Attack of the Bachelors

I guess I'll just start with the topic that's uppermost on my mind right now. I have been searching for a new apartment to move into and the discrimination seems to just keep getting worse with time.

As if things like religion, caste, sex, class, ethnicity and regionalism were not enough, our society has come up with a number of new ways to spread their bias. One of the foremost among these is the bias against bachelors. Now, normally I wouldn't care about what society thinks in general but when something affects you personally, you notice.

And the reason that I notice is that it has become more or less impossible to get a decent place to stay at a decent location at a decent price in Mumbai. More than half the doors are shut in your face (or to be more literal, phones are slammed down) as soon as you mention the B word. Everybody wants to rent out their place to a religious, traditional, vegetarian family. They run from people like me as if we carry the pox. Even if you manage to find a prospective landlord who is willing, the all-powerful housing society will come into the picture and ban all bachelors from their particular building.

Despite all this, if you do get hold of a flat, be ready to pay crazy amounts of money as "Security Deposit", even if the flat is an unfurnished one, and to bear the sickening condescension shown by the landlord towards you, as if you would have starved on the streets if it weren't for his gracious helping hand.

And I really don't understand how this bias has been so well established. I mean, sure there are quite a few bachelors out there who maybe get drunk and make a lot f noise, but I'm sure their number is less than the number of married couples shouting their lungs out at each other or the number of parents with one-year old babies who are just discovering the pleasure of screaming bloody hell in the middle of the night and watching their parents dance around them. At least, when bachelors make a noise, its out of joy and happiness, not because someone got the wrong kind of butter from the store. You can tell the bachelors to stop making noise and they'll listen to you, try the same thing with a baby and he'll just poop on you.

The only solution possible to escape from this discrimination would be to get married, though even thinking about that brings too many proverbs about rocks and frying pans and hellfire to mind.


P.S: For those idealistic ones who might be offended that I am comparing serious issues like religion and caste with my personal problems, once again I say, I don't care.

Third Coming...Really ?

Ok. So here I am, again, after a gap of over two years. The last time I was away for one year. I would have thought that the gaps would get shorter and shorter, instead I seem to be working backwards. I am not even going to pretend to myself that I'm going to stick around this time and make useless promises about posting regularly. If it happens, it will happen but I'll just leave it to time to decide how it goes.

A lot has happened in the time that has passed and some of the things that I wrote earlier makes me cringe now. I guess we are all embarrased by what we did or thought in the past (specially things like references to Shakira concerts) but there's no choice other than to put on a brave face and move on. Nothing stands the test of time, even your own thoughts that you would be willing to bet your life on today.

I have a lot of things to say and I hope I manage to put some of them down in this blog before another attack of ADD comes calling. So, with that I'll put a stop to this post and start on another.

Ciao.

Extremes

Life can get very weird sometimes - one moment you feel up in the clouds, the center of the party, the charismatic hero and just as suddenly, you're down in the dumps thinking if anyone in the world really cares.
It has been a frustrating week. I set out with goals that I wasn't entirely clear about myself and now I'm more confused than ever. Is fighting against the natural flow really worth it? Countless books and movies tell us that it is, that achieving your dream is what its all about.
But what happens when your dream keeps changing one day to the next? What if you never feel passionate about something strongly enough that you're willing to sacrifice your safe and boring future for it? What if you finally do manage to get a reason to dedicate yourself entirely and then fail spectacularly?
Questions that are inner demons for all of us. Lets just hope that we find answers to as many as possible.

The Second Coming

Well, I know that no one really follows this blog, but I still feel really bad about not posting anything for nearly a year now. I am probably the most lazy wannabe blogger that ever lived. Well, in any case I hope I am done moving around for a while now( my last year count : 4 months in Gurgaon, 3 months in Gangtok, 3 months in Trivandrum and 2 months in Mumbai) so I can settle down a bit and concentrate on some things - like this blog for example.
It has been a hectic, brilliant, weird, eye-opening and chaotic year for me. A few things I realised while jumping from one corner of India to the other is the ridiculously vast cultural diversity it holds. I know its been said a million times but when you experience it firsthand, its something completely different. I'll relate my experiences in detail in subsequent blogs...

The great mystery solved

I have finally discovered why cricket is so popular in India. No, its not because it is such a great game. I mean, there are many games such as football or tennis or basketball that are much more exciting to watch and play. Its not because its the only game we are good at. To date, even after nearly five decades of cricket mania in the country, our achievements in the game of hockey outweigh those in cricket.
It is because the game of cricket, more than any other game by a huge margin, offers scope for calculation of statistics. And we all know that we Indians are a math-loving country almost to a sickness. Where people from other countries shudder at the thought of algebra and geometry, we love it. Even the calculation of banalities like the mean and mode of a given set of figures excites us more than a shakira concert(okay, not me but most of you). Its not because we love the game that the calculations are made, its because we love the calculations that the game is played.
Of course it helps to have people like Sachin who provide the raw data for the calculations to be made.

Rambling

Feeling isolated, depressed and fiercely joyful in passing phases, it seems that I am leading someone else's life. There are no markers, no breakpoints to show me direction or my progress. It feels like I am lost upon a desert world where everything is alien.
I wonder if this is a feeling others undergo too, or am I the exception. This constant need to be similar to everybody else makes me claustrophobic at times to such an extent that I find it difficult to see. Why must we all be the same. After all its by natural order that we are different and in this lies our strength.
It is only this thought that keeps me going though it is lonely to walk a lonely road(to quote GreenDay).

Life can just get so weird sometimes. People whom you knew for years suddenly melt away and before you feel their emptiness , there are replacements in forms hard to imagine. Why there should be such jolts and jerks is beyond me. The concept of a single womb is long gone and has been replaced by something like an amoeba, forever changing. I'm surprised I'm not bewildered by it.