one year I was in Hamburg, I was living in some kind of bubble where I had forgotten all that my life was made up of before coming there... and then POP! Today suddenly that bubble burst! This is why I love being in India... because I am only truly alive when I am in India. India is bursting to its seams with life and makes no apologies for it. What if the traffic makes you pull your hair out... it makes sure every drive is an adventure! :P .. What if the internet is slow.. it makes sure I dont stay too long online (unlike in Hamburg where I am the undisputed biggest FB king :P) ... all in all.... man its gonna be tough entering that bubble again when I go back to Hamburg... but its a long time till then... and am gonna enjoy every second I can, living the way only a 'Hyderabadi' can! :D Cheers!

What i wanna do

To be able to go out and run around like a dog in the open again... to open a window to let the breeze in and not have the room become like freakin -10 degrees x-( .... to sit in the bus and listen to a hundred different people talk a hundred different things..... to sit back in my balcony in a rocking chair with my favorite book in my hand and the warm sun streaming on my face... to act on a whim and go to some strange part of the city i haven't seen before just because i can... to be so bored sometimes as to watch all kinds of weird insect documentaries on the Discovery channel... to have an endless stream of pretty women dressed in all the colors of the rainbow walk right past me wherever i am... to go to my favorite snack stall and have panipuris till my tummy threatens to burst... to go wild and jump around like crazy with my friends every time Sehwag hits a six... to have my mom make chicken curry, eat every last morsel i can get and then lick my fingers, the plate and the bowl clean ;) .... to sit in a darkened movie hall and watch an awesome SRK movie that has you wishing you could get up and twist :P.... and most of all... to have so many wonderful friends that you always have at least one person willing to join u in all of this... thats what it means to be in India for me... India... Main aa raha hu :D

Who am I?

'Be Yourself'..... this has to be the biggest most nonsensical ludicrous bullshit motto ever invented by man. I mean, look at this way....have you ever realized that you are nothing but a product of a process that delivers millions of people like you every minute?? The minute u r born ur lifestyle is already decided for u.... U have absolutely no control over the clothes u wear or the language u speak or the beliefs u consider your own..... for god's sake u cant even decide ur own name!! The one thing that's gonna define you, that will set u apart or at the least should set u apart. U might be thinking, hey we can just change our name if we don't like it right?? Wrong. The problem is cud u ever go around telling the people around you to stop calling u wit that silly name and use the new one? The point I'm trying to make is that who we are is decided by our circumstances before we can even think straight about who we want to be. For example, if I were to take a baby in a strictly vegetarian family ( and I mean strictly) and put it in a family where meat is eaten every single meal.... don't u think that same baby after growing up would eat meat like it was second nature to him/her? On the other hand if the baby were to grow up in the same vegetarian family he/she would probably later say.... "Uff! Even the thought of meat makes me wanna puke! How can you eat that?"!!

The point I'm trying to make ( if your still awake that is) we have absolutely no hand in the kind of person we will become. We just end up adopting the beliefs and culture of the society around us. I am not saying that people don't enjoy having a ready-made identity thrust at them by the time they make it out of the womb... most people would say its better than being an orphan who doesn't know where he came from or where he belongs. Also some enlightened people might even say that you can always defy your circumstances, adopt any belief system you want or even make a new one and then you can be 'unique'. But honestly, the chances of that happening are so bleak that should you ever manage to do it, your uniqueness would only be glorified a hundred years after your dead and gone! All of man's greatest ideas came from people who defied their societal traditions or conventions.

How can anything unique come out of a world where money makes all the rules? If you ain't putting bread on the table, you ain't doing anything worthwhile, or so think the billions upon billions of people in developing countries. Can anyone even imagine what all those minds would think up if they had not to struggle for the basic needs? The mind is like a gateway, and to get across first you need to pay the toll. People are so busy scourging for this toll they have forgotten to ever cross that entrance to mental nirvana. True peace and happiness only lies in mental and physical satisfaction. Ask those hundreds of millions of people barely making ends meet what they would change and you'll see the truth. Then perhaps we would one day truly discover what mankind is capable of when each and every person becomes 'himself' and sets his mind free!