I walk alone... I walk alone

I walk a lonely road

The only one that I have ever known

Don’t know where it goes

But it’s home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I’m the only one and I walk alone

These were the lines from Green day (one of my favourite number  ) that were ringing in my mind when I decided to take a stroll on a lazy Sunday evening… errr… no… noon… I don’t know to categorize (it was 3 pm  ) Yes, I felt the entire city was busy in the afternoon nap after a heavy Sunday meal  The noise and the honking was pretty less  I somehow wanted to go for a walk (may be cos of the unusually pleasant weather  ) alone that noon (evening)… There were many scenes that caught my attention and made me to capture it in my blog…

Caution: This is gonna be a long post… I tried my best to reduce it but this was the max, I could do 

Here goes my walk to remember

I left my house and as soon as I stepped out of my street, my ‘walk alone’ concept was challenged by a black dog… It started following me, wagging its tail, its eyes pleading to make it part of my walking chronicles… As you all know my dog-phobia… I tried my best to follow my friends’ and parents’ suggestions (Ignore a dog… Don’t give your attention… Only when you keep noticing it, it will follow )… Trust me, inspite of my heart beat which beat with a huge decibel (am sure it would have been heard out  ), I tried walking without turning back but I knew it was close behind my legs  I kept walking till the end of the street and finally when I made up my mind to turn back, I found that my black friend had got distracted with the food packet, a few paces behind… I smiled to myself, thanked the owner of the food packet and his immense road sense for throwing it near the dust bin (not in the dustbin ) and quickly turned to continue my walk alone…

There was a pretty deserted bus stand and a ‘cobbler’ couple were sitting… They were very old… Definitely 80′s something… They took a break from the work (I observed a needle with a thread near a half torn shoe… so decided the ‘work in progress’ board was applicable here ) and having one of the best moments of their life… The old man opened a small tray, that had a scoop of strawberry ice cream… He took two plastic spoons from a jute bag near him and placed it in the tray… Both were all smiles and started enjoying the ice cream… The vehicles, the shoes near them, the dust… nothing mattered to them… They enjoyed every little moment and the teethless mouth was beaming, time and again, making it more cuter…. seeing that scene, my lips curved a smile involuntarily 

I moved on cautiously , not to disturb their moment of togetherness… There were many shops on to my right… A tea shop was one among them… I found 4 people reading tamil newspapers as they show in movies, 90′s song in the background , the tea-master busy with his well practiced tea-stunts and a boy waiting with tea-glasses… While I was giggling seeing this, a white indica was blaring at me… I moved to my left giving it more way… but still he continued to honk urging me to turn and give him a cold stare… I hopped on to the broken platform, making up my mind not to  get irritated… I continued my stroll, with hopping and jumping through the broken tiles in the platform… Actually, I had fun doing it 

The silence was suddenly overshadowed by the hustle and bustle… I took a turn and entered into that road… Market road…The colorful painted dolls, people with bags, loud bargains gave me a clear signal… Dussehra has begun  So many different colors, the paintings in each of the doll exhibited the intricate art work…A guy was giving a final touch to a ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ doll… The paint was glistening under the mild sunlight (it was a cloudy)… His concentration and passion exhibited was immense… Our ‘Mahatma’ soon joined his companions ‘happy man’, ‘a set of cricketers’ and ‘charlie chaplin’.

This street was crowded and I apologized thrice for dashing the ladies who were busy bargaining and who didn’t even bother to give way to me… I squeezed my way past them… There was a reunion that happened on the other side of the road… A few relatives who had come shopping waved and got near eachother… There were two kids who were the most affected ones by this reunion… Already the two of them were irritated about getting them to shop in their play time… One of the women from the gang pinched the elder kid’s cheek and am sure would have given the usual comments “How big you have become… Do you remember me?” The kid didn’t respond while his parents were continuously giving clues about the ‘new’ aunty… The kid continued to display the language of our Prime minister… muteness  Like the Indian Janata, after repeated attempts, the elders moved on to other topics… Am sure the kid now would have made up his mind to practice the art of muteness as it was useful in times of need  The next attack was on the younger kid… Girls are always a bit more expressive than boys , so was this kid unlike her brother… She smiled… It was the gravest mistake… She had a cadburys diary milk unwrapped in her hand, when she was about to take the first bite, this over affectionate ‘relative’ lifted her in the arms so fiercely that  the kid missed her control over her precious chocolate.. It fell right on the ground… Tears swelled up in her eyes… The crowd had a tough time to minify her tears… While the entire attention was on this girl child, the elder one slowly moved away from the crowd, opened his dairy milk carefully and started relishing it… Muteness zindabad 

At that time I got a call to my mobile…. The display read “Aish calling”… I wondered ‘how can I call to my own mobile’… Stills of Madhavan’s 13B passed through my mind… I attended the call expecting something unusual… “Where are you? Come home soon… Your aunt and uncle are coming home”  My mom’s voice… Ufff ! I had stored the landline number as Aish… I decided to rename it to ‘Home’ to avoid any nervous breakdown in the future and made my walk back to my home 

PS: A picture is worth a 1000 words… Since I didn’t click a pic, I used 1000 words to recapture the picture 

Incredible India

As I have always told, whenever we plan something for weekend… It never happens  The same happened this weekend too… I had charted out a long to-do list… As soon as I was done, my mom came up to me and informed that am accompanying her to the market! First blow to my to-do list as soon as it was made… okay.. I pacified myself that its just an hour’s work (though I was sure it would take up the entire evening  ) and set out to the market.

I was really excited as we had almost finished all the work within an hour and we were about to return home… At that time “Helllooo!!!” A chirpy voice exclaimed. I turned back, but to my dismay couldn’t recognize her! Before I could conclude she mistook us for somebody else, my mom responded in the same excited voice… “Hellooo! It has been ages since I saw you”. I had exactly  look on my face and kept gazing back and forth at mom and that lady… From the conversation, I understood she had returned from her exile, “Vidheshvaas”, after 10 years…After a while, the lady finally noticed me and remarked “Is this your daughter? Oh! My God (seeing this exclamation I didn’t know how to react and continued my expression)… I saw her when she was so small (her hand showed that “small” expression too small… a size that was humanely impossible)…Now she has become this big… I couldn’t recognize her at all” (The rate of growth discussion, made me feel like a pet animal  ) When my mom was finally bidding her bye, she became over-affectionate and nagged us to come home…I kept pressing my mom’s hand to show my protest… My mom coolly replied “I’ll come some other time… My daughter has some work it seems”. The lady threw my a so-chweet kind of smile and said “Am sure 10 minutes can’t ruin your work”. I threw an angry look at my mom and forced that “cho-chweet” smile on my face too and followed her.

As soon as we entered her house… she started fanning with her hand and rushed towards her AC switch “Habba! I don’t know how you people survive here… Its so hot! Can’t be without AC for a single second”. She left us for getting juice, my mom got up to follow her to the kitchen… I pulled my mom back to the couch and whispered (angrily) “who is she?” My mom’s explanation couldn’t expel my ignorance… So I jumped to next question “Why is she overacting?”. My mom gave me that behave-yourself look and told “She lived in US for 15 years. Now her husband has got transfer to India, to be with his parents (who lived in a floor below them… And not in their house ). My mom justified her acts saying so sad… It will be difficult for them to get accustomed to India”.

She brought 2 glass full of orange juice… While I picked a glass, she added “Ufff! The water here is so dirty… The packaged drinking water that is available is unfit even for washing dishes. That’s why I make my friends there to  send these juices. We can’t completely stop drinking this water but whenever possible I avoid using it!” This made me realize am drinking an imported juice and shouldn’t waste. The “health drink” tasted bad !

She insisted that she showed us around her house. All the while she kept complaining about everything possible. She said “My kids eat only healthy foods… But what’s healthy here? We, there eat only cream coffee, cheese(some cheese, that I couldn’t decipher ), etc…Here, the food is so unhealthy”. I blurted out “Research shows 90% kids in foreign countries are only obese. We Indians, though we eat unhealthy, we stay healthy.” I continued looking at my “healthy” juice glass as I didn’t want that behave-yourself look from my mom.

The lady managed “smart girl” remark for which my mom proudly started narrating my career growth. She listened to this and threw a bouncer at me for my previous remark.What’s your daughter’s age? and that very same I know-a-guy-story… A typical matrimonial ad! My mom gave her usual answer saying “We are not looking for a match as of now”. This matrimonial ad made me more furious and the cold war intensified.

At the peak of the cold war, somebody rang the bell… 2 kids (proving my point about foreign kids are obese) rushed in.. I couldn’t help giggling! She explained how her kids have become so “weak” coming here…”The roads are so polluted. The school and kids here are so unhygienic.  Every now and then these little(who were not little) kids fall sick”. My mom had to give that artificial so-sad expression. I looked at my mom and both of us controlled our giggle. She asked her kids “Do you want some cookies and milk?” In a sing song way… In the same way, they replied “Yeah mom”.

We were standing in the balcony, so I conviniently turned towards the road and started laughing. Finally she got the “imported” cookies(which is nothing but our butter biscuits). The kid was standing next to me in the balcony. “Don’t stand there for long, its so dusty! Come in…” She looked at me and said “Look at the road.. In US and all it looks spic and span… Like a mirror”… While telling this, she was busy opening the carton containing cookies… She gave the cookies to the kid, offered me some , squashed the box and threw it down from the balcony, instructing her kid to go eat inside as it is dirty out.

I could stand no more. I remarked “What to do aunty… Even people who have stayed in foreign for years together still remain “Indian” in their ways. They still throw waste on road but complain India is dirty.”  She gave a sheepish smile. I assumed the role of Aamir khan inSathyameva Jayate and continued my speech “As you said, India is bad… Even though foreigners and the half foreigners…That’s NRIs return back here… stay here, eat here but still complain… We continue to let them stay here as we believe in Athithi Devo Bhava… This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.  Incredible India”

I knew I was a bit rude, but couldn’t help it! It is depressing to know, Indians (few), themselves talking bad about India. Then, how can we expect others to respect us? I really wish this attitude of ours changes.  Instead of complaining about what’s bad, we can take a step to make that bad turn good. We have to believe we are the best, then only we can make others believe the same.

If Facebook was born in India- II

First of all, thank you for the numerous suggestions and feedback that you gave for If Facebook was born in India .. Trust me I really didn’t want to write a sequel to any of my posts…Since, my friends felt many more things should be added to our very own “Your Neighbour” social network, so I had to write this Part 2 post 

We are already done with customizing Like button, Share button, Wall, comments, poke …Added new buttons like treat, dub in native language etc…

I was asked about the step-motherly treatment towards ‘friend request’ section…   So we’ll start off with this section first now! We always don’t request anybody to be ‘friends’ with us… We Indians are very straight-forward people… Right from our kindergarten, we don’t say ” Can we be friends?”… Indians put it this way ” Hey I wanna be friends with you… You agree or not?” We always expect an yes or no answer immediately. So we change friend request to “Be my friend” This “Be my friend” section should have 2 buttons… Deal and No Deal  If the user clicks on Deal, he accepts to be his friend and will be immediately redirected to our Treat? section as a token of friendship  Very much Indian right ?  So, now what happens if he clicks on No Deal? Nothing much… he’s rejecting his friendship and a better luck next time message will be sent to the sender (if at all he plans to be his friend still  ) If no button is clicked, the “Be my friend” notification will be shelved in an area called loft  In India, we always store things that are not useful right now but may be useful sometime in the future (Future thinking you see  ) in a place called loft  So this area called “loft” will contain all these unanswered notifications for future reply 

Next is application that tells us about the auspicious days and time… This application will be activated by default… This would be very useful for uncles and aunties who do everything based on the auspicious days and time. They needn’t rush to find a calendar to get all these information you see! Our team of astrologers will take care of this section and the daily prediction section 

India is a country that is difficult to predict… Today everything will be fine, but tomorrow a strike will be announced! So in order to deal with this, we’ll have spy working in all government sectors. If there is a probability of a strike they’ll alert us before hand and our app “Probability of holiday” will be enabled. This will give us the probable date of strike, so that we can plan our holiday well in advance  May be in future we’ll try and make thesestrikes and bandhs fall on friday and monday… so that we can get a long weekend 

Now a days, we have become all health conscious, all of a sudden  so we’ll have a section that throws light about the simple exercises, yoga with photos of the postures  , healthy diets and also do’s and dont’s for a common disease…We’ll have to rope in doctors for this  So if any of you have doctor friends… applications are welcome 

During any crucial cricket match (only crucial…as we keep playing matches almost everyday  ), we’ll have to customize the entire look of “your Neighbour” showing our support to Indian team (no matter how we play  ) Just like how the advertisements and products make us eat blue, think blue, bleed blue etc… “Your Neighbour” should also cash in at this time!

The front page of FB says “Its Free and always will be”… This should be modified in our Indian edition as “its FREE FREE FREE” This is more than enough to attract our Indian crowd  As we have an affinity towards “free” and “discounts”… We should also give away coupons (even if its silly..its ok  ) very often to attract and retain the crowd! Marketing technique you see 

Notifications should be modified as “Flash news” and the flash news should be a catchy one-liner…Clicking on that, you should get the entire news, as we are used to reading news that way  For eg: Flash news: “A new friendship blooms in Your neighbour” This will make us curious and definitely will make Indians click this… At that time we’ll have to let the cat out of the bag “New friendship- XYZ is now friends with ABC”  This is a technique that is sure to work here 

Okay, that’s all from me  No more part 3s and 4s… Errrrr…as an Indian…what to do… am no different … Have an habit of freezing at an interesting scene and continuing it as the next episode  And of course promises are meant to be broken right..?