I was just going through Goodreads a while ago, to see when I last updated it. I chanced upon some of my friends’ profiles and noticed that they have read so many more books than I have. I have around 42 books on my ‘Read’ list and they have more than 100!
I thought, “That’s it. Time for me to read my ass off and update my Goodreads profile so I have more books to show off than them.”
That’s when my inner voice asked me, Are you even listening to yourself?
That moment, right there, was a small moment of enlightenment. There was no drama. Nothing. It was just one thought responding to another thought and yet, it made so much sense. Even as I uploaded the name of the book I was Currently Reading, an Ernest Hemingway that lay in front of me, untouched for hours, I realised I was being an idiot. People have passions – reading, writing, drawing, cooking, eating, making music, dancing, whatever. But I think, thanks to social media, people are forgetting that they are doing things because they like to do them.
Boo!
I’m not pin-pointing at others and saying this. This “sharing” on social media is happening naturally, almost instinctively, and somehow, that irks me. I mean, you make a painting, hit share. You click a picture, hit share. Sometimes, it’s OK to take selfies just for memory’s sake. It doesn’t always have to go on Facebook. That’s not the part where you’re making a memory! You’re making a memory by clicking a picture. In fact, you don’t need the picture at all. You’re making a memory by living that moment.
See, it’s alright to share things online, but somewhere down the line, I think people are missing out the point of doing things for the love of it. There’s a difference between doing things and sharing them, and doing things to share them. Sometimes I see something cute and think, “Oh this will look nice on Instagram.” I’m forgetting that it’ll look nice simply in a picture. Why bring in Instagram into the scene? It has become more about uploading things online, waiting for people to respond, waiting for likes, comments, etc. Perhaps I have also gotten sucked into this whole thing simply because it’s so nice to feel like someone cares and appreciates what you do.
This morning, my sister wrote a blogpost. I told her to share it. She said, no. Her “no” made me think, “What? Then why write?” Again my inner voice went Dude get a hold of yourself! What are you even thinking? But, somehow, I coaxed her into sharing it anyway. (Haha!) Similarly, my friend, Rahul, is completely against social networking. Every time I click a picture and say I’m going to put this up on Facebook, he says why? What’s the point?
Exactly. What’s the point. Social networking is such a fleeting phenomenon. One minute your post is there and the next minute, it’s gone. I don’t think anything anyone uploads has long-term effects on anyone.
I know you’re probably thinking, “Rubbish! I don’t do that!”
But think again. It’s the most subconscious act, which makes it worse. So try and nip it in the bud, lest you lose track of your real life! : )
Just WHAT is the matter with you? When I say society, I’m talking to you, my mom’s friend, to you my doddamma’s friend and whoever else is going to come up to people who know me and ask them if I’m “available for marriage.”
I’m 23 and I’ve been receiving wedding proposals from everywhere. I don’t want to get married already! I know I’m awesome, but you can’t just choose me out of a webpage or a booklet. That’s how I buy clothes btw. Or books. Or gadgets. Go online, see the specifications and buy them if they suit me. I can’t do that with human beings. Cash on delivery or not.
Parent's logic for their daughters: In high school: Don't talk to boys. In college: Don't talk to boys. When you turn 23: Get married
I’m not writing this because this whole “marriage” issue has bothered me or something. It hasn’t. Even my parents aren’t bothered. It’s just a broad message to the society. But this post stemmed out of this discussion I had with my doddamma (aunt) last night. This is how it went.
Me: Doddi, just so you know, I’m never ever going to agree for an arranged marriage. I have to choose whom I want to marry.
Doddamma: Of course you have the freedom to choose whom you want to marry. Let’s say it’s 50% your choice. The other 50% is mine, your mum’s, dad’s, tatha’s, pati’s, su’s, etc. (Sure, because they are all going to have to live with my future husband, 50% of the time.)
Me (Amidst peals of laughter): Say, let’s make it 80% and 20%. (Sarcasm)
Doddamma: Whoa! You’re giving me 80% choice? Yayyy! You’re my favourite niece! I love you my fourth chinni! (That’s what she calls her kids/nieces. First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh chinni.)
Me: Haha! You have high hopes! You’re lucky I even gave you 20% choice.
Doddamma (Absolutely, dramatically offended): HAW! Why not? I’m your doddi! I must have a say. Your husband should be a Brahmin, from a good family, handsome, earning well, famous. (Points at this guy on TV, whom she is a really big fan of.) Your husband should be like him. Hmmm… We don’t have any TV stars in the family. Marry a TV star.
At this point, I figured she was taking the discussion elsewhere, completely deviating from the point. My life isn’t a movie. I’m not going to marry a TV star and watch him act opposite some other pretty girls. Not happening. Ok forget such hypothetical situations.
In my real life, a few of my colleagues are going bonkers over marriage! I have one girl whose mum is worried that all her friends are getting married and having babies. She is least bothered. Or so I think. I have another colleague who, by herself, is worried sick about her friends getting married. She gets so worked up every time she sees some friend or acquaintance on Facebook put up wedding or engagement statuses or photos, she gets into a terrible, angry mood swing.
I suppose that’s one way of looking at it
While I understand that people might be irked about not having found that perfect someone, it’s ridiculous for parents to force marriage upon their children. Marriage is something that is supposed to make the couple happy. Not the couple’s parents happy. Marriage is just a phase that a couple gets into when they are so sure that they want to be together forever. A thread around my neck would mean nothing to me. I don’t like wearing threads around my neck. I don’t even like rings on my finger. They symbolise nothing to me. Marriage is something you believe in. If you don’t understand or believe the seven rounds you do around a fire or the shlokas a diamond studded purohit says, then it’s pointless. I have already told my parents that I don’t want a fancy wedding affair. (That’s one less South Indian Iyengari meal you can expect.) Marriage, I believe, is something you settle into. It does not happen overnight, after you sign a register and kick a bit of rice and spill it onto the ground. That would feed four or five poor hungry instead.
Besides, if a girl hasn’t found that perfect someone and is worried about turning too old to have babies, she’ll adopt a baby! Or there are other ways of getting pregnant now! If it’s the parents who are worried about not having grand kids, tell them to adopt a baby! Gosh! I’m suggesting adoption because if you’re more worried about having a baby at the right age than finding that perfect someone, then you won’t bother about having the baby with the perfect someone. Ok I’m getting a bit complicated. Was at Purple Haze for a bit too long.
Let’s just put it this way. Think about it for a second. What do you want more? A baby or a partner? Whatever you decided within the first four seconds is your answer. I guess.
As for me, I’ve had enough of living according to the norms of the society to keep others happy. I studied well, be’d a good student, a non-spoilt, mature-ish girl all my life to keep others happy. Although I didn’t do engineering, as was the norm, I got into the best Journalism school there is in India, to keep others happy. It’s not like the steps I have taken so far in life haven’t been fruitful. I don’t regret those steps either. It’s just that there is always the question of “What if” in my head. “What if I had done everything I wanted to in my own way? Would my life have been completely different? Maybe better? Maybe more adventurous?” I have come to realise that I have done a lot to keep everyone happy. I’m not bragging about how I’m so selfless or anything. It’s just that a little bird told me that when you try too hard to keep the whole world happy, you end up compromising on your own happiness, even if making others happy makes you happy. You make one person happy about something and another might get pissed at the same thing. It’s not easy.
I’m done though. This is a question of a lifetime and we live just once. I’m not compromising on my decision to choose my own life partner. I’m not someone who’ll experiment with marriage or relationships. I’m old enough and thanks to living by the the norms, mature enough, to make my own decisions. If I get into something, I will stick with it forever. I trust myself more than anyone else with my own life.
That’s why I’m going to choose my partner, 100%. All you people who are trying to hook me up, save yourselves the trouble. Or if you insist on continuing, go ahead. Amuse me. I’m yours to be entertained!
PS: I’m not against people who want to get into arranged marriages. I’m just irked by the lack of freedom of choice that we often see in this society, even though we’re living in 2014. Peace. Cheers.
A lot of my posts revolve around commute, riding etc. That would be because I ride from Malleswaram to Koramangala and back, every day. That’s two hours a day and 32 km, on a tiny little Scooty Pep. Well, it isn’t much, compared to those who travel to Whitefield or Electronic City, But it feels like a lot, especially because of the roads. I don’t have an elevated highway that takes me to office. I go through places like Guttahalli and Viveknagar, where the roads are as terrible as the surface of a pineapple.
But we need such roads. Why? They create employment and help the already employed flourish! I’ll tell you how.
When there are bad roads, we need people to fix them. So the BBMP hires a few people, who do a shoddy job by applying tar on wet roads, so that the tar comes off in a week and their colleagues have some job to do later. They’re all probably very concerned about each other, making sure there are roads that need fixing at any given point in time. Isn’t it wonderful to have such thoughtful people!
Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! Add some more craters to that road!
Next, bad roads mostly affect our vehicles. Mine oft gets punctured, at a frequency of, say, once in two months. Other than that, there are issues like the spark plug getting cut and the battery dying. But that isn’t because of the bad roads. Anyway, I have found mechanics at every corner of the city – Kanakpura Road, Banashankari, Viveknagar, Malleswaram (that would be my dad). Most of these mechanics are doing well, because they charge three times the cost price, except my dad, who charges three times lesser than the cost price (I have no clue why). It’s damn annoying. They think Oh this pretty girl riding a Scooty Pep won’t know anything! Let’s just clean the carburettor with her own petrol and charge her Rs. 500! Stupid pricks.
The number of mechanics required is directly proportional to the number of bad roads. Also, the worse the roads, the better the mechanics’ business. We must appreciate how bad roads are bringing bread and butter to the tables of so many households. There are also tyre shops and helmet sellers on the roads, who need bad roads. Even if you don’t want to wear helmets in Bangalore, you have to, if you care for your face. When the tar has chipped off, they generally fill it up with sand or mud, that mud is blown into your face if you happen to be riding behind a bus. That’s when a helmet is most necessary. Not because you will speed and crash and crack your skull. There is no question of speeding on these roads, because there are speed breakers after every two pot holes.
While those are the most primary set of people who profit from bad roads, doctors also make the most of it. Bad roads cause slip discs and spinal problems. They cause accidents and injuries. (Oh don’t blame the accidents entirely on bad roads! Accidents happen all the time!) So of course, we need bad roads. What would doctors do otherwise? (Remove corns, I suppose? But I believe my corn grew because I only wore hawaii chappli in Chennai, and my feet were exposed to roads that were full of slush. That is what affected my foot. And why were the roads full of slush? Potholes.) Whoa! I’m beginning to think everything comes down to bad roads.
Next, bad roads cause distress among commuters. Bad roads cause road rage. I yell at every single person on the road. He honks, I yell. He cuts my path, I yell. I go through a pot hole when I’m riding fast, the first thing I yell is “Son of A Bitch!” An otherwise peaceful person, who cringes at the sound of bad words, swearing comes naturally to me while riding. But after parking my bike, I’m a peaceful person again. But there are some people who push it too far and remain angry even after going home. They yell at their wives and kids, smash flower vases in the house (like they show on TV), and that could cause problems. So, enter therapist. A counselling therapist in Bangalore, I’m certain, gets so many cases of anger management and the cause just boils down to bad roads.
Apart from physicians, therapists, mechanics, automobile service and spare parts people and the tarring fraternity, policemen have a lot of work to. Someone tries to avoid a pothole, swerves to the right and a guy who’s trying to overtake crashes into him. Boom! Accident. Now the traffic police have to involve themselves. So it keeps them going, adds some spice to their otherwise bland days.
Apart from all these good deeds that potholes do, you know, sometimes potholes can cause true, childish happiness among commuters. Everytime we drove on bad roads, my sister and I would go “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” and our voice would vibrate and bounce along with the car. It used to be so much fun! We’d laugh gleefully, looking at the bad roads; our laugh would also vibrate and change pitches.
Recently, I read this article somewhere, about how most of the complaints doctors get are of slip discs and they attribute it to bad roads. I think on an average, there are articles about potholes in newspapers at least once a week. They make for good fillers. They engage readers in a way that every reader can relate to it. So, in a way, the bad roads give story-idea-craving journalists something to write about! They also gives NGOs something to fight for. Certain groups of people even go ahead and fix the road, feeling productive, feeling united and good about themselves. Also it gives people some sense of ambition and hope, when they make Facebook pages like these.
Now there are so many good things happening because of bad roads and we want to do away with them. The very idea is unthinkable.
(Starting abruptly because I can’t think of a better way to start)
In Deccan Chronicle, we have a column where we get bloggers to write something Bangalore-related. Unfortunately, they’ve given me the job of scouring the internet and finding a good blog to publish. You will not believe how difficult that job is. You probably think, Oh! There are so many blogs. Hell no! Do the job once and you’ll know how hard it is. I’m just upset about people not writing. Not because it makes my job difficult, although that’s one of the issues, even otherwise, why don’t any of you write?
I’m sure half the people on my friends list on Facebook are journalists or journalism students. I don’t see any blog posts being written! My teacher at ACJ made me make this WordPress page and it’s the best thing I’ve gotten out of the New Media classes. It’s such a blessing, this blog. All students were asked to make this page. But not one has maintained it. It’s so important to write! It helps you improve your grammar, your command over the language improves and you begin to have a way of putting your thoughts down. Most of you are really intelligent people, and have deep meaningful thoughts I’m sure. Why waste those thoughts? Put them down.
Seriously!
Tyrion Lannister once said, ‘A mind needs a book like a sword needs a whetstone.’ I can’t agree more. Imagine if all those authors had decided not to write their books and just keep their thoughts to themselves. Well, I’m not asking you to write something deep, reflective and informative. I mean look at the load of crap I write and get away with! Look at the mindless stuff Varun Agarwal and Chetan Bhagat wrote and became best sellers! Take a look at the Twilight series! (Just kidding. Don’t even look at those). But trust me, it feels so good when random people text you or ping you out of the blue saying, “Nice write-up, can’t wait to read the next.”
It’s not so difficult at all! I’m sure some of you have blog pages that lay long-forgotten, asleep somewhere on the internet. You needn’t even write on a blog. My creative writing teacher had advised us to write just one page of something everyday; best advice ever. You can write about anything! You can build five paragraphs around something as tiny as a tweet you saw, or a little incident on the road, or an animal, a news article you read, a movie, a play, a match, a concert, chewing, taking a leak, anything. You could even challenge yourself to choose a different word each day and write about it. If you’re a journalist, it’ll help you immensely. Even otherwise, writing helps you remember better. I told my sister to write about her year-long stay in Amsterdam. She wrote for two days and forgot all about it. :-/ But I’ve written a little about my Euro trip, so I made tiny notes at all places I went to, and I remember all the places so well! When I read what I’ve written, I feel like I revisited the place.
Well, I’m not forcing you. But it’s a good habit to cultivate is all I’m saying. You don’t need to be able to write well either. I read this somewhere. It is one of the most important lines (for me) I’ve ever read. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Just write as you would speak to someone. Learn a new word everyday. Click a picture to go along with it. Buy a new exciting pen or notebook (This always works for me. Recently found a Hero pen, the kind I used during my school days. Can’t stop scribbling writing neatly now). Make it a fun thing for yourself to do when you have free time.
Good luck with it.
Cheers!
PS: Here’s a blog I really like. She writes about anything and she makes it interesting. You could take inspiration from here.
Swat of All Trades 