why arE wE such a complacEnt lot?

A year has passed since the terrorists struck Mumbai and innocent civilians gave up their life for government apathy. On the one hand it’s glad to know that most of the Mumbaikars have gotten over the sad things that happened during India's 26/11; but on the other all the more frightening. Was this our first taste of a terrorist act? - No; was this our last? - may not be. The question that had been troubling me is the continued occurrence of these gruesome acts in India - Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai ... when will we learn or why don’t we learn. It was enough for just one 9/11 to wake Americans out of their slumber - be it internally planned or externally. Not one single attack of a comparative magnitude has struck that country again afterwards.

During my last years visit to the US, I found out how the Americans have succeeded in thwarting the terrorist mess for 8 long years- the security and the heightened level of alertness. When I told about the strict and thorough security checks I had to go through, to my friends over in the US, they were quite unsurprised. In fact they told it was always in a state of high alert for every single day after 9/11. On the contrary in India we see a beef up of security just during the national holidays or whenever the RAW/IB/FBI or CIA comes up with a threat advance. Before every Independence Day or Republic Day commemoration we read and hear about heightened security all over India; as if terrorists have ever struck during one of these days!!! If that was not the case and we are arguing that it was only because of this extra security that we don’t have to see these attacks, then let me ask why don’t we have this all year round? Is it the enormous cost of security? Oh crap, it’s always the material cost, not the cost of a human life!!! We have one of the largest reserve army and police force. Rather than utilizing them around the independence/republic days why don’t we use them every day. That makes sense as these reserve units are always in a state of readiness and can effectively tackle terrorist threats any time of the year.

Oh, then India will become a police state just like USA; the activists will shout. But aren’t we a police state- where the police can do anything as they are still doing in the many corners of India where the press and the visual media can't cover or will never bother to cover? "Only if a police state could have prevented their absence with us today"; the near and dear ones of the grateful dead will never bother.

ഏതു കാലം? ഏതു ഭാഷ? ഏതു പ്രാര്‍ത്ഥന?

കന്യാസ്ത്രീ ഉമ്മ, തമ്പുരാന്റെ പട്ടാങ്ങയായ അമ്മയെന്നും വിശ്വാസക്കാരെ, ഈവണ്ണം ഉമ്മായെ വിളിക്കുന്നത്‌ യോഗ്യമെത്ര ആയതെന്നും വിശ്വസിക്കുന്നേന്‍! പട്ടാങ്ങയായ മാനുഷ്യന്‍ ദൈവസുഖത്തിന്നുടെ പുത്രനെ ഏതും ഒരു നോവും സങ്കടവും കൂടാതെ പട്ടാങ്ങയാലെ പെറ്റു എന്നതിനെക്കൊണ്ടും എന്നാല്‍ ഈ ഉമ്മ പെറുമ്പോഴും പെറ്റപ്പോഴും പെറ്റാറേയും എപ്പോഴും കന്യാഉമ്മ ആകുന്നതെന്നും നിരൂപണം കൊണ്ടും വചനംകൊണ്ടും പ്രവൃത്തികൊണ്ടും ദോഷത്തിന്റെ കറ ഏതും ഉമ്മായിക്കും ഒരുനാളും ഉണ്ടായില്ല എന്നും വിശ്വസിക്കുന്നേന്‍.

സാറ ജോസേഫിന്റെ ഒതപ്പ് എന്ന നോവലില്‍ നിന്നും എടുത്തത്‌...

O Brother - Lets go see this movie ...

My roomie was insisting that I should the movie 'O Brother Where Art Thou'. Just like anything else, I put this task too for a later time. A few days back I happened to lay my hands on a movie 'The Big Lebowski' by the Coen Brothers. I had seen their movies 'Blood Simple', 'No Country For Old Men' and 'Barton Fink' and was beginning to sprout a likeness for their movies. TBL helped me strengthen my belief in the brothers artistic skills and I planned to watch all of Coen's work. I researched a bit on their work and finally realized that there is one movie OBWAT that is gathering gossamer in my archives. So I pulled out the disc and started this wonderful journey together with the protagonists escaping a chained gang in search of a treasure and their destiny.

This movie was inspired by Homer's Odyssey as the Brother's put it in the titles. True to it the main protagonists first name is Ulysses, then there is the oracle who predicts their destiny, the seducing washing women for the sirens of Homer, and a few more metaphors. They escape the chain gang so that Ulysses can recover some treasure that he has hidden in a valley which is about to be drowned by a dam. On their way they encounter some wonderful sights and perilous perils, a black American boy who has sold his soul to the devil to become an ace guitarist, sings a song for a few dollars (the song immediately becomes a huge hit), a group of singing washer women (reminiscent of the sirens), a rogue Bible sales man, the KKK, the incumbent governor and his adversary and so on and on...I wont divulge into the plot details so that you too are eager to see this movie without any spoilers.

But the most stunning ingredient of the movie is the innocence and the simplicity of its characters, a bunch of plain ol' southerners roaming the country side. The pack is led by Ulysses with Pete and Delmar following him to the treasure before the dam fills the valley. The picturization is immensely beautiful and the most vital ingredient of this movie is its soundtrack. Wonderful country and folk songs indulge the viewers over the entire length of this beautiful odyssey.

This is one of the few movies that have made me weep out of happiness (the other being Amelie). This wonderful journey of the three simpletons embarking upon various adventures and hazards and dangers and finally finding greater happiness at the end provides a reveling depiction of hope, togetherness and happiness. Very few movies can elicit this kind if feeling in the minds of the movie goers.

A must see for all the movie goes out there. The music is one which you must have to ease the strides in your life's way.

india, womEn & arrangEd marriagE

Love marriage or arranged marriage - the perpetual question in group discussions and the favourite of debaters and perhaps one of the most clichéd argument topics in India. I was dreading the day when I will take up my e-quill to spray my take on this subject all over the blog. And finally for me it all fell into a single piece and here u can have my arguments on this. But I’m sure I have no where read about a similar argument and as far as I know I’m pretty authentic with this one...

So ask for the greatest advantage of an arranged marriage and the elders will undoubtedly say “stability”. Perhaps Indian subcontinent might be the only place where arranged marriages are practiced in such abundance. In the west and the 'other' east, its “man vs. wild” in the fight for woman or vice-versa.

I remember learning in history classes that in India during the Vedic period women were much freer than they ever were in the 19th or 20th centuries. But something terrible happened after the Vedic period and there was the Dark Age the passage of which meant more of darkness for the Indian women. Finally it all boiled down to a state where women were no longer considered part of the homo-sapiens. They were just a tool to produce off-springs so that the male child can help the father in his business and girl child can be burdened off to some poor male soul so that he too can have offspring.

It’s in this so called patriarchal or male centric society that women were considered subservient and their dignity and stature as humans eroded in the long run without education, social contact or any other forms of action with a scope for emancipation. The woman too adjusted to this and they surrendered their dignity to the male society and started coping with the way they were treated – a rather sad kind of Stockholm syndrome. It is in this context that I believe arranged marriages became common method for stable marriages with the choice lying solely with the groom. It is this setup where the women who were down the chasm of social recognition and lacking total support not even from fellow women, that arranged marriages soon translated to mean stable marriages.

As the country progressed socially with the arrival of British raj and later after the independence, economically with a more inclusive social growth, the women were granted rights to education, social status, recognition and dignity. With this her level of awareness grew and after the wake of the millennium she stands almost in par with the men (at least in certain highly educated societies and cities). She no longer feels the compulsion to stick with an un-adjusting or moronic husband just because she is a woman. I would be lying if I don’t mention the fact that Indian woman are more conditioned to adapt, suffer and tolerate compared to their western counterparts owing to the mental and psychological conditioning she has received through centuries of consistent ill treatment and brain washing (and it may still be present in their DNA for decades to come). The society as a whole has become more liberal and as a result divorcees from arranged marriages have also increased.

So in all, the so called stability of the arranged marriage is a farce act by the so called protectors of the society’s moral fabric. When, in this society women attain the same status as that of men in all places, all conditions and in all strata of the society, the facade and the whole structure of this dumb charade will crumble. Then it will be a victory not for those who argued against arranged marriages in debates but it will be a victory for the better half of the world.

god of small things

A novel I longed to read was really worth the wait.

I wanted to read this book, the time I read about Arundhati Roy bringing the Booker prize to India. But 'fortunately' I was living off my allowance those days and I dint want to put the pressure on my parents. So I pushed this book into the stack allotted in the trenches of my mind, where it creped down to oblivion. Later when I had the chance in college, I had lost myself and the stack was lost (I was to discover it was quite recoverable). After my rediscovery of my true self during the employed times, I was able to reclaim my long lost stacks and I started a frantic search and rescue in the stack. I have been reading like there is no tomorrow since then.

I started on this novel, the beginning of July and during my busy but useless schedule, I’m glad that I was able to enjoy this book within a fortnight. As I said earlier, only now I recognize why destiny shied this book away from me all these years. I could have never understood this book, had I read it any earlier. This fact made me think a lot philosophically and that’s was made me write this long prelude to my endeavor with this book.

The novel is set in the backdrop of Kerala and its Syrian Christian Community centered in Kottayam in the 60s or 70s presumably. It narrates the life and times of a tragedy that happened in a typical Syrian Christian upper class family and how it turned around the life of twins. This feels like a tragedy from the outside but from the viewpoint of the young protagonists, but in fact to the reader this is a magical journey through the childhood. I could identify with the children and the narrative stands out, clearly because of the freshness and tenderness of the children's mind which Ms.Roy has captured quite brilliantly. Only on adult looking Peter Pan can craft a narrative as innocent as I saw in this book.

I believe that’s the strength of this book. It captures the small and minute details which often slip the adult eyes but are devastatingly large in the eyes of the children. It captures the small joys and happiness and doubts and assurances of the kid's life without delving deep into the abyss of examining the adult thought process.

A simple and powerful story 'of small things' told by the young at heart to an audience who is into 'large things' to be bothered in their reality.

looking back from the silVer lining

as it is customary with any undertaking of mine, i procrastinate a little; even when it comes to celebrating the silvEr jubilEE. as a matter of fact, that is the only thing that has taken my life through the course it has taken. i see it clearly, how it has shaped me. if i stop to pracastinate, its as if i'm loosing my identity. its these little careless acts of so called misbehaviour and bad habits that makes the human life all the more twitched and interesting. without these what else can identify ourselves from the computer? (pardon Windows users. its more unpredictable than women).

so what do i feel when i look back at the 25 years i have lived out?
if that was someone else i would have slapped his/her face (atleast verbally), but under this circumstance, its me and i dont have an easy escape from the answer. i would like to make this very very clear- i dont have any regrets except for a span of 4 years in this 25. those are the years i spent, i breathed, i lived for living and those are my college days- the engineering days. it took away the hard earned self from me which i could recover only later with the help of a genious. in fact i'll say, he is the one who has made the present day me (of course after my Parents). he is the best friend and mentor i ever had.

thanks macha...
i reclaimed my life, thanks to you...

my Parents need no mention. i'm sure, if i intend to thank Them i will be doing a terrible job, coz words cannot express nor the heart cannot oralize the importance They had in my life. i dont want to walk the cliched path. PERIOD.

arE wE nEgativEly chargEd

First of all this is not a musing of mine on physics. But it rather is the output of another deep endeavor into human psychology and sociology, or whatever people call this stuff.

I have seen a lot of American/Western television and movies than Indian. I don’t know why I’m so inclined to western movies and TV shows; maybe it’s the lack of creativity in Indian cinema/TV art community. What matters in this discussion is that I see much more negative portrayal of life in Indian TV than in its western counterpart.

I’ve been thinking for long, why is this so? Is it because we Indians have a negative attitude towards life? In most of the fictional series and movies in India, I see pain, suffering and generally a lack of harmony and happiness. Those who come up with this lackluster real-life dramatization have a point to make; that is they are accurately depicting the so called real-world or real-life. But what’s the point? Even after 60 or more years of combined depiction of real-India, where have we reached so far? The causes for the dismal portrayal of life still linger and looms shadow over the lives of a large section of the populace. If the so called depiction have not commanded a change after 6 decades, isn't it high time we change it for good?

Or is it this negative portrayal (or the portrayal of life which itself is largely negative) that continues to push us to the brink of a humanitarian crisis of social ill-being? The large number of suicides in the country reflects in many soap-operas in Indian TV. Whenever the hero or heroine or his/her wife/husband/mother/father comes to a standstill in life; their reaction is so obvious, suicide. Media takes up the stories of suicides with great zeal and the encouragement from fictional TV serials is no lesser. What is the cause what?

Although life must be hard, people should be shown and taught to fight it and not to succumb to it. But at the same time, we must not ignore the people who face the hardships. If we have more pleasantries in life from the TV, then I believe our general outlook itself will become positive.
TV and cinema are becoming more and more crucial to shaping of the nation. It is the duty of the perpetrators of fiction to bring in more happiness and reasons for cheer into the lives of avid audience in order to have a future generation with a pleasant outlook.

In a situation where people are increasingly tuning in to the media advice, the onus is on the media industry...

sita sings the bluEs

I came across this animated movie from a review found in Hindu's Friday review section. What got my attention was the peculiar mix of the modern and the archaic; narration of Sita's story with Blues (the music style). I went through the beautifully presented review and before I completed it, I found torrents for this freely available (without any copyright/left/license restrictions) animated film. The film is directed by Nina Paley.

This animation takes a different perspective at the Ramayana from that of Sita rather than the more prevalent male versions that we have grown up to. the film is presented in a multi threaded format with two of the threads going in parallel as a narrative & analysis of the Ramayana by puppet characters and the actual story told by first person performance and jazz recitals by Sita and the third from the life of the director Nina Paley. The narrative thread played by the puppets is kind of a modern day analysis of Ramayana and the various intricacies of the story. Puppets complement and comprehend each others doubts and take a looks at the characters with a contemporary outlook. This thread felt like second generation NRIs explaining their scant knowledge of the Ramayana to their adolescents. Their doubts bring forward the picture of the Indian male dominant society and the various strata in the Indian society and about the women in general. They also post various doubts which will seem quite blasphemous to the new guardians of Indian culture and may even lead to the complete boycott of this wonderful piece of art.
As the puppets doubt and conclude upon a certain section of the story, it switches to Sita's perspective of the actual story. Most of the actual story is told by Sita's jazz performance. Various blues genre songs are used to provide the wonderful narration of love, romance, loss, despair, hope and divinity.

The third thread is from the life of the director herself. It speaks of how she and her husband were having a wonderful married life, how it was torn apart and how she redempted herself by turning herself into the solace of Ramayana. I believe she is trying to draw parallels with her story and that of Sita by interspersing her story inside a Ramayana narrative (she was dumped by her husband who she loved so dearly; after all that’s what it seems to be).

In all, this is a wonderful endeavor from Nina Paley. most of the animation is done by her as well as the direction, animation, editing, story etc. the animation for the three threads are done in three different styles - the main story when told from first person uses the kind of Rajput drawing technique prevalent in the 15-18th century. The narrative from the puppets is told with a kind of collage type animation (animated photographic composition). The directors life story is told in squiggle vision. I believe this blends in quite beautifully with the film. The actual story is in bright high quality animation which signifies the clarity of the first person perspective of the narration itself. The second thread as narrated by the puppets is a collage as they are collecting all their ideas and opinions with whatever information they had from the different sources. Finally squiggle vision for the director's life story may be the dramatization of her unkempt life and the emotional turmoil she might have gone through.

For those who have seen Anurag Kashyap’s Dev-D, the psychology of the puppet narrative may seem familiar; the Ramayana is told without changing anything in the story but rather analyzing the character of Sita in depth no one has ever gone through cinema (or the animated cinema at least).

thE grEat indian Election trick

The rise in power of the Indian middle class is no less explained by the great Indian unifier called the elections. this time to make matters more interesting to those who can read, is the latest IT oriented manifesto bought out by none other than bha ja pa or BJP.

delving deep in this episode, is into the atrocious chasms that our politicians get down to secure their powers. let me go down one such abyss to take a look at the offers that might woo the real silicon valley to India. it starts with the general rhetoric of every politician;

- 12 million job offers in the rural sector
Well not so bad. Already a million of the unorganized sector jobs have been lost to recession. remember so far recession has only started to grow its tentacles around India. just imagine what will be the scenario when it really grips India? never mind elect BJP to power and all this and more will come back.

- laptops at 10 grands for 10 million students
The wonderful performance of our students is because of the absence of laptops. had there been laptops they could have watched lots of porno, movies, songs with which they will become the best performers for any political party which is the party cadre. after all unemployed uneducated youth are the best cadre for any party.

- bank account for everyone
This one will definitely be a super hit in rural India and among the urban poor. (Only if banks will accept poverty and hunger as deposits).

- for people below the poverty line a smart mobile phone
Oh, why are these people below poverty line; its easy they don't have smart phone. its the only thing lacking in their life. with a smart phone they can google, consult with their American counterparts, place online order from shops & hotels and this will save them money which was earlier spend on food and clothing and occasionally on shelter. I thought BPL stood for below poverty line. Now i understand that it means below phone (smart) line.

- broadband connectivity in all villages
That is easy; we can make the poor in the villages to dig pits in which to lay the fiber optic cable which is going to bring in connectivity to their villages. once they have connectivity they need not travel (which was already difficult because of the absence of roads) and they can sell their goods in international market without middle men at international prices.

- internet in every school and countless other schemes.
Yes! phones with cameras are bad and they should be abolished in schools as they are spreading cheap porno among students. with broadband they can subscribe to high quality international porno which will enrich their international exposure)

- national digital highway
Already the national information highways are so congested that it takes days for essential supplies like smart phones and laptops to reach villages.

- Abolish sale of software that could not be used in regional languages
Someone please invent darwasas and kidkis for Indian computers.

Every election right from the first one saw politicians barging into the peaceful life on Indians with false and will-never-keep promises. but this undoubtedly is the best one which should be written in golden letters in the annals of all democratic constitutions.

After all who knows if BJP comes into power we may not even see people outside the streets (not because every one or the other will be killed in some communal riot but they will be busy enriching their lives in their digital fortresses.

an auction in action

India is a nation of great principles, morals and values. as a matter of fact we treat these items as prized and priced possessions and keep them in beautifully made up show cases and galleries, so that everyone can see them and no one can use them. yes that's the truth, nothing but the truth. all the goodness of a culture of millenniums are kept good and clean in the display cases of pure uselessness.

who or what was Gandhi? it was not his specs or his long walking stick or his bowls that made him the man the world knows. it was his principles of ahimsa and love. so instead of worshiping these principles as the main idols we are worshiping his glasses, watches and personal artifacts. it could not be explained better by the big hoopla created over the auction of some his personal items. it was as if the whole idea of Gandhi was contained in those 5 pieces of historical artifacts. only a few days ago was it discovered that wooden desks someone found from the governments store houses and cleaned and exported to some foreign nation were priceless pieces of history. not a big thing for we Indians, huh? we through away these items as junk and when some foreigner understands its value then suddenly we want it back. if it was not for the tourism dollars that our "crap" bought from these foreigners would we ever had maintained these things as we see today?

there was a lot of pep talk and requests and even diplomatic relations used to cancel the auction of Gandhi memorabilia. but the collector and the auction house went ahead and there was no return. whole political leadership and the middle class was in tantrums. gandhi was up for sale. how unthinkable. why dont we see the paradox. we had already ditched him in the ugliest and filthiest of sewers and his own land had set the precedence when thousands were massacred in the Gujarat riots. oh dont think that i'm a Gandhian. i am way below his perceptions of a free Indian. but what prompts mee to write this is the hypocrisy that surounds India and which has engulfed its people.

to get back to the story, finally salvation came to India when Vijay Mallya the liquor baron bought them for $1.8 million. the same kind of people who Gandhi despised. an Indian made rich by selling the very item Gandhi always wanted to ban. the man who lives in extreme luxury amidst the millions of poor, who brings out special swim suit issues of his calender, who owns yachts and even a cricket team (no problems for me, but again I dont think Gandhi will appprove) and the whole of India was praise for Mr Mallya. even the Navjivan trust who Gandhi himself established declared "Mallya made India proud". the whole of Gujarat was announced celebrating; celebrating the great Indian hypocrisy. the politicians were not left behind. cultural minister was speaking as if she instructed Mallya to bid for Gandhi even when Mallya was refusing this claim by saying he acted on his own.

Good thing the Mahatma was cremated otherwise he would have been twisting and turning in his grave.

mera bharat mahaan!!!

my pErcEption of God

Human evolution and universes seems to be the most incongruent arguments to the human mind; nevertheless if there was an explanation for this or if there comes an explanation for this which is outside the divine power then that seems to be the end of existence of one supreme power. We have been taught from the very beginning of our thought process about the incompleteness of a world without God so that very few people truly believe there is no supreme power.

I don’t want to contest about the existence of the divine power but HIS/HER behavior.

We are told that God controls and maintains our lives and he knows about our life from the beginning to end. But I am not satisfied with this explanation. What is so special about life that makes it worth living? Believe it or not, it is the tremendous uncertainty and the expectation of the future. One who is able to see the future will definitely lose the anticipation and zest to live so much so that his life will be more or less zombie kind or even worse. I believe these are the same thoughts that lead the God to create the man. He wanted to see how man turn out to be if he is given intelligence and will power.

I certainly do believe that God controls our lives, but exactly how much? I don’t exactly believe in the notion that God knows all about the future of his children. What challenge is there to God, what is he to expect if he knows before hand what is going to happen? Then to God humans will be as robots are to humans. Even though a robot might not know what his next action will be the programmer will know. Other than a mechanical marvel such a robot will serve very little psychological help.

So my thesis is God created humans. He gave them a mind, thought and intelligence. He expects them to take their own course of action in their lives. But I definitely believe he does not have any idea about how the humans will behave. Just as the unpredictability and the uncertainty makes human life worth living it is the unpredictability and uncertainty in human lives that God wants to enjoy and live His fulfilling life.

Then does he have any control over our lives? I believe he has. That’s where prayer comes into picture. Our prayers being answered are those situations in which he guides us through difficulties, not because he sees the light at the end of the tunnel, but He too EXPECTS to see the light at the end.

slumdog millionairE

Who contests the fact that the film was good? I have to say is the film was fantastic.
Wonderful story, screenplay, acting and direction. How else would have the film bagged the globes and would have raked in such amount of money at the box office?

I’m not aiming to write a full page review on the film, but what struck me most were the themes that were handled in the movie.
If u ask me for the plot synopsis, it is just another rag to riches story with a cleverly sewed in love story. After the movie bagged awards at the globes, all the Indian channels were abuzz with the notion that an Indian film won the globes. After the Mumbai terrorist tragedies they were in pursuit of breaking news and they got it. At least we should open our minds to the fact that this film is a western made movie directed by an English and his crew which enacted a story with an Indian back ground which of course required the use of Indian actors and an Indian musician who could capture the westernized Indian music. More than that for whatever reasons it may be, it took an English man to showcase what the real India is all about, apart from the glistening picture of a middle and upper middle class world portrayed in the predominantly upper class media.
The truths in India like child abuse, religious persecution, sexual atrocities towards women, poverty, gangsters and their murky underworld, atrocities and corruption, social and class discrimination were quite boldly taken up by Danny Boyle which the native film producers and directors always avoided. Even if they were taken up by an Indians they dint see much light, thanks to a wonderful director and his crew this film broke all the social barriers and was an instant success. Life in the slums were quite brilliantly captured by Boyle, the rampant poverty and the social discrimination. The class discrimination is so rampant that even in the tv show, the host (Anil Kapoor) taunts the slum dog with chaiwallah and it is the same upper class superiority that led him to beleive that his fool proof show is being cheated by this slumwallah.

And now, with all the media hype surrounding the film, Amitabh Bachan has come out into the open, criticing the movie, you may not beleive it, for accurately picturizing the facts. He is saying it will tarnish the image of India. Image, the vanity of the rich. I dont have any more to say to those who attracts the curious western clout to the Indian pelvic dance and sleeps in the imaginary glory of the donkey carrying the idol.

I don’t have any illusionary notions that this film is going to change India or the perceptions about it, but we require more and more people like Boyle, to come up with more socially relevant themes and pursue someone to take some actions to bring about a better India.

what bafflEd mE in the US or an idiots guidE to US of A

I should have written about it much earlier, but going by my instincts of procrastination I thought this is the right time to do this.
Well US of A is an amalgam of cultures, which unlike India, means you have one pulp of all the culture of the world. And that also means finding Americans wherever you go in America. This comes as quite a surprise for Indians when they find Bengalis, Tamilians, Mallus, Gujarati, Punjabis etc when travelling in India.

Rather than banging on the wall with my irrelevant visions into the minds of a diabolic, let me come back to the point.

These are the things I found intriguing, amazing, mind boggling, baffling or in short quite different from India.

1. They drive on the right side of the road.
I thought this is a piece of cake to adapt to but the harsh reality is after more than a quarter of a century of living in India I got used to the idea of driving on the left and walking on the right so much so that I was almost hit by a speeding car when I forgot to remember this fact. This was a lesson I learnt the hard way.

2. Water should not be drunk.
We in India use water for almost say 70% of our bodily activities. But the Americans use either coke or some other soft drinks for filling up the 70% water occupies in a human body in India. I seldom see people (Americans) drink water. Even when they drink water (the intake of which may be counted on your fingers) they take it with a lot of ice even in freezing winter.

3. Their switches go up to turn on the light
Another silly but easy to miss adaptation point. They push the switched up to turn them on and down to turn them off. A logic which quite well goes with the common notion of up being positive and down being negative. I remember in my ancestral home some of the old switches still go up to turn on whereas the latest version of switched come down to turn on. I believe we reversed our rationales and packed them together with the British when the left for the isles. Believe me not this was the hardest thing for me to master (not to say that I finally mastered this thing).

4. What is a mug and bucket?
A mug and a bucket are the sure shot ingredients of an Indian toilet (if there is one). We use the bucket to collect water and mugs to slam that water through the ass holes to cleanse the body after the wastes are passed out. But since the Americans have an aversion to water when it comes to body it should be quite obvious that they do our task better with paper. This was one of the first oddities I adapted to. But when I look back now I wonder how the hell I was able to do that?

5. Early to bed and early to rise, I thought it to be purely Indian.
Early Indian texts supposedly speak about rising early and after the bath saying prayers in the Brahma muhoortha which is said to be best time for the learners. Well not anymore westernization took that away; by away I mean they now own that concept. When all the Indian it companies it is an unwritten policy to come late and leave late. But not so in the America where people come early and leave early. I was truly awed when I heard that some guys come at 6 in the morning. I hardly wake up at 8am.

6. Policemen are too polite coz...
Almost all the Indians who had ever met the Indian police will agree on this fact. American policemen are very polite; they address you using 'sir', 'madam' and talk very softly and calmly and all that stuff. Well I too feel the same although I never had a chance to hear them speak to me. But to go by the idea that the films normally depict the culture in the country in which it is made it too agree with this point. But as in one film Robert de Nero remarks, most people respect the badge but everybody respects the gun, have you noticed that the nice speaking police man always has one of his hands on the trigger ready to shoot you if you make the slightest mistake. By shooting I mean shoot to kill not to hurt you or to maim, but to kill. So this politeness can be treated as the politeness extended to an animal of meat before it is culled. I prefer the harsh talking police men of India who hardly shoots anyone than the awkwardly polite western police.

7. Elections, silence as if in a funeral house.
This was the eve of an American presidential election which was turning all tables of precedence to elect a black man to the most prestigious office in the world. Compare the elections there in the US and in India. Here it is like a festival. We have a habit of turning everything to a festival and democracy is the most widely celebrated festival in India. All the people and netas on the road, posters, banners, flex boards, announcements, public meetings and stuff make it noticeable all around the place. But the American election is too calm and quiet to even notice it. Meetings and announcements are conducted in a concealed manner. May be they are fed up of democracy or I wonder if it is a democracy at all.

8. Courtesy and patience.
I believe this is one thing all Indians can emulate. At least patience, here everyone is such a hurry that they hardly think about themselves. May be its struggle for survival that makes Indians go crazy, hazy. Although we are never courteous a good deed done will always be rewarded and not just considered over with thanks.

9. Cars, more important than legs.
I think the number of cars outrun the number of people in this nation. The home to the biggest car market, there are on an average 2 cars per home. Cars are like your seconds pair of legs. And without a car, if you are not in New York you are pretty much an imbecile. This is a lesson I learnt the hard way as I was confined to my hotel and office and missing the most of the life in American. If I ever go there one more time, even if for a week, I will definitely get a car.

10. Ads means insurance, medicines and phone companies
When most of the ads in Indian television are soaps, foods, washing powders and targeting kids and youth the ads in American TV are all about insurance and medicines. As a cherry to pudding there are some mobile service provider's ads too. May be these shows the Americans dependence on medicines and insurance? They live the worst kind of nutritional diet and for all your diseases they run to the doctors and the pharmacy companies have carved such a niche for themselves with this medicine obsessed population who has a heavy dependence on health care which only insurance companies can provide.

After all I feel that if Indian is little more clean and disciplined I would love to stay in this country for ever more.