The Ghost

In a world where logic comes before emotion and austere practicality comes before everything else, where is the room for unconditional relationships, senseless love, romantics and..well, all of that jazz? Sure we see it in just about digestible amounts like texts saying ' I love you' or 'I miss you' and an occasional flower or two, but amidst the humdrum of struggle and work, friends and family-the romantic of an era long gone seems lost with time.

As someone who falls in love with Pablo Neruda poems every other day, I believe in relationships. Relationships of every kind - not just with the one person you love but with family, friends and ofcourse the occasional fictitious charcter. As we move from high school to college and college to well- whatever comes after, you see people you love less(maybe once in a year- some people would still call that lucky) given the different cities, states, countries and one of my friends even carried out a little expedition to space! (Just kidding). So the essence of this boils down to the three dreaded words that can sometime convert an 'I love you' to 'see you never'- LDR aka Long Distance Relationship.

So in today's concrete - jungle world, where the workoholic of today barely has time for a relationship in the same city, what hope remains for the unfortunate who have to deal with time difference, country codes and phone bills that reach one's toes? As I got to thinking about my (still) closest friends strewn about in every place on the map- perfectly content with emails, phonecalls and an occasional fight or two, I couldn't help but wonder.. Is the ghost of a failed long distance relationship generated from our minds?

It probably is because if you name anything to do with Skype conversations,emails, facebook chat, gtalk, blackberry messenger, twitter, sneaky trips, brainstorming ways to evade the distance and celebrating the countless anniversaries-we've done it all. I guess the romantic era still exists- maybe in subtler ways and with more love emails than love poetry, I have reason to believe that consuming love still exists. So as I move onto yet another phase in this frustrating yet envigorating long distance relationship with everyone who I love but can't see everyday, I can only say- that the era of Pablo Neruda and Napolean might have passed but till today, till now- the feelings are the same- strong, unconditional and lasting.

A dedication to everyone struggling with long distance (including my friends and family) and a more specific dedication to someone who makes this whole thing worthwhile.

The big 'M' and its side effects.

When you have two older sisters in the house, hovering around the age group of 22- conversation rarely shifts from the all time dreaded word, 'marriage'. I got to thinking. What is it about this word that makes a woman's knees weak and a man's heart terribly nervous?


As i moved from thinking about marriage to asking people who were actually living a married life or about to take on the challenge, I began feeling a clash. A clash not between nagging mother-inlaws or of the choice of a wedding cake, but a much spoken about clash- between man and woman. 
The further I delved into the topic, I realized that men were more nonchalant about marriage- no over excited phone calls (rather a mundane announcement to the locker room), no quandary over the wedding suit (even the mother is now 'skilled' enough to pick it out) and most definitely no form of generosity when expanding the guest list. Men were giving up their single life and they weren't happy about it!


Women on the other hand are all over it- from hyperventilating about 24594939 different shades of red or white for the wedding dress to the intricacies of which chair will be where during the wedding- the whole affair seems to be a nuance of a big time budget Kjo movie, wedding scene. They wanted to celebrate the rock on their finger making a not so modest display of their settled, committed (read- envy me now) life. 


After days of flipping through what seemed like a 1000 couples wedding albums, gauging their stories and still seeing the blush of a girl on full grown women did I realize that it is the clash that kept a 'marriage' alive. From the chase and romantic dates to bickering about the little things- a marriage is beautiful because at the end of the day you've found your soulmate- someone you chose to share your closet, toilet space, kitchen and most importantly your life with. 


It is the clash that makes it interesting, the difference in opinion that keeps it alive, the change in lifestyle that makes it a voluntary compromise and the quenching of a quest of finding the perfect one for over 2 decades that makes it unexplainably special. 


A dedication to my two beautiful sisters as they set out to find their soulmates :)

Make it or Mark it?

In a world where there's a rat race to even get to the check-out counter of supermarkets, how long and hard is the race going to be to get a great education and an even greater job? The answer came with a bang that could barely keep my morning coffee in my stomach; Delhi's Sriram College of Commerce announced a cut off of 100% to make it to the first list- effectively making my then majestic 92% seem a little, well- 'out of the race'.


As I read more articles, scanned more news channels and judged diverse opinions via twitter and other social networking sites, I couldn't help but wonder; are Indian students getting smarter, or is the requirement to get educated from a great college simply impossible to match? India's progress in practically every field has been evident since the past decade, but how is it possible that a sector that is supposed to usher in more development and pump out the best from the nation- education; is so primitive in its approach? Since when did you have to grill yourself at home, with an external tutor or at any spare moment during the day to 'learn'? The question, now seems rhetoric. With cut-offs of a 100% (essentially leaving no room to make even a single mistake), it seems natural for students today to feel like education is a task, rather than a process of growth and learning. When will the system change to include more students without a perfect marksheet but greater knowledge, students without tutors but actual learning? Who's to say that a 100% marksheet will make it in life, and someone with an extremely humble education background but great sense of learning will not? Experience tells us that the exact reverse is true, so why is an extreme level of importance attributed to what we know isn't the be it and end it of it all?
Moreover, the sirens of teenage death have been ringing for a while and have increased in the last few years in an almost mutually proportional relationship with escalating percentage requirements, to strengthen the argument against the gaping holes in our education system today.


Ultimately, everyone wants a fabulous education at an extremely well reputed institution- because that is a trump card to get the corporate jobs, high end perks and societal pleasures; but when will it dawn upon us that if everyone gets involved in a donkey race to tutors and excellent marksheets, the system will never change, the education will never be worthwhile, the pressure will not stop and the death toll (both emotional and physical) will only increase?

Rain or Reign?

No work can be uninspired. Today my source of inspiration is the Bombay rain; simple, recurring and yet thought provoking.

 I remember waking up today morning, looking outside the window and thinking ' How can anyone possibly complain about the weather- it's gorgeous'. I admired Bombay's newest trophy; the Bandra- Worli sea-link from my balcony and couldn't help but feel a rather pretentious sense of pride in something that belonged to the city as a whole. Almost sequentially, I transferred my breakfast from the dining table to the unevenly leveled balcony that overlooked almost all of Bombay. I felt like I could never have gotten enough. Soon enough, the early morning freshness began to fade and as the sky took over a more yellowish nuance, I got up and began to embrace my chores for the day. I stepped out feeling rested, confident and almost too content for my own liking. 

My pink umbrella did absolutely nothing to protect me from the wrath of the downpour, as I hustled about looking for a cab. How had my mood gotten from crisp to mucky, from dry and comfortable to wet and miserable? The longer I took to find a cab, the harder it was for me to appreciate the Bombay rain. What seemed perfect from my balcony, was different in the true light of it. 

After what seemed like hours, I finally got into a cab and as luck would have it, I was hitting every possible signal in the city. In a desperate attempt to distract myself from screaming at yet another signal, I bought a newspaper from a boy who's eyes barely came up till my taxi window. It occurred to me, not until later that he was soaked in the downpour, no shelter - but had handed me a perfectly dry copy of The Times of India. As I began reading of the death of a senior journalist's(crime reporter) murder amidst other chaotic political stories I couldn't help but wonder.. till when will people sit in the comfort of their balconies, reading about gruesome criminals, political hum-drums and letting it pass like a bad storm? When will we be estranged from the claws of political leaders, cold blooded murder and scott free criminals? Here we are sitting in our homes thinking we're safe, but when will it sink in that a journalist; a journalist who was doing his job by letting the truth surface was shot, on one of our Bombay roads, in our Bombay rain and within our judicial system, how safe are any of us?

Maybe its time for a unified 'us' to evade the comfort of our balconies and step into the storm of our current affairs to understand the gravity of the situation, and press harder for change.