Little Things Along The Way...

I'm not sure what this post will turn out to be, but when I started it, it was with the intention of trying to pen down the year that went by and the little things I learnt along the way...

Nothing is constant. Not circumstances. Not options. Not people. Not choices. Not friends. Not feelings. Not even change. They say "Death is the only constant".

Emotions can be treacherous... They betray even the best of intentions.

Going with the flow, instead of fighting it, has brought its share of advantages.

Restlessness is beginning to become second nature.

Re-discovered old friends who were there when needed. Some old friends became better friends. Some friends I began to understand better. Some began to understand me better. Some I've stopped trying to understand. Some grew distant. And some new-found friends felt like old friends.

Learnt from a friend to appreciate that I was indeed lucky to have parents like mine. Parents, whose presence, has allowed me to experiment with choices which may or may not be the best, but which allow me the opportunity to learn from them on my own terms. Thank you S. for that conversation a long time back and thank you Pa & Ma for letting me learn without feeling pressurised to show results.

It takes a lot of humility to try changing things. This I learnt from my sister who's shown a maturity far beyond her age in allowing things to affect her and then reacting upon them in a publicly visible way instead of pretending to be a tough cookie and not a 'sentimental fool.'

It is not important to know things. It is more important that people understand and know what you know. A friend recently pointed out that he wouldn't read what I'd written in my blog because he couldn't understand it. Though, the fact that he didn't seem to want to make the effort to read what I'd written did annoy me initially, his criticism was completely valid.

The amount of time you've known a person is not proportional to how well you know him/her.

People are difficult to understand. Men think women are complicated. Women would love a manual on how to understand men. Older people wish youngsters had their priorities more sorted. Youngsters wish older people would empathise more. Bosses think their juniors are shirking. Subordinates think their bosses are interfering... In short, mayhem!

Every second person can write. Every third wants to do their own thing (professionally) and among them, every second person wants to open a restaurant/bistro/cafe. :P
[Disclaimer: The statistics are not accurate, but to me they seem to be... :) ]

Nobody wants to be the first or the last... It seems to be the season of weddings now and this certainly is on my mind as much as it is on my friends'.

Hard as we may try, there are some mistakes that we cannot help but repeat.

When one has lost touch with a friend, it may not be because either has grown apart from the other. It may just be that both don't know how to break the silence beause they're afraid of how the other would react or what to expect. Each one would rather the other took the first step.

And finally, summing up with words from a song that's playing on the radio now, as I write...

"Old enough to look back at my mistakes
Young enough to look at my future and like what I see..."

A small world, indeed!

Sometime back, I read an article in TOI in their science section. The article was a little snippet on something called "monkey malaria," some new strain of malaria that, as the name suggests, was present in a particular species of monkeys and which has now been discovered to infect humans. Reading the article got me thinking about a couple of things.

Firstly, what's with the sudden spate of "animal-illnesses"? From bird flu to swine flu to now monkey malaria?!? Maybe, the world is no longer big enough for all of us. Maybe, co-habitation is utopian. Or, maybe people have just lost their minds. At any rate, this spate is rather amusing (as long as it isn't declared an epidemic)!

Secondly, for as long as I can remember, I've been socialised to believe that the field of medicine has advanced and this development is a good thing. Mortality rates are lower, diseases that were feared earlier (because they had no cure) are now curable and on the whole life expectancy has increased. But when I was reading this article, I wondered... Does development ever really happen? On the one hand, we've found ways to ward off illnesses and on the other we're faced with newer and newer ones. Maybe, our current developed society is not very different from that of our ancestors. Maybe, diseases also come in "ages". So like there was the Stone Age, Ice Age, Bronze Age etc., there is also a Small-Pox Age, Leprosy Age, Malaria Age and now, an "Animal-Illness" age!

In passing...

Yesteday, I spent my first all-nighter at work. It was also the first time in 6 months (since the time I passed out of college) or maybe more that I have been up the whole night (and day) and required to work. So it was momentous in a small way, but that’s not the point of this post. Among other things, my team-mates (which basically consisted of 2 other people) & I would lapse into conversations on various topics (not completely related to work) everytime we’d feel the need to take a break to stay awake and mentally alert. During one such conversation, one of my team-mates was talking about what Delhi meant to non-residents like him & I. And this was what was interesting. Since then, I have replayed that conversation in my head (once I had taken a nap and was in a better state to process things, of course) and realized how the same city can mean such different things for people with almost similar circumstances.

For him, Delhi was associated with freedom, booze and live-in relationships (among other things that I can’t quite remember at this moment). And he claimed this to be a generalization. Maybe it was in the social circles he was in. But what I found interesting is how none of the people in my acquaintance have come close to associating this city with similar things. In fact, for me personally, Delhi per se does not give me a sense of freedom. Of course, I have the freedom that comes with being away from home and being answerable only at a very macro level, but that would be in any place that was not my “home-city” or “home-cities” in my case. I am yet to get used to the fact that in this city my “freedom” is curbed by my self. For the first time, I have begun to consciously think and be aware of where I am going and at what time of the day and then consider how to get back. For instance, if I go for an evening show of a movie over the weekend with Tanvi & PK we always end up reminding ourselves of when the show is likely to end? Will we find autos at that time? Will the autos go to the places each of us have to go to? Is it safe to take an auto at that time of the day to that part of the city? And so on.

This, I find contrary to my concept of absolute “freedom”. Maybe it’s a trivial consideration and one can argue that the same is with any city, but atleast with all other cities you’re not psyched out and made to be wary long before you even reach the city. Having said that, I haven’t had an out and out unpleasant experience so far…touchwood. But still I just found it interesting to note how people could think so differently about the same place.

For me, Delhi is about comfort and taking a back seat and being lackadaisical. Unlike Bombay, I don’t get a sense of being rushed here. In Bombay, everyone seemed to be racing against time everywhere and at any point of time in the day. It was also a place where I kept feeling this innate need to constantly prove yourself. For me, it was a city that signified chaos and flux. Delhi, on the other hand, feels sedentary.
I am yet to understand why the association with booze & live-in relationships though. I was told that’s very prevalent in Noida. Unfortunately, the conversation was interrupted in between by some work that came up so never got around to figuring that one out. I guess it was one of those times when you mix with people different from your usual circle of friends and hear or discover something new.