Elixir of life..wanna sip?

Just the other day a news item caught my eye. An English bioscientist claimed that advances in science & technology meant that man’s lifespan was set to increase by leaps and bounds. The man who may live for 150 years, has apparently, already taken birth. 150 could gradually become 500 and then, even 1000! Stunned by this revelation, I wondered what man would do for 500 years of his life. Living for so long would be disastrous, to say the least. What would life imprisonment stand for now? With an average life expectancy of 60, if it means 15 years, will it become 120 when lifespans grow to 500 years? What will be the average age of retirement? 400?

Today, people are spurred to make the most of their lives, to excel, to peak only because they know they have limited time on their hands. The knowledge, that one day, not very far into the future, we will all perish prevents us from losing speed and taking things easy. Sure, there are all those moments of relaxation & unwinding. We all need that. But we utilize them to rejuvenate ourselves and get down to business with renewed zeal and vigor. Imagine a life without any constraint of time. People will start taking things too easy, become lackadaisical. The all important sense of urgency will be lost from our lives forever. The purpose of life, itself, will begin to fade away. India, already harassed by mammoth delays and plagued by lazy, errant babus will be in shambles. Politicians here, revel in the prospect of making money for years on end will hit a goldmine, now that they would have 500 years do exactly that! Our wily old ‘Fevicol’ netas, who have stubbornly stuck on to various posts for 20 out of their 50 odd years of existence (a la Kalmadi) will merrily dance to the tune of some cheesy Bollywood number called ‘Lambi zindagani’ or “Life ho to aisi’!

It boils down to one basic question. What does one do for so long? Sure, you can earn your billions and zillions, sleep with every last sexy chick on the planet, travel to the farthest corners of the world and do all the research you want. But all said and done, how much will you do? 500 years of existence is sure to make even the most blessed soul on earth tear his hair out. No one can remain sane for that long, even if he is bathed in the all the comforts life has to offer or endowed with all the power the world has to offer. Keeping up the passion, fervor for life for 500 years is simply inhuman. Man is bound to get tired, mentally and emotionally, if not physically. 500 years of dealing with life’s myriad ups and downs, rejections, dejections, elations, failures, successes, heartbreaks, politics, compromises, disappointments, wins, losses, jubilations et al is sure to take its toll. Man will live like a vegetable for the better part of his 500! The elixir of life is around the corner.. You wanna sip?

Travel Diary-Part 1

Normally, one associates ‘travel diaries’ as lengthy and colourful descriptions of great journeys, far and wide. From Ladakh to Lakshadweep and Monte Carlo to Madagascar, they offer an insight into unknown lands and exotic locales. Well, my travel diary is a little more humble. Or say, meek. It describes my journey on a route thousands undertake everyday, the journey from Pune to Mumbai. The distance between the two cities is all of 150 kilometers, covered in typically 3 and half hours by road. I have traveled up and down this route a zillion times in the past 4 years, by rail, bus and car. So what was so special about this one journey from Pune to Mumbai? Well, for starters, it had a sense of finality to it. It was as if I was bidding farewell to Pune, my surrogate city. Four glorious years here had taken me from a ‘12^th pass’ to a ‘graduate’. And now it was time to leave for Mumbai. On a bike!

Yes, I had bought a bike in Pune, thanks to the city’s dismal public transport system. Many people have contradicted me on the use of the word ‘bike’. Technically speaking, it wasn’t a bike. It was a scooter. A Honda Aviator. These ‘people’ duly point out the difference every time I call it a ‘bike’. They believe that bikes belong to a superior class and that scooters are lowly and ‘cattle class’. It is apparently, quite blasphemous to equate the two! Needless to say, I beg to differ. Not caring much for the ‘coolness quotient’ of the bikes, I think utility-wise scooters have the upper hand. They provide the necessary stability on congested city roads and importantly, offer storage space. Strangely, my mom & dad wanted me to buy a bike (for disparate reasons obviously). While their superior mileage and fuel savings were on my dad’s mind, my mom was drooling over a flashy new bike and thought it would make her ‘laadla’, a dude! I’m sure they exchanged worried glances when I reasoned with them for a scooter. They thought I had seriously lost it!

Moving on now, my Aviator had to be somehow transported to Mumbai. Countless people had given me countless suggestions. Some said that I could have it transported in a bus. Some said truck. Some asked me to play safe and employ the services of the Indian rail. And then some, jeered heartily at the other ‘suggestors’ and asked me to drive it down myself. ‘Exhorted’ is more like it. I didn’t pay heed to them at first. Then the instigations began. That it takes balls to do something like that was agreed upon. Tales of valor and bravery were dutifully narrated to egg me on. That 150 kilometers was peanuts, as compared to the great miles driven by great people in the past, was pointed out. Provocations ran wild. And ultimately, riding my Aviator to Mumbai was the only chance I had, to prove my detractors wrong, was the general consensus! Who my detractors were and what exactly I had to prove to them, I have still not understood!

As I sat there bewildered, I began to weigh my options. The prospect of actually driving my bike down sure seemed exciting. The heart had leapt up with joy but the ever-cautious mind would need some convincing. But that too, didn’t take long. All it took was one of those transport agents describing to me all the hassles, the ‘safer ‘options involved and his subtle endorsement of the ‘do-it-yourself’ method. A few anecdotes from ‘The Adventures of when that cool uncle of yours was young’, which invariably includes a stunt like this, makes you think “If he could do it 35 years ago, why not me?”

And so, here I was, my heart & mind both convinced that riding my bike to Mumbai was the best option I had. Only one tiny hiccup remained. Mom and Dad. Two words every guy, no matter what his age is terrified of. Of course, I had assured myself of the safety of the exercise. But that had been possible only after deliberately overlooking certain facts and a somewhat half-hearted risk analysis. I had almost bribed my heart into goading my mind into it. Influencing my parents, however, would not prove to be that easy. So I took the path of least resistance-not telling them at all!

At least, that’s what I thought I would do, had it not been for that darned thing called ‘conscience’. I gave my Dad just the slightest hint that I was going to be driving down Monday morning, so that I could at least be absolved of the crime of ‘deliberate concealment of facts’. But how he ended up uncovering the entire plot is beyond me! And then, expectedly, followed the deluge.

Phonecalls dissuading me from committing this huge mistake and messages listing out the various risks and safety concerns involved, choked my cell for the next 2 hours. First, there were stern “No’s” to everything. When that didn’t seem to work, threats followed. And finally, seeing that all was failing, philosophical messages on ‘life’, the importance of ‘sound decision making ’ and the ills of ‘imprudence & impetuousness’ were employed. But this was one of those few times one enjoys being steadfast in the face of cacophonous opposition. And steadfast, I was! Finally, resigned voices wished me luck and pleaded that I take care of myself. Phew. I could almost hear the trumpets playing in the background and could see the sun rising from behind dark mountains! Yeah baby! It was on!

When you weren’t looking...

I observed a rather strange thing the other day. I was standing on the balcony, intently staring at dumptrucks and cranes put a big pipe into the even bigger chasm, dug up in the road in front of my house. Except, they weren’t really doing anything. All, those heavy machines were doing, was to flit around from one side to another, raise their robotic arms only to lower them again and make those characteristic whirring noises only to stop midway. I was excited at the prospect of actually witnessing something interesting happen but it seemed as though the mammoths were deliberately fooling around, conscious by my presence and waiting for me to go away, to get on with their work. How often does that happen to us? The moment we stop and carefully observe something, it seems to lose all its vigor and life. I looked out of the window for a quick glance sometime later and ‘voila’, the gaping hole in the road has almost been filled up, pipe and everything! When did that happen? They were so darned slow when I was actually looking at them!

Countless things in our everyday life fit into the ‘I can’t work while you’re staring at me’ category. Most obviously, the humble clock. Everyone, I’m sure has noticed that the hands of the clock seem to drag themselves, almost unwillingly so, when you sit down and stare at them. That the act is a telling indicator of how jobless you are and is fantastic at putting you to sleep is another story. But as a kid, I remember trying to ‘monitor’ the clock, in a bid to investigate how on earth, my half hour cartoon show got over in a jiffy! Another common experience is with body pains. How many times, have those minor niggles, nasty sprains, groaning aches and throbbing wounds in various corners of the body magically disappeared after a good nights’ sleep? They simply refuse to die down, testing our patience and troubling us with all their might while we’re awake. But the ‘morning after’, its as if they were never there!  

These observations seem simple and profound at the same time. They are evident yet inconspicuous. Somebody might brush them off as ‘frivolous’ and yet somebody might find meaning in them. Unable to contain my philosophical side, I could not help but relate these to life itself. Doesn’t our life, too, zip by like a whirlwind while we are caught up in a plethora of activities, some essential and important, some trivial and avoidable. Buildings are built, cities are transformed, newer and more advanced gadgets take over, mankind progresses and before we take stock, its mostly too late. The kids have grown up, your sweetheart can’t see you clearly anymore and needs a cane to walk and most of those dear old pals have perished. If at all the clock teaches us anything, it is to brake once in a while, to stop and look around. To forget the rat-race for a while. Soak in life. Taste life. To find higher meaning in our existence. And when its time to move on, to store an image of life as it is, in all its still glory. Because one thing is for certain…Life, like you know it, is never coming back.

Exams!!

I’m finally free…after a gruelling month and a half of submissions, practical exams, theoretical exams and the like, I can stop, look around , sit back and just relax! The feeling is something different. Nothing else seems to matter as you carelessly indulge in this ineffable pleasure. Ah, the joys of just not doing anything! Plus(and most importantly) I get a chance to get back to my beloved blog!

The vacation was long awaited this time around. Simply because the subjects this semester were tougher and much more advanced than the previous terms. The university guys really cranked things up this time! The depth and breadth of the syllabi, the exam patterns, everything saw a major shift. It was as if the course planners were saying,” Hey blokes, took it easy for the first 2 years, didya?.. well, lets get on with it now! If you thought engineering is a cakewalk, take that!”

So we took it(as if, we had an option!) as and how they came by. Sometimes ecstatic and chagrined at other times. Tired and anguished on some days and lively and spirited on others. The mind is a rollercoaster of emotions during exams. Tension on the previous night and apprehension on the day of the exam are inevitable. The lucky few are able to mix variable amounts of confidence into that while some enviable ones are able to throw in a ‘devil may care’ attitude! The exam itself gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘unstable’. Emotions rise and ebb depending on how strongly each question rings that bell situated somewhere in our head! Exams almost invariably end in a frenzy as papers are (rather ingeniously!) made so as to either get over in the last(est) minute or never at all!

All of the above, finally results in one of two scenarios- We either end up feeling dejected and disappointed and start blaming God(or ‘facebook’) or feel elated and flushed with newfound vigour and zeal!.
The former causes some to simply resign and give up or thoughts like ‘You may have won the battle but the war is not over yet!’ start creeping into their heads! The latter, on the other hand are an excited lot, giggling and cackling at having won the proverbial battle!
But everyone, after a temporary sense of relief(at least the darned subject is done away with!)gets back to the grind on a war footing!

It was no different for us. Combine that with minimal sleep and seemingly unending hours of work and you get one helluva exam!(PS:Frustrated souls like us would go and have ‘poha’ and a ‘cutting’ at 4 o’clock in the morning for no apparent reason!) Its really at times like these, that you begin to miss those wonderful days when you could do anything under the sun and sleep to your heart’s content. Every little thing tugs one back to the time when life wasn’t a living hell. Every minute is valued like never before. Fond memories of periods of total freedom are conjured up at instants when your conscience denies you even the most basic pleasures of life.

Some start building dams around their thoughts in a bid to shut out everything else and just focus on the job at hand! I, on the other hand make lists. I list out every little thing that I feel like doing during those tormenting days but obviously can’t. This way, I’m assuring myself that I will actually do it someday and that it won’t be forgotten, which, to an extent takes away the urge of wanting to do it at that instant. A good example may be the urge to watch a particular movie or read a certain book.

Inspite of all the hardships, the tempestuous period passes like a blur. And before you know it, you’re back to being a free bird. You haven’t realized it but you have actually steamrolled ahead. The storm hath been weathered…leaving us waiting, for surely, this wasn't the last!

Khan(t) digest it!

Just the other day, I heard news ‘break’ on the idiot box. A certain Mr. Khan had been detained at Newark airport for security reasons for over an hour. And trust the Indian media to blow things out of proportion! It’s like second nature to us! I mean, what’s the big deal? Just so you guys know, I don’t really feel sympathetic or anything towards him. But news channels just kept showing the damned thing on television the whole day. It was Independence Day for godsakes! Poor Manmohan Singh and his speech were relegated to the sidelines. No patriotic ‘specials’ or visuals of the flag-hoisting or ‘walks’ down memory lanes.. not even those depressing (and repetitive) stories on swine-flu…It was all ‘King Khan’ on Saturday.

Actually, that’s exactly the problem with us Indians. We carve out gods from mortals! (as if we had any less gods to pray to already!). We worship them and elevate them to the grandest of pedestals. That's when they begin to believe they are above the rest and don’t deserve to be subjected to mundane stuff like this. They detest being packaged with the common man and being treated like any other ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’. So what if Shah Rukh had to undergo an hour-long grilling at the hands of American authorities? So what if the Americans are paranoid about their national security? Isn't that precisely the reason why they haven’t let another 9/11 happen again? If that’s the cost a few must pay in order to keep an entire country safe.. well, so be it! In fact, I would suggest that India learn something from this, start taking its security seriously and implement such kind of practices at its airports as well(Plus, we’ll get a chance to hit back at those Americans!). After-all, we’re at a much larger threat from terror strikes.

And, by the way did anyone even notice what transpired in the news in July. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was apparently frisked on 24th April this year by the ground staff of Continental Airlines at IGI airport(in dilli). This was clearly a violation of protocol and they apologized later. But the point to be noted is that Mr. Kalam(for whom, by the way, I have immense respect) didn’t make any fuss about it. He quietly let them frisk him just like an ordinary passenger. Did the media give this case even a fraction of the importance it gave to Shah Rukh? Wasn’t this a bigger shame to the country? SRK, on the other hand seemed all upset and disturbed and angry. Come on, SRK grow up! You know as well as we do, there’s no VIP culture in the US. Nobody is exempt from security checks! No use taking the support of Islam and getting too philosophical. Thousands are detained at international airports for being muslims. You didn’t exactly raise your voice then, did you? For all the love, praise and adulation that people shower upon you the world over, you really better be prepared to take such things in your stride! And hey, what are you cryin’ for anyways man.. Al Gore, Edward Kennedy and scores of other senators and sport-stars are frisked and detained day in and day out at American airports.. That’s a pretty illustrious company to be in, ain’t it ‘King’?!
PS:Scroll down to the end and voice your opinion in a poll related to the article you just read!

India's tryst with pigs

Hey guys.. I’m back! Tonnes of work and a busy schedule kept me from blogging. My sincere apologies! But now I feel compelled to write, more than anything else. Recent goings on have drawn me to the ever-reliable MS Word. Times are churning out unbelievable events…hitherto unseen, unheard of!

One of them, which I’m sure is on everybody’s minds (hopefully not on their throats!) is…yes, you got it right.. swine flu! Pigs have suddenly caught the imagination of one and all. If you discount the Chinese, nobody ever gave them so much importance apart from eating them of course! (The Chinese have some strange astrological methods wherein they denote years by animals and to them a ‘pig’ is a sign of fertility and virility!) Never before has the word ‘swine’, (popularly perceived to mean ‘dirty’, ’lowly’, ’disgusting’) been used so frequently! It has rudely gate-crashed into the modern, urban lexicon. The flu, on the other hand has made people do things they would never have imagined were even ‘do-able’.I was, at what many would like to call the epicenter of it all-Pune when pigs burst upon the national scene. And I have never witnessed such mass hysteria in a very long time. Imagine a whole city covered in masks! The Taliban guys would have been jumping in joy had they seen it! All the ‘wallahs’ including rickshaw-wallahs, tapri-wallahs, udupi-wallahs and pav-wallahs were donning masks! Even our house-maid, armed with a mask, who I’m sure had never known what even ‘flu’ meant was buzzing with information and statistics about swine-flu. Initially there was apprehension, shyness coupled with misinformation. “Yikes!!, you crazy ??!!, how can you wear masks in the classroom in front of the teacher?” , ignorant people would remark. My friends outside Pune would laugh at me when I told them I wore a mask for a whole day in college. However, a couple of deaths laid such reactions to rest! May all of them rest in peace! Some others turned vegetarians overnight (??) while others stopped going to the gym!

Suddenly there were public announcements at malls, theatres, plays urging people to wear masks or to cover their mouths with something. It was as if everybody had been jolted out of their slumber. It was a like a different kind of ‘social-awakening’. Revolt against swine-flu! In a knee-jerk reaction people fled Pune. Loads of students from outside the state ran back to their home-towns. Swine flu had done what Raj Thackeray has been unsuccessfully striving to do. It had driven away the dilliwallahs and biharis back to where they came from! In fact, maybe swine flu can be used as a formidable deterrent by places like Mumbai and Pune against the ever-growing inrush of the ‘bhaiyyas’ from UP and the ‘babuas’ from Bihar. Imagine Raj Thackeray’s men brandishing vials full of H1N1 viruses at stations!

Anyways, gradually the situation is settling down. Panic is deflating. I discovered that all the talk of people shunning malls was bullshit. I couldn’t find a place to park my car in a mall which has a humongous parking space! Fear is giving way to humor. My gym instructor suggested this flu become a bi-annual affair in view of the unexpected ‘flu-break’(which is, by the way as long as an average Christmas break)! Just the other day I got an SMS ‘forward’ saying that the Americans have asked India to warn all the gujratis here to not line up outside American embassies……since H1N1 is not a type of visa!

Changing trends in technology

The world has come a long way. The humble beginnings of the ‘early’ man have given way to a modern, sophisticated and technologically advanced society. Today’s world is fast. In fact, ‘fast’ seems like an understatement. Technology, today is taking giant strides, whizzing past the laggards at dizzying speeds like a juggernaut not showing the slightest inclination to stop. It’s the age of snazzy mobile phones and PDA’s, cutting edge laptops, funky mp3 players, glitzy laser crystal displays and mind-boggling global positioning systems. Newer models and configurations are being launched at the drop of a hat.

Integration is in vogue, fuelled by the insatiable appetite to multitask. Everything, nowadays serves multiple functions. From headphones which measure your blood pressure to watches which double up as mp3 players and from sunglasses which can play videos to talking cars and t-shirts with temperature control, the list can go on…
There are some who claim to be addicted to these ‘marvels’, lapping them up as they make their way out from factories and warehouses while others brush them aside as unimportant, esoteric rubbish. Their argument? How many of these have actually lasted beyond the initial hype? Are these simply fancy names, then, which make for good reading?

There seems to have crept a certain sense of saturation into the technological arena. Most of the path-breaking discoveries and iconoclastic inventions took place in the 19th and the early 20th centuries. Since then, there has been a kind of a vacuum in that department. What we hear about today are just fatuous additions, subtle modifications and obvious improvisations. Once considered as a revolutionary concept, the car today is looked upon as an outcast in today’s society. CO emissions in large doses, generous contributions towards global warming and the inevitable traffic snarls haven’t really helped its cause. Governments are exhorting people to use public transport and to walk or cycle down short distances. Some go as far as to limit the number of cars per family. Now, owning just any car is no big deal but possessing a ‘hybrid’ version of a four-wheeler surely grabs a lot of eyeballs!

Mobile telephony was, I think, the most recent technological advancement which grabbed the people’s fantasy. Mobiles sold like hot cakes and they continue to do so. But, don’t we rely too much on our mobile-phones now? Haven’t we made them completely indispensable entities? Once a popular status symbol, it has now been reduced to a bare necessity. It is as if, your mobile number provides sole proof of your existence! Greetings, wishes and other formalities which would earlier be deemed complete only after a heartfelt conversation are now got over with cold SMSes while messages are conveyed with curt missed calls. The advancements in mobiles today, are all about higher resolution cameras and better multimedia sound quality which, really speaking has got nothing to do with the basic function of a phone!

The 20th century has been witness to the gradual change in the way people thought. That has translated into what we have invented , discovered and unearthed in our constant endeavour to progress. In the beginning, foundations were set, basics learnt and concepts established. Slowly, great scientists and researchers bore deep, unravelling fascinating mysteries about different aspects of science. Discoveries during this time revolutionised the world. They rewrote unwritten rules and redefined old paradigms. I think , they were simply waiting to be made. Necessity, not curiosity, was the father of invention then. Research was focussed on getting to know the subject better and gaining expertise. The bulb, the telephone and hundreds of other discoveries were, in a sense, serendipitous but they changed the way people thought.

But, slowly things have changed. Man has been there and done that. There is virtually nothing major left to discover. People are leading good lives with bulbs, mobiles, computers and ipods. The Moon has been conquered and nuclear energy harnessed. Now what? Has research stopped? No..certainly not. It has merely changed its nature. Research is now people-centric, aimed at making lives more comfortable and luxurious. Companies have virtually got into a rat-race in a bid to come up with products which appease the general masses. Suddenly, huge importance is being given to compactness. Smaller phones, sleeker laptops, faster computers.. all they have to do is to tweak their existing products here and there, reduce their size, give them a ‘feel-good’, contemporary look with a spanking new logo, throw in a few add-
ons and voila!..you get a ‘next generation’ product!

Today, every creation is aimed at erasing all efforts man has to make to eke out a living. ‘Manual’ is slowly being replaced by ‘Automatic'. Air-conditioners or stereo systems were great but people had to actually reach out to them to switch them on, so they came up with the idea of a remote control. This has now been extended to tube lights and fans also! It is this very relentless pursuit of appeasement that has led to the creation of frivolous and sometimes, purposeless products. One sometimes wonders whether all these have made life simpler or more complicated?
Well, love it or hate it, this trend is here to stay. It is thus, imperative that one is ‘in sync’ with the goings-on of today’s world to avoid being tagged as ‘ignorant’ or ‘backward’. So, pull your socks up and take stock!