Is it that hard to feign an occasional conversation...

I want to blame somebody .... dont you get the feeling sometimes that everyone seems to be right but there is something very wrong with what is going on?

People just move on. Its not they are doing anything better. They would like to believe that they are a step above what their parents were but they are not. Maybe its the case with us, or maybe its universal. You find a companion, you settle, your cute talks and your desires to have idle conversation is fulfilled by your partner. So much so that its painful when you have to talk to your parents. Why is it that hard? I can imagine that to be the case if all you do in your routine life is to have intellectual conversations. But thats not true! You can spew forth the most asinine drivel and make-believe stuff when you talk to your gf/spouse but when it comes to your mom and dad, you cant come up with a single interest topic of conversation!?

And that is why it becomes a difficult situation. Who do you blame? The girl who married Mr. X and thus directed the meaningless drivel towards herself or the guy who wants to talk and spend time with the girl he loves? Neither, right! Maybe people should blame the parents then! They are the ones who sit at home waiting for a small stupid, meaningless conversation with their children. Why do they do that !? Dont they realize that they are putting too much pressure on the young souls of their offsprings?

What is even more heart-wrenching is the happiness you see on their faces when you do talk to them. You can see them begging for more but satisfying themselves with what little they get. Its like the letter which 'Bruce Willis' in 'Sin City' gets every week from the little girl. It is his only piece of joy, his only ray of light. And then suddenly, the letters stop! And similarly, one day the conversation stops.

I want to blame someone.......

Why cant pretty people get together ?

Why do people commit to less than beautiful? Isnt beauty the highest criteria for selecting a girl? Then why doesnt it prevail when you choose a girl? Why do so many mismatched pairs exits?

Girls seem to get it right. Wealth on an average tops a girl's priority list and hence not surprisingly, you dont find girls marrying guys who earn less than their expectation. Yes, they might not be as rich as an Ambani, but they earn reasonably well. Similarly, why dont good looking guys find reasonably good looking girls? Maybe not an Aishwarya Rai, but at least having some physical attractiveness. I know that marrying someone is not just about looks. You need to look at compatibility, a good sense of humour, a nice nature and what not. But do decent looks and these features never come together? I have friends who have chosen girls who clearly fall short of their own standards of beauty but top in their standards of behaviour. You cant but fail to notice their eager looks when they first show you their gf's pics. They hope that I will approve, that I will probably find something beautiful that they, by their own high standards, missed. Alas, I cant offer any consolation. The best I do is to side step the question about looks and head straight for the 'how good is her nature' zone. After all, what makes you think that my standards are low!

Age accounts for some things

I sometimes feel that only a select few people in my college realized that they were there to study. That being in IIT was an opportunity to pursue what they dearly wanted to pursue. The majority were people who did courses for the sake of doing them. The tag of being in a premier college was enough, after all it would land them a pretty decent job anyway. The point is that I am not trying to be sarcastic.

Through the years that passed during college, work and in college again, I have come to realize that age plays a major role. When we look back at our actions in college, we always feel a sense of 'what was I thinking'. But it is probably being too harsh on oneself to say that I should have done things differently. After all, we were younger, more immature, more active, more young :), isnt it ?

Random Thoughts - Act I

There is no inspiration to the words that follow. Somebody recently told me that when you start a blog, the usual reason is that you are brimming with ideas. But soon, the ideas desert you and your blog joins the community of the many old, lonely and forgotten blogs.

I have no inspiration. Just a desire to write something. Its not as if I don't have any ideas. I have many opinions and many comments on a variety of issues. But to sit down and express them in an organized manner is a difficult feat. It simply takes the pleasure out of the spontaneity of expression.

I read Jug Suraiya's article today (TOI). He comments on how writers find a flow in their writing and generate reams ad reams of ink-laden sheets without facing the burden of reading their drivel themselves. How true ! I really suspect that Jane Austen thought so much while writing what she wrote. The way her novels are dissected in an English Literature class seems like a perfect example of making a mountain out of a molehill. Give it a rest, please ! I guess reading contemporary fiction makes much more sense in that way. Not only do the writers talk in context of the present day (with which one can relate), the writers themselves can be cross-questioned about their work thereby clarifying if they actually meant to say something meaningful or were they just blabbering on paper after 5 cups of morning coffee.

I feel obligated to continue with the same line of thought expressed in the previous paragraph. But I just don't feel like it. Instead I feel like describing the fluttering curtain of my room which offers an intermittent view of the tall apartment outside. I could set the scene and describe the plastic switchboards and the dull-brown curtain bars and the dripping faucets in the adjoining rest-room. But will it interest someone who reads it. Ive read some books myself and I just cant help but skim over the sections which 'set the scene'. Why do writers write them? Do they really feel that it helps? I don't think so. Maybe its just for their own momentum. Maybe it helps them get into the mood so that they can follow it with the actual story.

Which makes me ask another question. Why does somebody write in the first place? Does he want to serve the masses. Does he feel obligated to express his 'superior' point-of-view? Or does he want to make money. Is writing a means of expression or a means of entertainment?

Money means security here

The seed for the following blog is a recent argument with my girlfriend. The story begins when she asked me to buy her a train ticket form Delhi to Ludhiana. The date of journey was pretty close, as a result of which, the 'best' train for this trip - The Amritsar Shatabdi, was already booked. Since the trip could not be postponed, I went for, what I thought at that time to be the second best option, the famous 'Garib Rath'.

The Garib Rath is a relatively ordinary train. Though it boasts of only AC compartments and above, but as the name suggests, it an inexpensive train which travels through the hinterlands of Bihar before reaching reaching Delhi and then finally travels from Delhi to Amritsar.

My argument began when my GF expressed an immediate dislike to the train branding it as a low-class train compared to the 'so-called' high-class Shatabdi. I flatly disagreed with her. My point of contention was not the fact that it offered transport to poorer people, but the fact that she segregated people so casually on the basis of the train they travel in. I have always believed that the 'class' distinction is a myth. People are generally good. I have personally found train journeys to be a breeding ground for rich discussions which partially owe they genesis to the varied 'classes' of people involved.

But alas, as is frequently the case, she offered an argument which was beyond my logical skills to defeat. During her brief journey, she was hit upon by two guys! One of them was relatively cultured and offered conversational pieces to engage the attention of the subject. The other was more uncouth, said less but stared much more. Now, is she right in assuming that Shatabdi would have had a better set of people? I would have to say yes. Is she right in assuming that a cheaper ticket usually reflects a baser level of mentality in people? I would still have to say yes.

What is an even more obvious fact is that women in this country need to spend more for travel not for the sake of comfort but for the sake of feeling safe while traveling. A guy would choose an AC coach over a sleeper because he wants to travel more comfortably. But I would imagine, that the kind of people he will come across is lower down in his priority list for choosing between the two options. But its not the same for women, especially single women. This is unfortunate!

Do muscles need money ?

The middle class have big problems. And I am not talking about the conventional ones -meeting large expenses with small pockets. I am talking about the problems that they don't realise they have. The problems which would typically elicit a response of 'ignorance-bliss-folly-wise'.

I live in Gurgaon. It is an urban hell-hole. Try looking at it on Google-earth and you'll realise what I'm talking about. All concrete, no greenery. But there is another, equally sorry aspect, to this city. It is the glaring absence of any social-architecture - places where people wind-down after a day's work and pursue the stuff that they really earn there money to do.

But then why was I ranting about the middle class to begin with, right? Well, if you look closely at this city, you'll find the sports facilities and the parks that you are looking for. But they have been developed as privileges for the filthy rich rather than healthy retreats for all. Today, as I was driving by such a 'recreational club', my inadvertent remark was 'its good to be rich'. But then I suddenly checked myself! Why do I need to be rich to play a game of tennis? Why do I need to be rich to work-out in a gym? I could easily lead myself into believing that these activities are expensive and hence out of the reach of a middle class pocket or more importantly, a middle class time schedule. After all, many of us have been reared-up believing that money, or the pursuit of it, is the ultimate point of life. And since the rich have the money, they can afford to waste their time playing games and working-out in gyms. What a load of crap! We just don't know why we are earning what we are earning. We earn for the future and we f*** the present. We earn for a fictitious wife, we earn for a fictitious child, we earn for an impending disease or we earn for an MBA degree. That's what we do - THE MIDDLE CLASS! And what happens to this middle class when they've finally arrived in life - when they've finally met all the goals they had been saving their money for? A picture like this:

"Arre Sharmaji, humne to inhee beevi bacchon ko bada karne mein apni zindagi laga dee, varna hum bhi the aadmi kaam ke"

Conversation ?!

How important is conversation ?!! What is the reason behind it ? Why did it develop ? Has it evolved with society? Was there a need for it to evolve or has it just grown beyond control?

I dont get it ! I really dont get it ! As far as I understand, it grew as a medium to convey important information to each other. But as it appears, with an evolving social structure, the reason behind it has distorted beyond proportion.

There are three types of conversations (according to someone). The worst kind of conversations are the ones in which you discuss about other people. Then come the conversations where you discuss about other events. Finally come the conversations where you discuss about issues. As you would expect, the level of entertainment associated which each type of conversation follows the exact opposite order. But still, the point is that normally, there are reasons behind a conversation. However, the more I see around me, the more I find conversations without any purpose at all. The only purpose I see is to pass time.

Yes, that is what it has evolved into. A medium to pass time. And it is such a pleasurable way to do so that people indulge in it without realising that it is actually an indulgence. You eat to much of chocolate, you lose precious health. You indulge in too much of conversation, you lose precious time. And its not just the time you're having the conversation that you lose but also the time spent thinking about it afterwards. What can you do in that time? Well, if you dont have anything else to do, at least you can spend that time finding other stuff to do.

Having said that, I dont deny the importance of conversation. It is probebly its regular supply that keeps us sane and social. In solitary confinement, which is one of the highest degrees of punishment, that is what you take away. All Im saying is that it should not turn into a hobby!