A Bowl of Elusive

Ted and I spent the summer of ’09 in a small cottage by the beach. The rent was reasonable, the cottage was cramped and we spent 14 to 16 hours a day slogging at the Marriott Resort nearby. Summer Internship a.k.a Industrial Training, since we were 2nd Year Hotel Management students. Ted and I had been friends since the eighth grade and we stuck together till college. We got along very well in spite of being quite different from each other. He was universally liked and I was universally despised. He drank & I was a teetotaler. And that kind of sums it up, ha ha. We started out with our internships, all excited to be there. Posh hotel, flashy uniforms, big presence in the industry, we thought it would be LEGEN- wait for it -Dary!!! But soon, we realized that none of these things matter to the people getting into the premises from the staff entrance. A reasonable shift for an employee at an Indian Hotel is 9 to 10 hours, which includes breaks. But India being India, labor

We are a country with over a billion people living extraordinarily mediocre lives. Many of us don’t know where our next meals will come from. We have so many real things that we need to worry about. Yet we can’t stop obsessing over little things like a young couple kissing in public. Protests rise against moral policing and we get caught up in the symbolism. Are we dumb enough to think that these protests are aimed at just making kissing in public legal? (By the way, it's already legal.) Have we forgotten about how couples have been getting thrashed for so much as holding hands in public? I see so many self-righteous “respected” grown-ups publicly shunning the “Kiss of Love” Movement, labeling it as Western Culture corrupting and degrading the Indian culture. How is this an effect of the Western culture? It's like watching a goldfish with its 3-second memory cycle. If you were to believe these gentlemen, Indians didn’t know about kissing before meeting foreigners and al

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.                                                                -William Shakespeare (“Hamlet”, Act 1, Scene 5) Every now and then, we hear stories about ghosts, imps, angels, vampires and what not. Of course, we don’t believe any of those things exist. This is a time of great scientific advancement and our minds have no tolerance for the paranormal or the supernatural. And yet, there are people who swear they have seen, felt or experienced such elements in some way or the other. And quite expectedly, these people become the brunt of ridicule and laughter. Such people are called ignorant. And yet, with the tremendous advance in scientific research and discovery, we have learnt that there are n number of things in this world that we were wrong about. Latest discoveries in quantum mechanics changed the way physicists looked at the universe. For decades, the atom was considered an ind

Very few people realise how severely Sexual Abuse scars its victims. This is the last part of this article. I will be throwing some light on how deeply this heinous crime affects the lives of the children who go through it. Imagine a 7-year old boy being sodomized by a 30-year old man, bleeding and writhing in pain. If you think that is the worst thing a little boy could go through, you're mistaken. What's worse than the abuse itself is having to live with it. It changes people. And I am not talking just about the victims of violent sexual abuse like I described. Even milder forms of abuse leave their mark. We’re talking about little impressionable children here. Subjecting them to an intrusion of their privacy, coaxing them to cooperate with acts of perversion affects them in hundreds of little ways. It goes on to leave indelible dents on their personalities when they grown up. Don’t believe me? Read on. In the previous part of this article, I described

As promised, here I am with the second part of this article. Let us talk about the sexual predator our kids face. We need to know what we are up against to fight it better. This is a sensitive topic and we need to eradicate all misinformation from our minds. I will sketch a character profile here, drawing inspiration from my own experiences and that of many people I know. There would be many readers who when they hear the phrase “Sexual Abuse of Children” will instantly imagine a pedophile. (A pedophile is a person who is sexually attracted to children.) But this isn't always the case with people who abuse children. To understand this better, we have to first get over the misconception that rape is committed out of lust. Rapists are almost never sex addicts, they are violent aggressive and disturbed people, and the purpose of rape is never just sexual gratification. Similarly, child abusers aren't always driven by attraction to children. Terrifying as it is, this means tha

Having been a victim of sexual abuse myself, this was a topic I always wanted to discuss out loud. This is the first part of this series. I don’t expect these articles to change the lives of abuse victims out there, but at least they should enhance our understanding of it. This part is meant for parents. Almost all of you have faced some form of sexual abuse as a child. You might not talk about it, you might not report it or you might have blocked it from your conscious memory. But it has happened. Approximately 52.33% children report having faced some form of sexual abuse or the other. But seeing how sexually repressed our society is and how we condition our children to think of sex as something bad and alien, you can imagine how high that figure might actually be. Being a victim myself, I have always tried to make myself aware about this topic. I have spoken to a lot of peers about it, friends, colleagues, old flames, etc. And an alarmingly high percentage of the people

“TRUTH“…Such a sublime concept, isn't it? And yet, its never absolute. No, this is not a lesson in philosophy. I am talking about a very practical aspect here. Because, we aren't a species that is driven solely on instincts and reflexes. We take time to analyse “the truth”, “the reality” and then act on it, as we see fit. And hence, the need for “truth” gets elevated several folds. And truth here should be absolute. As a lot depends on it. Sometimes life and death and at other times, a person’s identity. Coz what we believe makes us who we are. Thats the truth I am speaking of. Have you wondered why things are never absolutely true? If you start thinking about it, you'll realise that this ambiguity in the concept of truth exists only in things that are human or related to humans. For example, look at the sun or the moon. One is a star and the other, a satellite. Both of them are celestial bodies. That is the truth, the absolute truth. As its universally

This article is about a real living person, lets call her Alisha. I am aware that a single article can never do justice to a person’s story, so I am going to try to cover only certain aspects of the story. What is Love? When people claim that they have fallen in love, what exactly do they love in the person? And I am specifically wondering about people who say they have fallen for someone who doesn’t feel for them. I mean, are they in awe with how that person looks, speaks or carries themselves? Is that what love means to them? See, I am not trying to make a point by asking these seemingly existential questions. I am genuinely perplexed by these thoughts, have always been. You see, love, for me, has always been a reaction. A reaction to someone’s affection for me. The only reason I ever needed to love a person was for them to love me first. And that’s why I could never understand Alisha. We had first met under the worst possible circumstances. I was in the last stag

So yesterday, I wrote this article about certain hardships I faced in college. And all hell broke loose. Coz certain people who read my article, didn't quite get it and just worked out a meaning that suited them. And kept on sharing my blog post and criticising it all day. I say “free publicity”. Anyway, this article is NOT about them. Among a bunch of people of who commented on my FB page, there were several sweet souls, who showed concern about my well-being, by advising me to move on. They got the impression that I am still beaten down by the struggles of college days. I’d like to set the records straight. I am not sad or depressed about college. I took it in my stride. I just wrote about it yesterday coz I was reminiscing. And I love to write. This was something I had always wanted to write about. And a lot has happened since college. It was 3 years ago. And the things I wrote about yesterday happened in the first 2 years of college. Things had started looking u

Innocent Song of a Six-Year Old I will make the moon brighter, I will paint the world in green; I will make this earth a beautiful place: Such as was never seen. The air will be free of dust, The walks shall be all clean. I will fill people’s heart with trust: They shall not be so mean. I will make this earth a loveable planet, Where everything will just be right. Peace shall be the ruling passion: No more useless fight. I don't remember when I wrote this one. I had it filed along with other poems I wrote. Hope you like it. Its short & sweet.

I still ask myself whether I’d have been better off at IHM, Pusa. My AIR (All India Rank) in the Entrance exam was good enough to secure me a seat at Pusa or Dadar, the best IHMs in India and I chose to be at IHM, Goa. I know what you’re thinking; Beaches, babes & booze, right? Wrong. For one, I don’t like beaches that much. Two, I never had a dearth of babes, irrespective of the place. And lastly, I was a teetotaler & I still am. I chose IHM, Goa coz I knew for a fact that Goa was culturally different than the rest of the country. And I needed to experience the diversity and the exposure. And yes, I did get all that I came looking for, and a lot of other crap. Maybe a little more than had I bargained for. The three years of college at IHM, Goa broke me down! You see, IHM, Goa is more than an educational institute. It is a way of life. The students here are as diverse as the flow of tourists that Goa gets each year. So imagine a random mixture of student

There aren't a lot of people who know this story. Hence, the identity of the girl is well protected. Just one of those crazy experiences I thought would be fun to share. It was recently pointed out to me by a dear friend that everybody from our high school (juniors, seniors, teachers) still remembers me, while they have forgotten a lot of people who were actually popular back then, even the pretty girls. So apparently, I was kind of a celebrity. I sure didn't feel like one. I felt like an outcast, always the odd man out. But I’ll leave that story for another day. Of course, everybody knew me. I had joined the school in seventh grade, when they usually don’t accept new admissions. And I was freakishly tall and hefty for my age. So, not that easy to miss in a crowd. Add to that, the fact that I was a major attention junkie and always involved in one controversy or the other, and you get wide-spread recognition. Now, coming back to my story, remember the bloome

I don't have to tell you the woes of being a smartphone owner in today’s world. Its a blessing, no doubt, but you kind of end up wishing that the blessing came with a longer lasting battery. ;-) I own a Samsung Note since a couple of years and even though it has been rendered outdated by its successor models, I love the little beast. It gets stuff done, keeps me connected and doesn't trouble me as much as you’d think it would. But like all smartphones, its batteries give me a lot of trouble now that I have started travelling so much. And no, I won't carry a spare basic phone. Two phones, two numbers is just not my thing. Hence, a power bank. Like all guys my age, I too love gadgets and research them online as much as possible before I go for a buy. And after a lot of research, I moved my crosshair on this device: MI 10400 mAh Power Bank. Its from the Chinese Smartphone Giant, Xiaomi. You know the MI3 guys. Remember the hype? Their products are hyped so m

My views and ideas about the american culture are mostly derived from the movies & television shows that I watch. Hence, I might be mistaken. But it feels like a majority of foreigners (americans, englishmen, etc) prefer to get employed in their hometowns, unless of course, if they are enlisted. The scenario here in India is different. As an Indian, you will find yourself moving away from your family and hometown at a certain age. Usually it is to pursue higher education, which is fine. But then, you get a job, and almost all the time, your job keeps you away from your family. As youngsters in a capitalist, ambition-oriented society, we don’t mind this in the beginning. New job, incentives and perks, we are happy to make our lives all about that. Until that longing, the one that is the epicentre of the family unit, sets in. You start missing the people you grew up with and your home. Again, I’d have to draw your attention to another difference between our culture a

Now, don't look at me like that. And read on. I started this blog yesterday and I have been writing constantly. And it feels incredibly good, putting my thoughts and experiences down in writing. Writing, as always, is fun but primarily its helping me keep the mist of depression that keeps creeping towards me at bay. So I intend to keep writing. And I wanna mix it up. I can’t bore you all with only my life experiences. So I am taking inspiration from a porn site I discovered a couple of months back. (Yeah, I watch porn. We all do. Stop fussing about it.) So its a site for fetish enthusiasts hosted by this ameteur Indian porn starlet. Its called hornylily.com. I guess she runs a paid cam as well and the site is to promote that. What impressed me was the sheer diversity of her posts. I am sure I don't need to describe that coz you must have her site open on another tab by now. So, I have been thinking. I wanna keep on writing. And I wanna make this blog fun to

We are a species of over seven billion individuals. We live in societies, communities, nations, federations, etc. We communicate constantly and yet we are so lonely on a fundamental level. We go about our daily chores, among milling crowds of millions but at the end of the day, we are left alone. Living in a city, where life moves swiftly, where we can’t really take moment to stop and pour our heart out before a fellow human, it becomes evident how singularly solitary our existence has become. Come to think of it, it all boils down to the simple concept of ‘self’. Which then leads to instincts like self preservation, self development, self esteem, etc. Doesn’t the concept of ‘self’ beat the purpose of being a part of something larger, be it a community, a countty or a race. An extension of ‘self’ is the concept of ‘my’. My family, my land, my property, my future, etc. No. I am not advocating communism, if thats what you’re thinking. I totally agree with the premise

You hear about break ups and rebounds almost everyday. A rebound is when you prematurely get into a relationship after having broken up with your former partner. Thats the Indian definition. Coz I believe an american would go and have one or more one-night stands as a form of rebound. There could be various explanations to why people get into rebound relationships. Maybe it is a pathetic attempt to mimic the level of comfort they had with their former partner. Or maybe it is just as a way to spite their ex. Irrespective of the reason, getting into a “rebound relationship” is the worst thing one could possibly do. I am not saying one-night stands are healthy, they are not, but at least they don’t have such dire consequences. (Unless of course, if you knock a girl up during a one-night stint.) But India being such a sexually oppressed place, we choose to get into a new full-fledged relationship to get over a messy break up. And a whole lot of mess entails. Running int