Nostalgia...Scene I

One of the blogs i follow has a post called time machine... one of the posts i had written years ago was abt nostalgia... and now with christmas & new year here... i am getting nostalgic again... and am missing everyone... including the people who i meet everyday... so this is an attempt to remember a few very very heart-warming moments... with people who once were or continue to be an integral part of who I am.

Scene I (am wathcing too many movies I guess)

Set in a cold december night in Delhi... AFWWA hostel... Divya's room... 

Dibiya is out partying... and we (read - me, taru, rakhi, dhara, neha) are all in her room  -- (there were party hoppers too)... wondering what to do... so we think of having our own party... music list prolly was Chunari-Chunari on repeat... with some help from FM... on the menu - maggi!!! and we danced like there was no tomorrow... how that hostel bed survived the foot stomping will always be a mystery... why on that day the warden did not even bother to come for a round dispite the blaring music we'll never know. Sometime around dawn we all collapsed and slept off in that little room... 

cut to.... 12 hours ago... the same set of people + divya + ira + preety + gauri... make a plan to watch kabhi khushiiii kabhi gammmmmmmmmmmmmm.......... at chanakya... we have to catch the morning show... no body would ditch etc etc...

cut to... early morning... knowing us... ira comes to wake us up...with senti tht none of us is ready for after the "saturday-night-fever"... so we drag ourselves out of the room and into a foggy delhi morning;this is the time when we saw movies in the front row coz they costed less than air... which meant standing in lines for hours on end... for a ticket window that opened only an hour before the movie

sooooooo we reach and the show is sold out... so we get in the line for the next show (which means we are in the line for 4 hours)... while ira goes to her would be mother-in-law to get us food... i dont think any of us had the heart to tell the 'good ppl who stuck to the plan' that we should cancel the movie...or prolly it didnt strike anyone that we could catch the show another day...annnnnyway... we got the tickets and we saw K3G.. preety cried her eyes out...and we all lived happily ever after...

one of the days that i'll always remember... probably not vividly... but the fuzzy feeling... i liked those girls... i like those girls... i miss them. and i will remember them... all of them. 

Forwards galore...

In the past 2 days I received too many smses (is that a word?) about how the marathi manoos or Raj Thackray should go and try and defend the hostages as the NSG commandos are from the north or south
1) People have to stop confusing MNS with Marathis or Maharashtrians..
2) about the sms... quoting a friend - the 3 top cops who lost their lives and other 11 cops did not differentiate that the people at CST were waiting for trains to goto Nasik or Kanpur or Patna or banglore... they went there to defend indians and lets not bring this pettiness at a time of such tragedy

about the raj thackray remark... India has serious problems... and people like raj thackray and narendra modi are not here to solve them...they are only here to tell us who to blame for it... thackray will say each and every problem of yours is because of the north indians... modi will tell us its the muslims... this is just divisive politics and nothing else (I really dont understand how people keep being led by this...how they believe it!!!)... we have serious problems... and we need serious people to tackle them... sadly we dont have too many of them around... so I cant help but wonder - what are we going to do about it - sit at home and crib 'is desh ka kuch nahin ho sakta'? or will we be the change we want to see?

Cheering the commandos...

its 1911 hrs on 28th nov... the media and the people are going crazy cheering the commandos... and i cant help but remember this was the same media that cried abt the multi thousand crore "burden" that the sixth pay commission was going to be to the tax payer... there were polls being done about if the Armed forces were justified in asking for equivalent pay packages... nobodys on the street said how they already get enough... and the media ran its sms program...quoting a friend of mine - every profession gets bastardized and this is the bastardization of the media. they have turned now...everyone is for the sixth pay commission...every one remembers the soldier now and praises him... and i wonder how long will this last... till the time the next news story hits... or the budget deficit ticks to a higher number... i wonder how long will it take for the media to start harping about human rights... starts questioning the ways of the army... and how much it should be paid...i give the media and the public 3 months to turn against the same commando... the same army man.
and that soldier will still stand at the border...protecting us through this cheering... through the sms saying he doesnt deserve to be paid more as it might hurt my next mall trip...through the hue& cry about human rights.... through the IAS officers robbing him of his rights... because that soldier is the only one who knows what it means to be an Indian

The spirit of Bombay

I came to Bombay 4 1/2 years ago... and in this period i have seen the crisis situations like the flood, the bombings, the MNS menace - and the day-to-day struggle of a mumbaikar coz of the lack of infrastructure - sorry state of roads, no prep for the monsoons, packed local trains, traffic jams etc etc etc... and everytime all this is swept under the carpet of the "spirit of mumbai"...

in the beginning i was really amazed - i was in awe of this city and its people who bounced back the very next day after the flood in 2005...everyone applauded the spirit of mumbai - accolades to the mumbaikar... 'thats wot makes bombay' ... and that was that - nothing was done. bombay was stuck again in the next monsoon and the next and the next. The spirit of bombay keeping it afloat.

trains were bombed... the average mumbaikar descended on the roads with food and water to help the ones affected... "praise the spirit of bombay" ... and nothing was done... life went on.
MNS went on a rampage -- killed a student -- destroyed govt and pvt property -- party 'karyakartas' held the city hostage as the MNS chief went to court. "spirit of bombay blah blah blah" - life goes on

Now yesterday terrorists open fired at CST, Leopold cafe, trident, taj, cama hospital, bombed vile parle & santacruz... killing more than 125 innocent people (number increasing by the minute) injuring many more... hostages yet held at nariman house taj and trident. Mumbai has lost 3 of its top cops... encounter carries on...Army takes over the city after 15 years... now what will happen??? Will the mumbaikar again be assuaged by the praise of his/her spirit... or will bombay finally put its foot down and say enoungh is enough... Will bombay spearhead a people's movement -- will there be change or will we go back to business as usual??? Time will tell.

Subah dekhenge

The encounter and the rescue mission is yet on. My mom called in the evening and asked if I was going to office tomorrow and I said "subah dekhenge". My mom said - "Yeh toh Jammu wali baat hai".

From 1990 - 1992 my father was posted in Jammu... if you havent stayed in J&K you have no idea of what I am talking about. There you lived on a 'daily basis' ...that time it seemed natural...that was the way of life. You made plans having checked the hygiene factors (bombing/shoot outs)... I remember all of us going to the railway station to drop my aunt... when we reached home there was the news of a bomb blast on the same platform - we missed it by 15 min. We went to raghunath bazar and by the time the first car reached home there was a blast and we waited... hands folded in prayer... for the rest of our family.

Today... after 16 years I am again in a place jahan subah dekhenge...

Standard Deviation of......................

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.


The people who wrote the constitution... the preamble of which is cited here... probably did not consider the following obvious issues while they were busy getting us our freedom and charting what was to be meteoric rise of a nation-state.

1) EQUALITY of status and of opportunity

- not if you are a north indian in Maharashtra... and trying to write an exam for a railway job...
- not if you are "an upper caste hindu" anywhere in India... it wouldnt matter if you are the best at what you do... I think we should also get a quota for merit now... (deviating a little...i dont think there was any worse time to be an upper caste hindu...) Call me insensitive... but i refuse to be treated by a doctor who could not manage to get a 50% on his bio exam... what you are saying is...his prescription may be 50% correct...though i would recommend this doctor to a certain Mr Arjun Singh...

2) JUSTICE, social, economic and political

well... no point in even atempting bullet points on this not because this is well taken care of... but because i dont quite understand in todays scenario what is justice! let alone social economic and political...

what i do understand is that if you make enough noise and burn enough buses you get quotas & reservations ... atleast it gets you on TV... actually anything gets you on TV these days...

also... if any random politician says i think so and so community should get so & so percentage of seats...its a win-win...coz no other party will actually come out and say this is not right... due to the fear of the latter losing those votes to the former...

another... it pays to be in politics... if you were in Congress in '84... you went scotfree reason being ' jab bada ped girta hai to dharti hilti hai'... if you were in BJP wen the babri masjid 'fell'... you are prolly in line to be PM...

as i said... i dont understand this concept to write about it... so we will go to the next...

3) LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

- the Mumbai argument again
- Midnight mass...which cant happen at midnight
- Orissa & Karnataka massacres...
- if Jaya Bachchan wants to speak in Hindi.... let her... why does the PVR booking window have to be broken for it.
- Amarnath yatra threats..

- you cant screen Jodha Akbar.... in Rajput areas... or Aamir Khan movies in Gujrat... or Bachchan movies in Bomday (HA!!) ( If they speak in hindi)...

- "Water" cant be made in banaras... though its set in it...and based on it... but well... it shows the not-so-pretty side of hinduism......... now dont go about thinking i am anti-hinduism... i am a hindu... but lets call a spade a spade...


4) FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation

- now im not limiting this to the MNS and SHiv sena...but did the congress actually think linguistic states was good for unity of the country????

- homosexuality is immoral??!!! Hello!!! We are the second largest population in the country... we can do with some less breeding here!!! OK... jokes apart... its a personal choice and a nation can not ostracize a community ... we are anyway a homophobic population... we are pushing these people further into anonymity.... a closeted life... and increased susceptibility to STDs... where is the dignity of the individual and this community????

- the number of ppl whose faces were blackened by the MNSs and students unions... they are yet indians... and last we checked there was a justice system... or that too is only limited to getting anticipatory bails????

ANNNND....can someone pl explain why SIMI is a banned orgn but Bajrang dal / VHP are not... dont get me wrong...im all for banning orgn if they intend to kill ppl...but are we banning only islamic orgns??? coz maybe im toooo liberal..but it doesnt sound right in a "secular" country... are we yet that or have we amended the preamble to read... "We will be what suits us the most and gets us the most votes"

The Dark Knight...

WOW!!! many times over!!!

Batman Begins had given hope that the character which was made a joke of by the many many many earlier batman movies could be salvaged... and then came the dark knight... i really wanted to write this when I saw the movie but I had no words... Nolan is a Genius!!! How can one possibly make what he did...

I have found myself repeating every possible line of the movie in every possible situation... completely unintentionally...

And after many many weeks of having seen the movie also... i find that i yet can not write about it... this time coz there is so much to say that it would border on incoherence.

Blogging again :D

After bt 2 yrs im going to be blogging again... all posts before this one are part of another blog i used to write... i've picked up some and put them here... i hope i am more regular... thrz so much chaos... which translates to thrz so much to write... so im writing again...