Bharat ka mess: chaos ya cosmos?

Posted this on intentblog to an overseas visiting friend who carried back home fond memories and some bitter ones too....



Give us one more chance dear!

India lives concurrently in multiple ages starting from dark to 64nm chip design one. Dare I say, you may have had a taste of it all in a very short time.

Personally, I feel mentally numb after a few weeks when I travel to US or other 1st world countries. The systems work so smooth that you stop noticing them after some time! (running potable water, right out from your tap!). The systems let you focus on your chosen vocation and keeps you free, as long as you conform to certain behavior. You can get complacent quite quickly if you aren't in love with your chosen vocation.

Life out here is a continuum of challenge! I am on my toes mentally, all the time! Crossing a busy street is a task, driving , parking, buying, selling, eating, sleeping.. all of it! You need to be smart to even survive , because the rules of interactions/interplay keep changing. The diversity of this country itself it overwhelming. Most friends have chosen to move to US or Canada to pursue their dreams of a “better life”, while we chose to thrive on this chaos! The India that I see right now is that of chaos and opportunity! A million opportunities at every corner! From an amateurish media to a speculative stock market, from rural employment schemes to socially sensitive corporates, the place is throbbing with opportunities. As they say in the MacD ad “I am loving it!”.

We need imaginative dreamers; we need young novelists like Rahul Pandita, missionaries like Anouradha, rugby players like Rahul Bose and of course, our ambassadors like you and Gotham (happy birthday pal, wish you stronger knees!). We are breaking through thousands of years of cultural continuum and adopting a new consumerist model. Ashok Khosla is worrying about its sustainability and we are thinking about it too. We are experimenting, please bear with us while we fix our Airports, roads, water works..

I watched the 35 probables of India's under 19 women soccer team practicing at the local stadium. I didn't even know that India had a women soccer team! I saw kids of all shades, shapes and colour, kind of full spectrum flag of India. Chinky kids from North East, huge girls from Punjab/Haryana, petite Keralites and dusky southerners. I spoke to the coach and he informed me that the Football association budgets about Rs 50 ($1) a day for diet of each of these kids! That brought a lump in my throat, I do “high end” technology consultancy for my organization and get paid by hour. The contrast. I offered a juice “treat” for these kids and was shyly avoiding their gaze when I heard them shout in one go “1,2,3..Thank you sir”...
I haven't exactly recovered from that. Our national team doesn't have a sponsor; most don't have proper gear, but can they kick a ball! We are learning to bend it..please bear with us...


regards
-Rakesh Mawa

incomplete one..

Nabokov's “dismantled moon in the courtyard” resound in my mind as the sweep of my eye is interrupted by the comma of a single white hair on the cuff of her T-shirt. A clock somewhere strikes a half hour pertaining to an unknown hour, Nabokov is haunting me today. “Gnostic turpitude”, a friend sms's helpfully to my rippled windy heart. A storm is soothsaid on my tarot card. My tired eyes rise over her bare arms to the face; a plaintive face of a teenage boy with the hint of a coming manhood. It is the nose that is impressive! An exaggerated motif on the basic canvas work by an enthusiastic artist who was keen on signing it off. It reminds me of the negroid excess of curvature in anthropological studies or maybe it is just too much of Nabokov today.

She is my friend and co-warrior, we deal with revolt during the day and reconcile to a fatalistic destiny in the evenings. She is my wife and suffice to say, my significant half.
My friends are a treasure trove that I hoard. Those nasty bunch of folks who wouldn't let me lie in my misery. My wife is my “best friend”, as I'd have loved to mention, if I was in my 2nd year in school. But we have just added three decades to the 2nd form. What is the equation one has, aspires or needs to have with one's wife?

Nietzsche mentions that marriage is a “torch to light you to loftier paths”! “Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul”. I find him profound and unimaginative at the same time; myopic to the extent of losing the peripheral vision. Lots of depth.

Who wears the pants!!

My significant half (Deepa) shoots a yan (yet another nag): "you should check if the toaster is really ON when you press the lever!" She means: we are delayed by another 1.5 minutes to office and that’s because of me. I sip the morning tea at leisure, as the clock chases the deadlines, the stress mounts, and my wife is directing the maid all over the house. I turn to the cartoon section and giggle quietly so as not to upset Deepa, who is already quite touchy. To be fair to her, she likes Calvin as much as I do, but not in the mornings. Well, after some hot words are exchanged, I reluctantly finish my morning ablutions (or skip them in extreme hostile conditions!) and proceed to kitchen. That is my territory!

I can do close to 16 variations of omelet, some innovative ones like chanterelle/salmon filling and some pricy ones, like a plain sunny side up with a hint of truffles. Deepa likes her omelets runny, melt in the mouth type with the aroma of Oregano taking you to hills as you bite into the double decked omelet burger! (I invented it recently). Before you think I am being immodest, you just need to tell me: how long you intend to stay awake and I’ll make a tea with real “character” to keep you awake for “exactly” that long! My friends still miss that character in their wife’s tea. Kitchen is like my battlefield, I can do twenty different things the same time and still serve you a piping hot breakfast on a clean sparkling white plate, taking full care of the presentation, colour, aroma, texture of the food and temperature of the drinks! I ensure that the kitchen is left cleaner than I found it! I can marshal the gods of gastronomy at will and cooking is like conducting a symphony. Pass me the baton, please, any time.

Even After eight years of marital bliss, my wife still can’t cook rice! She’s tried pressure cooker, electric rice cooker, Microwave, pan, yet no luck so far. Her “I’ll make rice” day is strictly a red/white wine day for us (red for burnt rice, white for half cooked). So we have come to a consensus, she takes care of the clothes (I can never fold a shirt correctly) and manages my loo cleaning schedules, besides making sure that our kitchen is adequately stocked up.

So what does this lucky lady do! Well! She writes software for a living, earns a salary as fat as my modest one (well, nearly…). But, she is a very good rock climber (5.12 feature last week!) and an avid mountaineer too. She is a long distance runner with a couple of half-marathons under her belt. She is a martial artist and has the standing record of 300 ab crunches at our local gym!

The traditional roles of women and men are changing, I guess! Not that I wouldn’t have liked a petite wife waiting for me at home and pressure cooker whistling its evening music! All I get is a wife who shouts “under-cut on right, overhead hold on left.c’mon you can do it”, while I suffer on a warm-up boulder…

Are the good ol’days of male glory over?