The Boweler's Dilemma

There are a million things in this world that we don’t know about. Then there are those we don’t want to know about. Yet these snippets of knowledge that we avoid have a weird way of coming back to haunt us.

We live in a world which is so rapidly moving towards modernization that if I buy something today, tomorrow it will be deemed outdated. We Indians have never been the big inventors of stuff. We follow the next best route to success: copying. You give us something which was originally yours and we’ll copy the shit out of it and show it to you as if it was our own, bestowed upon us by our ancestors. Toilets are one of the things we have imbibed. I hear that nowadays the “urban” people have started using toilet papers! Whatever happened to the good old hand cleaning?

Aside from the changes which have come in recently, I am against the institution of using a western toilet for doing my ‘business’. First of all there are 2 flaps. I don’t think there should even be one flap, let alone two. And what’s even more puzzling is that one of the cover isn’t even a cover. It’s like our Indian roads. While we redo an existing road, just before a visit from some high powered netas, we don’t care about the pothole. We lay tar everywhere except those potholes. Anyways the issue of Indian roadways is a topic for another time. Coming back to the ungodly Commode; there is a small opening at the rear end of the seat which gives out a good velocity stream of water. Now I don’t even know how to describe how ludicrous that sounds let alone how weird it feels when you actually try to test it for the purpose it was originally built for.

Now there is one thing that I have a doubt about. Why does the fairer sex care about the placement of the 2 flaps so much? I have seen so many of my friends  closing the lids on the toilets just as some girls were about come over to the house. And what is it with the 2 lids? Are we supposed to close one and sit on it? Or are we supposed to open both the lids before doing our ritual? I still have no clue. For me, going to the shitter was about the peace and tranquility  it was about the different things I could think of without being troubled. It was as if I was the painter and world was my canvas. After coming to “urban” Mumbai, I am worried half the time about if I am sitting right on the pooper and the other half about how to leave the 2 flaps when I leave. This has turned out to be quite the boweler’s dilemma.

I say let’s cut the crap about these weird formalities and rules, which by the way everybody seems to know about except me, and get on with the much bigger issues of our lives. Let a man find peace in the one place he truly can without stressing about such mundane things.

Happy shitting!

A Place Called Nowhere

Have you ever heard of foetal position? Its lying on an uncomfortable bed, without any fans curled up and feeling really comfortable. Personally I thought that its just an excuse for sissies to go to sleep while gaining the observers sympathies. Ironically, for the past month and a half that's all I feel like doing.
I have always felt change is overrated and it has never been a reason to feel low or get anxious, but in the past few days my myth has been shattered. I am struggling hard with change and so far its been a loosing battle. 
Mumbai, the city of dream, the maximum city and so on, there have been innumerable number of things said about it but none of them include the words crappy or abominable. Sorry all you Mumbaikars I really don't see what the fuss is all about. Be it the wannabe London style rains or the horrendously long distances or the insanely big crowds everywhere. I despise it. I cant wait to complete my 2 years here and get out of this place. 
There are a few things I have always been sure of. Despite my shortcomings the one thing I have been adept at is fitting in and that's the one thing that Mumbai has taken away from me. Without it I feel almost like a newborn without the warmth of his mother. I can say with some authority that an MBA college is just a place crawling with phonies and charlatans. You do meet a few genuine people here but the odds are stacked against those few. In such an environment I don't really know how to behave.
Throughout my life I have never really had a problem of identifying myself to my peers and teachers but here I believe that 60% of my class doesn't know my name and almost 20% don't know that I am in their class. Add to that a bucket-load of  lessons which make absolutely no sense to me in the fray and you've a potpourri of brewing disaster. I have never really felt so out of place anywhere else. So it was during this time I had been looking forward to meeting my old college buddies, in hope of returning some of the normalcy to my life. But when the time eventually came for that fateful encounter, I realized that I didn't belong to their worlds too. Never before have I had the urge to bolt from a hangout of college friends.
Maybe it was the presence of a foreign entity (read shock) or may be it was the fact that the person they once knew so well did not exist anymore, but by the time I came back home I was feeling befuddled and disoriented.
I had heard about the quarter life crisis, now I am smack dab right in the middle of it and I have lost my identity. I really don't know who I am anymore. But this isn't the end of the road for me. Now I will have to rediscover myself. And I believe that I will come back stronger. I will not let this phase ruffle my equanimity. And that is all one could ask for.
 I may be hurt but I am not bleeding, I may be bruised but I am not kneeling. I may have lost the battle but the war still hangs in balance, I may not live but I'll die trying.

Perception

Perception is what this world thrives on. Everything is always about the brand. This world has suddenly lost all confidence in the intrinsic qualities of a human being. What is more important is the brand which he carries. Life has suddenly shrunk into the chaos of business cards. Everyone wants a bigger and better looking card. Gone are the days when the individual goodness and humility stood the first priority for humans.


Take IIT for example. The students there are no better than any of the other engineering colleges. The course remains the same and so does the knowledge domain of the teachers. So what makes the IITs the most coveted colleges in India? Its perception. Since our inception we are made to believe that IITs are the best colleges in India. We are told that getting into them is no joke and that if we do manage to get in, it would mean a fat paycheck, respect everywhere and a painfree passage through a much easier life. And there it begins.. Everyone wants to get those things in life and so we strive to be the ' Best'. Now in reality, getting all those things at the same time is impossible and even if it were to be possible, there is no compulsory provision that only an IITian can achieve those. But its something our parents conveniently forget to teach us. And so the struggle begins. We create an illusion in our heads and long to realize it. We become too afraid to look beyond the IITs. Same is the case with the society. A guy from IIT, who's no better than a guy from some other college, would receive much more appreciation and approval in the society than the poor non-IITian.


So what makes the difference? The answer lies in the phenomenon called perception. We are all pawns in the mindless propagation of this phenomenon. From the time we are born to the time we take the last breath, its merely the perceptions that we care about. Come to think of it, the whole ‘society’ concept is just another euphemism for perception. “We shouldn’t be shown in this light. What will the society say?”, “avoid the company of troublemakers. What will the society think?”. These are just a couple of things we have all heard during our lifetime. Kinda makes you wonder if it really is worth it?


Schadenfreude is the term that should be used to denote our society. Schadenfreude means taking spiteful malicious delight in the misfortune of others. Its ugly and taboo so no one really accepts its presence, but within the coffers of everyone’s minds its pretty much prevalent. We as a society find a pleasure in watching others fail and therein lay the roots of the perception bug. We don’t want others to look down upon us, make fun of us behind our backs, and hear snickering when we pass people in the hallways.


There is no doubt that the IITs or the IIMs are very good colleges and that the students there are one of the brightest minds in our country but one must not see it as the end of the road if one doesn’t get in. Ultimately its who you are that defines you as a person and not where you received your education. Parents should realize this and convey the same to their children. People from better colleges should realize this before canning and making fun of the guy coming from a lesser known college. Compassion is a drug to cure this problem of perception, the only question is – do we want to be cured?

To new beginnings

The taste of a comeback is far more savory after pangs of absence. Well after managing to fly under the radar for almost one and half years I am back to this blog. A lot has happened in this lost time and lets just say that it feels good to be writing again.

For a long period of time during the past year I was filled with a sense of hopeless despair and had a hard time overcoming it. I was in a very dark place and like a phoenix I have managed to rise from my ashes stronger and wiser. Writing here feels like a lesson in relativity. It seems just yesterday that I had written my last entry and it feels as if all this time had passed rather quickly but while I was living through the bad phase it seemed the time had slowed its progress down. I wasn’t even able to complete my thoughts that I had penned down during this period, so as a result I have numerous incomplete entries sitting here on my computer.

Its funny how perceptions also change with time. After having managed to alienate all of my friends and dear ones I finally have them all back. Success and failure has that effect I guess. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that success attracts friends however true that statement might be it didn’t apply in my case. Its just that when you fail at something you start to question your moves. You go back to the start and analyze your actions, your reactions, your approach and even your motives. And in that time of cynical delusion you tend to read too much into the reactions you get. And being a master of subtext and underlying meanings doesn’t help you either. All it takes is just a little push down the wrong path and before you know it you end up spiraling down the path of loneliness.

I realize now that I am rambling on here, so I hope I get some leeway considering this is the first time I have written in 1.5 years. All I want to convey is simple. Failures are as much a part of life as successes. I really don’t believe it when people say that ‘somebody’ has always won everything in his life. Everybody loses at one point or the other. It’s the law of averages. You are bound to fail almost as many times as you succeed. So one must go through these phases to understand and acknowledge the success better. And most importantly keep up the appearances. As a matter of fact many of the people who’ll read this will find it very hard to believe that I had so much turmoil brewing just under the cloak. So take this as an advice: win or lose, keep up the appearances.

P.S: I would like to apologize deeply to all the friends I had alienated during the course of last year and I hope you forgive me.