Cherry Blossoms

Every spring, something grips me…makes me smile lovingly at kids, even when they are crying, wearing those squeaky shoes and making a racket…makes me call my mum more than once in a fortnight, our established arrangement of interference…makes me reach out to all my friends and enquire about their life without reminding them of the geeky school days …makes me (horror of horrors!) say hello to the neighbor’s cat without showing it the finger.

It makes me resist my urge to throw a shoe at the fish vendor, howling at the top of his voice in the morning, right before breakfast when the constitution is frail. Or using my limited vocab of the official language expletives, at the garbage truck, idling loudly right below my bedroom window. It makes me use the plant spray bottle, my version of the air gun, go a little off the mark while shushing the stray dogs below the balcony.

Telemarketers are greeted politely and even jested with a playful touch, while cab and auto rickshaw drivers get a tip and perhaps a song squeaked hoarsely and tunelessly if alcohol runs my life at that time.

I plan vacations to various places, especially Tokyo with nary a care about the bank balance. I reach out to lovers’ future past with no regard to their current emotional state. It makes me remember the pranks carried out with detailed planning, destined to fail, at the lack of basic logic with no embarrassment at all.

It makes me forget the transgressions of silly social media uproars and the voices of both Pappu and NaMo …no Kejri and the AAPtards are still not included. It doesn’t make my blood boil to see people loosely using the word ‘Rape’ or being selective over the value of human life.

Every spring, I become a monster. Every spring, I wish the monster would stay forever. Beyond spring. Beyond reality.

In our country, in Mumbai where there are only two climates - Summer & Monsoon.

“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”- Pablo Neruda

Do Inorganic Orgasms Matter?

During a much heated drunken argument with my friend-philosopher-guide aka my drinking buddy, we discovered that like web traffic metrics, our sex lives need some monitoring.

Image Courtesy: Google

Since the international female orgasm day was just 2 days ago on August 8, the focus of the conversation was centered largely around the lack of orgasms for the vast majority of Indian women including Jashodaben. Jashodaben who? The spouse of our much in news, PM Modi, with the famed 56-inch chest.

The 64-year-old woman who lives a very simple life in a remote village in her native Gujrat, must never ever had an orgasm. She was married off to Narendra Modi when she was 16 and stayed with her husband all of 3 months. Now it is theoretically possible to achieve at least 1 orgasm in these 3 months, given that both husband and wife were at the raging hormonal teen phase (she was 16 & he was 18), at the time of marriage. But both parties have refuted any physical contact with each other.

While the honorable PM found his g-spot in politics, the poor Jashodaben immersed herself in teaching young kids at a primary school. Till date, she has not been with any other man and has even given up eating rice for 40 years! How does giving up rice, help, is something I don’t want to get into.  Meanwhile our PM is neither giving her a divorce nor an orgasm.

Like the majority of women who are reluctant to use self-help to get to the big O, Jashodaben wouldn’t have explored this inorganic way either.

If you plot a graph of orgasms achieved organically or inorganically, most data would lean towards inorganic just like the viral videos of today. There is a whole economy resting on supplying tools (literally) to aid this inorganic big O.  When SMM experts go gaga over engagement and time spent, imagine the predicament of the female population trying to keep tabs on number of followers & likes while boosting its reach.  

Image Courtesy: Google

Unfortunately, just like brands who insist on organic growth, our culture favors organic orgasms only. Which is why in almost all condom related surveys, “Just 48 per cent of us said that they usually orgasm” and “Globally, twice as many men (64 per cent) as women regularly have orgasms” don’t take into account all the big O’s achieved without a partner.

As the startup whiz kids find newer ways to give a collective hard on to college drop outs & IITians, the empowered women in India are leaning more to self-induced joys of ecstasy. It is to be seen if these methods sustain or the good ol’ organic way triumphs. Meanwhile, the hope that Jashodaben eats a bowl of rice, will continue to drive this author to track her agonies over her ecstasies.

Why Developed India is a fantasy

I keep abreast of the happenings in my country through the humble newspaper and twitter (thanks to modern technology). I have been doing these for the last 20 years. And in all this time, I have never read any article that mentions any concrete steps or ideas for development. And I believe if some techie finds some time to write an algorithm that will take into account all the news articles of the last 20 years (even from a single publication) and finds stories which have ‘development’ in it and then do a qualitative filtering process of listing the actual ideas or steps, it won’t be more than 20 such articles. Out of these 20 ideas or announcements, 5-6 would have been scrapped for lack of funds or initiative. The remaining hopefully would be WIP.

The reason that I am throwing up such wild figures is frustration…frustration of seeing the same old stories on crime, corruption, infighting within political parties, some ban or the other. But in the same publications international section, one finds stories about how China is building a solar power station in space, or how Finland is scrapping traditional school subjects in favour of topics.

Why haven’t we moved to solar energy as the main consumer energy despite being a tropical country with an abundance of sunlight?

Why haven’t we developed water sports not only for recreation, tourism but as an Olympic strategy despite having one of the largest coastlines?

Why haven’t we increased employment in all public sectors but have encouraged ‘agent culture’?

Why are continuing to give drought relief and farmer subsidies for the last 15 years to the Vidharba region, instead of figuring out a source of water?

But instead our idea of development includes building a 300 crore statue of Shivaji in the Sea, having Aadhar and UID both.

All we hear about in the 5 year plans is ‘aim to reduce poverty, increase growth rate of agriculture, industries and services by 9%, etc. But how does it plan to do that?

We have planning commission, urban & rural development officers, many ministries to support all of these ideas but looks like somebody forgot to have a chief idea officer who can not only use available resources but look at the current crisis situations and provide solutions. Who is this person?

What’s your beef with my beef? : Open letter to the people in power

Dear Mr. President Pranab Da,

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/beef-banned-in-maharashtra-5-yrs-jail-rs10000-fine-for-possession-or-sale/

I read in today’s papers that you gave your assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 1995, nearly 19 years after the Maharashtra Assembly passed the Bill during the BJP-Shiv Sena rule in 1995.

Which means that apart from the slaughter of cows (previously banned), Buffaloes and bulls can’t be slaughtered as well. Only water buffaloes can be slaughtered now.

Our honourable Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in his eternal wisdom tweeted his thanks to you as well.

While I don’t have a beef with your political power games, I wonder what your issue with my palate is. Why don’t you want me to eat the food I want? Am I eating it out of your plate? Am I asking you to pay for it? Considering you all eat stuff at subsidized rates at the parliament canteen for Rs. 29 (read it in the same paper how our honourable Prime Minister descended to the canteen for a free photo op), I have to shell out atleast 100 bucks for a decent meal. I also have to earn my living and pay taxes unlike most of you who have amassed wealth disproportionate to your work experience.

Mr. Narendra Modi Sir, when you came into power, I maintained my faith in you to deliver, even discounting some of the ambitious ones. I have also taken the recent Delhi election debacle in stride. But I am beginning to doubt your effectiveness now.

While I am no expert in how to run a country, state or even a city, I did run a small department in my limited work life and I do realize that it’s not easy to please everyone and all calls have to be taken for the greater good of the project.

However, I fail to understand what greater good is there in banning slaughter of bulls and buffaloes (to the already banned slaughter of cows). I know that you are busy, but I would request you or someone from your team to address this issue.

I kept quiet when you showed your swag in a narcissistic striped suit, I kept my peace when you kept quiet amidst the communal violence in several states, I kept my faith when you gave verbal reassurance on the black money stashed abroad issue. I vented a bit when freedom of speech was abused when those sweet guys at AIB made a roast. I kept on trolling when lip service to Swachh Bharat happened without a proper roadmap. About the budget, I limited my ire to revamping the idiotic IRCTC website and priorities on development. On the issue of rape and women’s safety, I mostly kept calm as it is a deep seated gender issue. I know some issues will take generations to show even the slightest change.

But I fail to understand how my consumption of beef is going to ensure a safer, cleaner, higher GDP, democratic government?

If you could only share your reasons behind this, I would be much grateful and would convince my friends who all have been stocking up meat to accept this ban gracefully.

I should also point out that I am born to Hindu parents, had a catholic education (read convent school ;)), wear my hair short to match my short clothes, smoke cigarettes, consume alcohol out of my hard earned money, travel alone, not married even at the ripe age of 36, well read, have an interest in current affairs, troll the Congress, pay taxes diligently and have never considered living in any other country than India. But most importantly, I prefer logic over blind faith.  And I love my beef chilli fry, mallu style.

With so many issues on my plate (ignore the pun, please), I don’t want my tipping point to be this beef ban. And I am sincerely hoping that I am convinced that this ban is for the greater good for the country and mankind.

Notice Period

So it’s been quite some time since I submitted my notice period to the higher ups but I haven’t heard from them yet. I don’t even know if they have looked at it or even received it.

But while the top brass takes it own sweet time to decide my fate, what am I supposed to do? Twiddle my thumbs? Yes, like a true professional, I am trying my best to continue but my heart is really not into it. That’s the reason why I have put in my papers.

The first hint came a few years ago, but I suppressed it. Nothing good ever comes out of such thoughts. I had a good gig running here, why give it all up for some strange notion which I don’t even understand. There were many more hints and nudges but I calmly ignored them as flights of fancy. I mean…really to give up working which not only made me decent money but also gave me satisfaction? One must be really dumb to give up such things.

The next few times, I attributed to boredom and searched for external pleasures and pursuits which kept me gainfully occupied till the next time. But the frequencies of these nudges have increased since then.

I have since then taken up various pursuits and drilled it into myself that real happiness comes from being in the thick of things and not without. I have become a workaholic, picked up hobbies like classical dancing, travelled, mellowed down my outlook, rationalized my behavior, actually found happiness in loving my niece, been nice to family & friends but the restlessness continues.

These are all distractions to keep me from questioning the higher ups for their lack of acknowledgement of my notice. And the distractions can only help so much. At the end of the day, I know that they are distractions.

Nothing works for me anymore… it’s not just cynicism, but I do catch myself asking ‘What’s the point?’ more often than one should. Yes, there are thousands of books still waiting to be read, lots of movies that I haven’t even heard of, places that need to be experienced, food that needed to be had, sex that needed to linger and people that needed to be understood. But do I care?

So now what… should I take matters into my own hand? Should I wait for them to revert?