Jaada bahut hai...

Lucknow (ˈlʌknaʊ/ is the capital city of the state of Uttar Pradesh.^[8] This metro city is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division.^[9] Lucknow has always been known as a multicultural city and flourished as a cultural and artistic capital of North India in the 18th and 19th centuries - Wikipedia)

Truth be told, I have lived there not more than 4 years in all but I can never have enough of the place. And mind you, it is not because there is always something different when I visit the place...it is the same of what it always had. Yes, the roads seem to be wider at places, there aren't as many cows blocking the intersections, single screen movie halls have been duly replaced with multi-plexes, ganesh-autos now run on CNG (or at least are painted green!)...BUT it still is the same old nice, easy paced city underneath it all.

There was brief moment in my last visit that almost made me shake my head resigned to the fact that the "India Shining" craze finally caught up with my timeless hometown....that was the time when I came to know that Tunde-miyan ke kababs are now available in one of the bustling malls of the city now. Alas, I thought...how could that ever be? I mean...what fun is it to have those melt-in-your-mouth kababs if you aren't having them in the old city, standing in a crowd with a "pattal / dona" (small bowl made entirely of dry leaves) and a rumali roti tightly clasped in a fist, lest it looses the softness... The rest of the trip thankfully did little more to build on that feeling so I came back giving it the benefit of doubt.
 
While speaking to my Dad this morning, as he continues to make me jealous enjoying his well-earned retirement in Lucknow, I finally got the confirmation for what I'd be looking for the past 2 odd years.

See the thing with retired people is, especially if they've been in the armed forces all this while, that they are suddenly expected to come to terms with something they've never really had before.

Time during the day. Monday...Tuesday...Wednesday...-....Any-day.

So armed with this...time...a very lethal weapon in the hands of someone originally from Lucknow and who's never been able to use it in the past more than 3 decades, he took his 1998 model music system to an electronics shop, determined to invest as much....time...as was required to get the thing working again. A young man greeted him and inquired about the purpose of his visit and when our antique model music system was handed to him, he looked at it and said "zara ek minute rukiye.." (pls wait a minute)...This phrase in Lucknow could mean a zillion things, needing to spit the paan and get a new one being the most common one. So anyway, my Dad patiently waited, courtesy his post-retirement weapon we talked about earlier.

After a while, an elderly gentleman came along with the young man the electronics repair shop all dressed in traditional Lucknow winter clothing accessories - kantopi aka monkey-cap, ooni moze aka woolen hand-knitted socks, large check woolen blazer, hand-knitted woolen muffler to name the visible ones. You see, this particular shop had the work division clearly defined. All post-2000 stuff was repaired by the son and all pre-2000 was taken care of by the father.

The senior-shop owner then inspected the music system and asked my dad to please excuse him for the time being and come back post Feb-15. As it usually is the case, this delay was attributed to be a work-load issue by my Dad. But this assumption was quickly corrected by the senior shop owner when he politely told my dad this -

"...dekhiye issme kaam to itna nahi hai, par abhi jo hai...jaada bohut hai. Thoda dhoop-voop nikalne dijiye fir tasalli se theek kiya jayega...abhi toh hath-vath sekne ka time hai.."

Now where else can a business ask the customer go back and come after a month or so because it is too cold for him to make some money and he'd rather be warming his hands on a fire...

The Lucknow of my memories...still remains.

Flat rate, tips and toll extra

Even after more than a decade in an industry that borders on being snooty about how mobile it is...I am still not quite at ease while traveling. I've often tried to break down the issue to really get to the bottom of it. Is it because I absolutely detest packing a suitcase? Or is it because I hate waiting at random airports waiting for my next connecting flight? Or is it the whole lack of sleep thing coupled with skipped meals that precedes and sometimes follows a last minute (like mine often are) business trip? Or is it because I am just plain and simple...lazy? I think the last one sums it up pretty nicely.

That said, I have always enjoyed at least one part of these business trips...the ride back home from the airport in the back of a cab.

Well you see, the ride back home is nothing like the taxi rides you take at other times during the trip. It is devoid of any anxiousness of how the meeting would go? Would your flight be late? Plus, you know you'd get a little more "bhav" (attention and/or nuisance value) from your significant other considering she didn't have to put up with you for these past few days...etc etc.

But the real reasons why I enjoy this last leg of any trip are the conversations I often end up having with the cab driver. Funny as it may sound, but after all the posturing, positioning and one-upmanship of business interactions, it is so much easier and comfortable having a nice unadulterated and relaxing chat with the guy at the wheel.

Interesting folks I tell you, these cabbies! While some may do this full time, most of the people in this country who drive ungodly hours, are doing this to make ends meet and this is their second or even third job in some cases. For instance, the gentleman who dropped me home recently was a Vietnam war veteran, got laid off from a large pharma company's logistics department last year and so was ferrying people back and forth to O' Hare so he could make his ends meet. He told me all about how he was raised by his stepfather and the extent his dad went to keep he and his siblings out of harms way as they were growing up on the Chicago south side. Then he told me that as he was enlisting in the Army, he even took his stepfathers name over his own dad's as a show of respect to what the man had done for his adopted family. Then we talked about the role of parenting in how your kids turn out and so on.

Then there was this other guy who started out as being quite irritating by asking questions about my faith, what it means to me and so forth but after 10-15 minutes we were thick in a debate on the role of religion in a man's life. Though a catholic Greek immigrant, he knew so much about other religions that it ended up being a very fascinating conversation. For some reason, I had a pocket book version of Gandhi's - Message of Gita with me and I just felt like giving the book to this very quirky but intelligent cabbie. So I did.

Another interesting one was this guy who picked me up from the airport sometime in summer this year and seemed to be quite well groomed and sophisticated for someone driving a cab (nothing against the profession, just an observation). He had a copy of the latest WSJ by his side and seemed to be picking it up at traffic signals for a quick glance. One thing led to another and soon I found myself at the wide-eyed-tell-me-more end of an amazingly simple yet in depth take on what's wrong with the American economy. After a while I couldn't keep myself from asking what the hell is he doing driving cabs and was taken aback by this man's story. He was a Turkish business graduate who went bankrupt and had come to the US for a job but due to some issues with his visa paperwork needed to do something to put food on the table till that got sorted out. He found ways to get his hands on all the newspapers and magazines, albeit a bit late, to keep him self up to date. I have to admit that the best explanation of the sub-prime crisis that I've ever heard came from a cabbie!

I guess the setting of a conversation means a lot when it comes to what you end up taking away from it. That the back of a head could be so much more interesting than Pandora or Spotify, has been a revelation for me.

:)

One of my seniors from college asked me recently about why I'm not blogging anymore. I told him what I believed was the reason - life's too busy, too many things happening, new people - new country, added responsibility at work etc etc etc.

No, none of the above.

I didn't make any of the usual excuses. I told him the truth - that I don't think I can hold on to a thought long enough to pen something down. By the time I start typing, the chain of thought either breaks or am in a tangent so far from what I'd really thought of writing about that I start wondering if I should even put this into words or wait for the "new" thought process to develop a little more...

Basically, I kept waiting for a "good one". Which...of course, like the right time start going to the gym or the perfect day for planning your investments - never really shows up!

...will try being more regular now.

To Each His Own...

The thing about clichés is that while it is quite cool to not conform to one and maybe many of us also spend a lot of time and energy running away from them - they have a way of announcing their existence, most often right in your face. Let us get a bit more definitive here - "...a cliché is a saying, expression, or idea that has been overused to the point of losing its intended force or novelty, especially when at some time it was considered distinctively forceful or novel, rendering it a stereotype."

Another thing about these stereotypes (behavior, not people) is the way in which they assume a sort of undeclared-relevance for a majority of us. Even if not explicitly, they do end up shaping our ambitions, our actions and ideas of what is considered good, not-so-good and so and so forth. I am tempted to use the word societal or cultural norms but I believe that blaming a mass of people for choices that we make would be another form of escapism or sly-disguised-denial.

So what we now have is a bunch of folks chasing a dream or an idea that wasn't theirs in the first place or even if it was, the origin of it was based on nothing more than hearsay or in the best case a good deal of research on personal experiences (available quite easily both in first and in third person) of those who ended up achieving that idea or dream and living it well too.

The real issue however, arises when we start judging people based on these well-accepted-norms. Suddenly, the old friend from the neighborhood becomes a complete loser because he still hasn't managed to switch jobs and still works at the local fax / photocopier shop and plays cricket with the colony kids in the evenings. Or how about the time when you and your girlfriend couldn't help laughing at that friend's wife who did not know the difference between a vodka and a whiskey and thought they were brand names of essentially the same stuff! I mean who does that, rite? And what about that cousin in your hometown who is still preparing for the civil services exams or the bank PO for the nth time because he rates job security higher than job exposure and exit options?

What is really sad is how people get pissed off when these "outliers" seem happy with whatever they are into and hardly give any thought to what all they could have been or could have achieved. Some of these pissed-off people feel obligated to enlighten their "less fortunate" acquaintances about the possibilities that are out there. For them it is almost criminal to not want to go after the "accepted-better-life" and all that comes with it. It is almost like being happy with orange bar for your whole life when the big chocolate cornetto is waiting to be relished!

Does the thought that the bloke might actually LIKE orange bar better ever cross the mind? The rational argument will be - How can you say that unless you have tried both and then decided to stick with the orange bar? True, that does make sense but then why discount the fact that many folks simply DON'T WANT to try another thing and compare? That some folks are just plain and simple at peace with the hand that is dealt to them and really don't make a big fuss of going table to table to see where they stand the best chance to sweep the stakes.

...to each his own. Another cliché...then why is it so hard to understand?

26/11: Uncomfortably numb…

Usually walking by the river in the evenings is a pleasant thing if you are in a city as pretty as Budapest. From the initial days of being overawed by the sheer beauty of the place or the constant desire to explore a new city to now, the warmth of familiarity – there has always been so much to appreciate and be all chirpy about…

However, it hasn't been so for more than a week now.

Not since that fateful afternoon when I was waiting for my flight back to Budapest - a day before the "Thanksgiving Day". From a distance I could make out that the giant LCD screen showing CNN had something familiar on it - I knew that building! For the next couple of hours till I boarded the flight, all I did was watch with disbelief at what was unfolding in Mumbai - at the places I have been all too familiar with having lived in the city for a year not so long ago.

I do not remember having watched news continuously for so long ever before in my life. It hasn't stopped yet. At first I convinced myself that it is normal, after all this has been an unprecedented act of terror on my country's soil and it is all but natural for me to want to stay connected as much as I can, sitting thousands of miles away. I have read each and every article that has been published related to this tragic event, I have seen all the news clippings that have either revealed something new or are taken from talk shows and panel discussions that have spawned all over the world media. It is almost as if I am incapable of "switching off" from the information invasion.

Trying to make sure I don't get swayed by partisan media coverage, I have spent hours assimilating content from foreign media as well - all the conspiracy theories, the allegations and the counter-allegations. I am sure by now I can probably put to shame the leading experts on the situation with the diverse views I have subjected myself to over the past 2 weeks.

But this is now beginning to scare me.

All I can think of when I am not going through the news is trying to make sense of it all in my head. Struggle to somehow figure out a way of this madness, break the problem down into smaller chunks that are easier to deal with than the mess it looks as a whole. This paralysis of analysis has started affecting my actions, my temper, my sleep pattern and unfortnately even the walks that I so enjoyed earlier.

I am clearly not being part of the solution at the moment.

Epilogue:
There was no underlying point to this post; just like there isn’t yet any to what has been happening first in Mumbai and then in the world media since 26/11. I am still not sure what I wanted to share here – was it grief, helplessness, a purposeful action plan…I don’t know.

….guess I am just uncomfortably numb.