The ‘Sweet’ Bachelorhood!

Not being married seems quite an achievement once we cross the age of 26-27, even when parents of many of us have become quite supporting and relaxed in terms of letting us stretch our bachelorhood until marriage engulfs us into an altogether new life. This feeling of achievement is further consolidated when our close friends (I must say ‘especially’ our close friends) who once used to sit beside us in classrooms or live with us in our hostel rooms or play with us on streets, start getting married in front of us. There we are, making videos of their elaborate garland exchange ceremony and yawning away in the hall where they take wows to be together with someone for the rest of their life. What a change!

Having said the above, I am quite happy attending a friend’s wedding. I get a box of sweets at the end, I get to reunite with my college friends on the occasion, and I get to dance in most of them. Speaking of happiness, I am happy for them too. Now they won’t be thrown out of the race of renting an apartment just because they are not tied up in the holy matrimony. Now they have a license to rent a flat in any gated society of Gurgaon/Bangalore/Mumbai/any other city on Indian map.

Most of my friends, of course including me, are at the dreading point where maximum discussions within the group ultimately get directed towards weddings. Even when a discussion begins with a newly released movie, it somehow magically ends up on how one of us can’t go to watch it, as he/she has to attend a wedding in the evening. Even when we start talking about the new budget or taxation reforms released in the morning, we somehow end up complaining about our salaries and in turn, about the fact that how meagre it is to support a family after wedding. Seems as if ‘Wedding’ itself is trying to make a point by being the point of discussion at every point!

Attending weddings of two of my very good friends in recent past made me realise how different it feels to see a friend standing there, being a part of those big ceremonies which I always thought only mature adults are a part of. And Boom, there it hit me- An inner voice screamed-You too are an adult now! Not sure how this realisation will grow in the next few years with many such more occasions coming my way.  

However, it’s both a harsh reality (for some) and a sweet dream (for others) to visualise oneself getting married someday. I am sure my recently married friends, and I have quite a few now, will be the best judge of how life changes, and what all to look forward to.

As of now, I guess we bachelors will keep discussing how impossible the idea of marriage seems, and how we are slowly trying to increase the grace period we have received from our parents, post which marriage will become a non-negotiable reality.

Cheers to the still bachelors and the amazing couples! 

Please define the word 'Religion' for me!

One of my friends shared her experience with the so called ‘Religious followers of god’ a few days back, which reinforced my faith in the fact that India is still full of people whose so called religious sentiments are weaker than a burnt twig!

This incident took place in Delhi (sadly it’s Delhi, but then, it’s not just about this place. The issue cuts all the state boundaries but only reaches the border of our country) The ‘Kanwaria’ procession is quite famous in North India, obviously for the immense faith put in by the people who travel so long to prove how much they value god. More famous in Delhi for the 2-3 km long traffic jams it causes and the innumerable missed appointments, classes and probably loss of lives because of it. But shhhh…. The government might read it. I am lucky that I am not a famous blogger; else I would be put behind bars for writing this truth. That’s how it works- Religion it is!

My friend was driving to college for her evening class. While the kanwarias were walking on the side of road, a few of them were standing in the middle of the road, blocking it for the vehicles that would otherwise pass by easily. All of them had rods in their hands. After waiting for good 5 minutes or so for them to move, all in vain, my friend, in inverted commas, “Made a mistake of honking slightly, once” to ask those illiterate people to give her way on the road for which she pay taxes regularly and on which, those people have no right to stand aimlessly in the name of god. The strong believers of god rushed to her car, and in no time, surrounded it and started banging the rods on the window panes until one of them broke. If you are still reading, please note that all this happened in broad daylight in presence of at least 20 vehicles just around and no single person coming to help her. But that’s not the point anyways. The point here is that even after all this happened, and with great difficulty when she managed to escape the scene by her presence of mind, all that the police people 200 meters away could say to her was “Madam aap to nikal jao, hum dekh lenge”. Yeah sure, we have grown up to see how the police ‘sees to it’ in India!.

It is ridiculous that while on one hand people in India are going crazy about beef ban and digitalization through changing Facebook DPs, they still are very much fine with waiting for 2 hours in traffic for absolutely no reason other than the shit thrown in their face in the name of religion. Everyone is frustrated, everyone has suffered, but they forget after 2-3 hours and move on. No one discusses these things. I may have gone just a little step ahead to write about it, but then even I stop here. Some people may empathize, some may sympathize with such incidents. It’s all in vain if there’s no thought in someone’s mind wherein the government would be forced to take law and order out of the hands of people who claim to be god-lovers and make sure it’s handed over to those responsible people who believe in it and do not use it as a cheap tool to show their frustration and fulfill their whimsical fancies!

Turn Me Down, It Turns Me On!

Goes perfectly for the case when a beautiful girl turns down a guy, who thinks it is even more exciting to get her then.

Well, not talking about that here. :)

Of all those things that have come my way till now in life, the bad ones are those which I was not able to achieve. The good ones were those which I was able to crack. Probably the best ones were those which held my neck and banged it into unfathomable depth of failure, depression and most importantly, learning.

Needless to say, and as per basic human nature, failing hurts. Badly. I remember times when people have not trusted me, or not considered me competent enough to do a certain thing. I hate those times. But at some level, if today I do not care what people say or do to me, it’s because of those non trusting people. As they say, the worst of people teach you the best of lessons. Well, I am a learner, and a persistent one at that!

There sure have been, and will be times when people and opportunities will turn me down. Rejection and failure will take away a lot, but at the end of the day, they’ll all make me want to get more out of them. I’ll be always attracted to things that reject me. So whether or not I conquer them, it would be a pleasure being turned on at least! 

A Funny Society- Indian Society

A guy rapes a girl and maybe gets a bail, but a girl abuses a guy publicly and he’s not allowed to abuse back as there would be at least 10 people to stand by her side, even when her argument is pointless. Furthermore, the guy is responsible for the argument. End of the story.  As a recent case in a bus in Pune very aptly depicted, a guy offering his seat to a girl paid a heavy price by getting a slap on his face just because he is a guy. Even more interesting, no one in that crowded bus told the girl that just because she is having female reproductive organs in her body doesn’t give her a right to slap any guy for anything. Such girls are probably the reason, sadly, that people forget cases like the one of Nirbhaya very easily. And even when they do remember, the price is sometimes paid by innocent guys. If guys who rape set bad examples, girls like those in above case do that too. We are stuck at one single point.

The reason lies in roots of the stereotypes we have in our minds. Indian mentality has got rotten due to the acid of stereotypes. It is a society where stereotypes have made it difficult for people to do (and even more importantly, to NOT do) what they like to or dislike. It is a society where a guy is expected to like riding bikes and/or cars and somehow, a disgusted look comes on face of most people when a guy says I don’t know how to ride a bike. Big deal, he can run 10 km non-stop, what many bikers can’t do without their bikes. He may be able to do many other things that are enough to prove his manliness (which, in fact, is not a thing to be proven to everyone!)

Ours is a society where girls are expected (if not made to) to know how to cook. A pitiful expression comes on face of people learning that a girl doesn’t know how to cook. ‘Poor thing, how will she ever get married’ is what comes to their mind. Little do they know that the girl might know how to kick their own son in his balls!

People in India just claim to have moved on. Not many have changed except a handful. Modernization is still limited to using gadgets and high rise buildings. While some females do not get their basic rights, some go on using feminism as a tool to harass males. While some say females do not watch WWE/ Football, some still think males in kitchen are pets of their wives.

Its high time some people retrospect and realize. We’ve to go much beyond this stupid mentality. 

When it comes to eliminating the difference between males and females, a lot still needs to be done. A lot!

When Life Hits a Low, Take a Dip and Bounce Back!

The utmost jeopardized situations, where despondency takes lead of one’s life to one of the most eerie ambiance, where the fragments of tormented body and devastated emotions lie down in the ashes, with no signs to proliferate in ages to come, where the least on stake could be the iota of soul thrown away as something of no dignity, are the situations which ultimately lead to magnification in exquisiteness of the very goal in life.

Chocolate tastes even better when tasted after a chili, just like it feels better to read this paragraph as compared to the one above, unless you were smart enough to dodge it. It is a fact, or let me say a very common experience and hence a fact, that success tastes better post failure. Unless one has faced hardships in achieving something, he/she himself lacks the zeal to acknowledge his own efforts.

There are basically two kinds of people: One, who fall and get up again and again and second who quit as soon as they fall for the first time. While quitting is considered something undesirable, it again depends on personal call of a person. Quitting is not an action of the weak. It may be a result of a strong conviction to move ahead rather than clinging to things that may have no relevance left in life. 

A quitter is not a loser.

Life gives chances at every corner, huge and petty. A lot of those chances are missed, leaving us behind with a sense of disappointment that fails to go away easily. It’s not easy to hang on to things that never responded positively, and hence sometimes  all we need is to sulk a bit, gain back our senses, find an eraser to erase past memories, head forward and never look back!

   

The Wind Today Reminds Me of Someone!

Looking up at the sky, gazing hard at infinity

the wind begin to blow with just perfect velocity

touching my body, caressing my hair

touching my soul, reminding me of somebody

The ones with whom I parted long ago,

the ones who walked away never looking back

the ones who I thought I’d never remember

all just came back, within a flash.

As the wind blew, it reminded me of him

for whom life was but a moment forever

I remembered the friend who always said

'Live in the present, it’s now or never'.

The one who laughed came up too

maybe just to put a smile on my face

The one who cried took away the smile

both left me happy, sad and amazed.

In a moment I realized life has moved on,

the wind will stop and it may rain

some walk away, some come closer

some make you happy, some give you pain.

All I want is that the wind should keep blowing

till every memory of past it reminds

the ones I’d never meet, the ones who’d never return

the wind should blow, until all cross my mind!

Night is everything morning can never be!

To those who say nights end the day

yes sure they do, but make a way

for a stark realm of fantasies which eventually

fall prey to the sun's very first ray

May I ask you, when is it that

you see yourself and realize

you had a great day, you'll have a better one

let's get a sound sleep, it's night

Looking at yourself when back at home

what crosses mind is the 12 hours play

where you went wrong what you did right

how you can improve for the next day

---

Night is when you judge yourself,

criticize, cry over and get a glimpse

over life as whole and the past mistakes

and how long have you come since

The cool breeze soothes the heat of day

the look at stars makes you want to stay

you must have stared at moon for long

how often though, you stare sun during the day?

---

Some say dark scares, no it doesn't

It's you who has the fear

Not always is it when you step out in day

and pull off everything clear

They bond, they propel, they make it easy

to express oneself and prepare for the best

It's always darkest before the dawn

but dark is the best, yes, it's the best!