What kind of people Indians really are.

Indians are a peculiar race. They are the ones who have unique emotions and even a much more unique way of expressing them. And India is such a diverse country you can find all types of emotions here simultaneously. With variable opinions some of which are so extraordinary that they compel you to think about people all the more and the reason of their very existence on this earth.  Moving on with my ranting, these are some characteristics I found apt for Indians :

1)      Impulsive: Well, like people of any other place or nationality, we also are very emotional and impulsive people. But our emotions always flow over the top. Our actions and reactions to tiny situations are hyped like anything and they can be called unreasonable to some extent. A divorce in the family, wow! That’s something that everyone is interested in. A funeral. Well, you can see everything except civility in funeral. With all he loud crying and going all white, it's just all the more tragic. Some call it ancestral linkage but that's the way we are hard wired. Daily soaps take our emotions to an all new level. Don't be fooled by them. But it's true our emotions and our ways of expressing them are sometimes intimidating and scary.

2)      We, Indians are like herds of goat. We don’t form an opinion. We go with an opinion without applying our minds into it. So, that’s why Arvind Kejriwal rose to fame instantly and that is also why is fell back even more spontaneously. We are repeating the same mistake by putting all our expectations onto one man- Narendra Modi, this time. If we take a look at a different field, then in cinemas too, we can see that there is a phase for a kind of movie. 90s was the time of love stories, then came the decade for comedy, now we’re just watching black, unbathed south indian men with pot bellies being thrown like sandbags by a 50 year old hero with jet black hair. Of course exceptions occur in the midway and that is why we have come this far even. The point remains the same. We get hold of an idea and keep selling it until the validity of that idea is no longer viable.

3)      Indians are also very flexible people. You can question their reasons and most of the time you’ll end up seeing that they have started doubting their own reasons itself. Well, you can say we are influenced very easily. One moment we are with you, the next moment we can be ‘who the hell are you’? And we are very adjusting people. We adapt to every kind of situation whatever it is. Rather than raising questions we like to sit back and preach this world that we should be like water. Adjusting to every situation. Ask them why, we will tell you to become successful. Ask us what after being successful, we would become speechless. We always want some task or a deadline. That’s how we have been born and bred. To live to meet deadlines.

4)      Pretentious, rude, selfish, narcissists, prude, frustrated are the common adjectives. I would like to use something different. Recently I came across the word “impertinent” and this applies to all of us unexceptionally. We like to judge. That’s our sole hobby. And that’s what our aim for the life is. We judge even the Gods surprisingly. Ok, Lord shiva is not listening to us. Maybe Maa Vaishno Devi might help. Oh, is she also not listening to you? Why don’t you get baptised? Or don’t even change your religion. Come to the Art of living. We will teach you the life skills that you already knew all along. Or sahaj yoga? Brahmkumaris? Every person can pick a new cuisine for each new day! I digress. The best part about being an Indian is… well , there are actually two. First of all, you can ogle. And second, you can keep rubbing your nose in someone else’s business.

We are prepared with all the kinds of advices. You just name a problem man, we will have a solution. Someone else’s life is worth more importance than ours for us “the Indians”. Our self-righteous attitude, the hypocrisy and shallowness of our ideals are our forte. For every defect in us, we are ready with blame games. Why is India so behind? Well, The foreigners got far too ahead. They should have waited for us! Is the bottom line of all our responses. What baffles me the most is if we’re so open about our emotions of happiness and sorrow, what happens when we come to the point of love and affection? Why is Narendra Modi so ardent about his single status? The American president has to be portrayed as a family man to win the respect of his counterparts, similarly in France, the president’s girlfriend is a first lady. But in India with a population of 1.2 billion people, we want a prime minister who is celibate. If this is not hypocrisy then what is? Whatever it is, India is a very funny land. And I am so happy that I can whine about it on my blog. 

My first Hangover

Alcohol always aroused curiosity in me. It’s supposed to be a depressant. Then why do people feel elated after drinking it? And furthermore, what’s  so strong about this stuff? I wanted to know. I wanted to know badly. So, I bought a beer for the first time in my life but it turned to be farce! I did not get anywhere near drunk! I realised I needed more alcohol to get to the “drunk” drunk state I had seen people in.Well, mainly Charlie Sheen ;) So the next day I bought a vodka and beer bottle to satiate my curiosity. The first time I drank vodka was neat. And it burnt my insides to the core! It repelled me. So did the beer. But I had to experience. I continued. Mixing small quantities with coke, I kept on drinking the ghastly cocktail until all of it was over. Simultaneously I chugged down on the beer. It took 15 minutes for the effects to kick in. Slight lightheadedness, nothing more. Hell  I could even walk on a rope in that state! So my experiment had failed. I came to the conclusion that people were absolutely bonkers! They acted being drunk! ;) I had not been completely wrong. Oops. I digress. AS had been an integral part of all this madness. She was fascinated by my escapade and called me up in the meanwhile. I was supposed to save some vodka for her. She was to drop by later that night. Now, I had been out of booze. So, I decided to buy me some more. I set out in my car. I had anticipated some drunk madness driving but nothing really happened. I was still driving far better than these novice drivers do. I felt disappointed. So, I was back with 3 more vodkas and 4 more beers. I had more booze to experiment with. Well, it took me an hour to finish all the beer bottles and one of the vodkas. Now that was when the real effects kicked in. I drank some more vodka in shots and after that no one knows what went by.

   I woke up in the morning at around 10, shirtless and on my dining table! But that wasn’t my concern. I felt nauseated and so tired. My stomach felt funny! I gathered myself up and looked around the house. And it was a disaster! I had puked almost everywhere! On my feet, on the armchair. On the floors, on the walls, just about everywhere! The smell in the house was so pungent, I felt puking some more but there was nothing inside of me. I checked for my phone. And god! It was also such a disaster. My balance went down from 500 to just 75 in just one night. I had called some of classmates. Not to mention that they were girls. And I didn’t remember a thing I had talked about! Still don’t. The three girls whom I called still maintain that I did not call them that night! I guess they are probably right. Because their behaviour is now more affectionate towards me. That can’t happen when you talk drunk? I had send RIP messages to almost all my contact list and jibber jabber to AS! I could make out my drunkenness by reading some of that jibber jabber! Apart from all this everything else was pretty normal except for one weird thing. It’s a shameful thing but I’ll write it down anyway. I, till date haven’t found my underwear from that night. I found my T-shirt in the pot but not my underwear and I am positive I had been wearing it that day :P Well, what do you know..alcohol! Gets the best of you ;)

Needless to say that was the highest amount of alcohol I had consumed and I don’t plan on repeating that misadventure anytime soon. 3 vodkas and 4 beers is a real heavy consumption by the standards of even regular drinkers. I am glad I didn’t torch my house down that day. And me, well, I got away with some minor bruises on hands and feet. I found two empty broken beer bottles. Must’ve had cut myself with the glass pieces.

So my dear friends, you can either be a fool to try this experiment of mine with yourself too or be intelligent and avoid alcohol by all means. It’s not a cool thing to drink and it is definitely injurious to health. If you do drink it, do it with someone who remains sober. You never know when your adventure becomes a misadventure ;)

A guide to drinking for the first timers

If you are not a drinker and want to start drinking, you have come to the right place. Well, I am going to spare you the jibber jabber of I am not one of those promoting the use of alcohol but you should bear in mind that alcohol is indeed injurious to health. You’ll see how.

Now there are different types of liquors available in the market. There is beer, vodka, rum, whiskey and so forth. Also, each one has many different brands. And each brand has its own price. If you are a beginner or maybe let’s just say you want to experiment then I would recommend just cheap alcohol, for two reasons mainly a) you will not be able to drink all of it in the first time. B) it won’t hurt much to your pockets if you leave the liquor anyway. The main difference between the pricey ones and cheap ones is basically of distillation or how much pure the liquor is. But as a lay man you will just notice that cheap liquors give a harsher burning sensation than the expensive ones. And by expensive I mean really really expensive. A premium whiskey bottle costs anywhere between Rs 4000 and Rs 10000. Even that is cheap for some. Anyways, moving on, whiskey is not for the first timers. You can do beer but that just tastes yak! So bitter that you’ll just curse yourself for buying it. You could could’ve bought a coke and lived happily. And beer doesn’t get you drunk. With just 6-8% alcohol content, it will take approximately 6-7 of them (650 ml bottles) to reach the “Stupid drunk” point. And again, if you’re experimenting for the first time, you will probably find it difficult to gulp down even one sip. But if you do want to try a beer I would recommend Kingfisher or Fosters. These bottles will cost you around Rs200 and look classy in your refrigerator ;)  Do check the alcohol content in them. Like Kingfisher blue only has 6% alcohol content in it. A haywards 5000 will have 8%. Haywards is a cheap beer and will cost you only 100 to 150 bucks. The less the alcohol content the less the burning sensation when you drink it. And it drinking even one to two bottles of beer (650 ml bottles) will not do much good. It might come into effect if you drink all of it in span of 2 minutes. Yeah, like you drink water! Then it is sure going to give you a kick. But even heavy drinkers don’t have that kind of capacity to drink it all at once. That’s why in some Hollywood movies you’ll find that they have a beer drinking competition.

Going further, if you have to get real drunk, and I mean “real” real drunk, you should probably take vodka or rum. 180 ml bottles or quarter as it is usually said will get you to that “stupid” drunk stage. I would probably go for vodka because rum can’t be handled by all ;) Well, there is that and also the fact how your body would react to different types of liquors. So it’s best to stay with clear liquors. By clear I mean which do not have any colour. So vodka is your best option. Vodka also has many brands. A good vodka is always from a Russian brand. Well, Vodka originated in Russia so that makes sense. Vodka can be cheap but it really is a risk to go for the cheap ones. Cheap vodkas will make you suffer like never before. But not all cheap vodkas are bad. You can go for Smirnoff’s or seagram’s vodkas. They are cheap but are pretty safe otherwise. A 180 ml bottle will cost around Rs 200-Rs 300. Vodkas come in many different flavours. Orange is the most common. But you don’t have to drink it in shots. By shots it means 20-25 ml plain vodka drunk without mixing. It is a chivalrous task to take shots. 4 shots will pass you out completely. So, shots aren’t for first timers. Tequila shots are like that. And please don’t think your friends are cool if they are having tequila shots at a party. Because tequila like other liquors has different qualities and cheap tequila can make you very, very sick! And with 40% alcohol content in it, you will definitely puke! But anyways if you like to have tequila just go for 100% de agave rather than 51%.Tequila is made by fermentation of agave plant and by 100% de agave we mean, it is all made by agave plant only. There are no additives. It will be best to go for US or Mexican brands. It is quite expensive and mainly a party thing. Coming back to vodka, the best one is a plain vodka. The best way to drink it is mixing with a soft drink like Coca Cola. 20-30 ml of vodka is good with 100 ml – 150 ml of coke. Depends on your tolerance actually. But if you’re still not able to drink it, pour some more coke till the time you find your drink ”drinkable”.  Keep doing this till you finish the vodka quarter. And in 15-20 minutes you will be “jhuming” on your heels. This one gets you stupid drunk. But again you have to do it very fast. Only in a span of 20-30 minutes. If you keep drinking slowly like in a span of an hour or so, it’s the drunkness wouldn’t be so drunk ;)

Well, that’s all about drinking for first timers. You have a large scope ahead of you. Just dip in your nose and you will see :P

And I forgot to mention about The hangover. You are going to wake up feeling fatigued and restless. Nauseated and feeling funny. Don't get scared it's just your body trying to get rid of alcohol. Drink water. And keep drinking it for the rest of the day. 

Don't drink and drive and definitely switch off your mobile before drinking. You never know who do you call.

P.S I wrote this article because I wanted something like this guide to drinking when I wanted to try by myself. But I couldn’t find any kind article on the net. Hence, this.

Things I have learned during exams:-

1) You can do humour in the examination hall too.  Try acting all sneaky in front of the invigilator and he will think you were cheating. I just did the same. He asked me to open my fists and I kept saying there is nothing inside that. Finally after five minutes of ho-halla, I opened my fists which contained nothing and the whole examination hall bursted out in uncontrollable laughter. :D

2) Your most hated person becomes your best friend in the examination hall. He lends you pens, pencils, and also his answer sheet! :P

3) When you can only write for half an hour out of three hours, you get a lot of time for self ana;ysis and ponder over your life..

4) Also, you ponder who's the hottest girl out of the 50 girls sitting across to you.

5) And then there is always a scope for going to the toilets at regular intervals. But this plan does not work in my college. Suffice to say, nobody knows a thing.

6) When you have to suffer for 3 hours continuously, being detained for an hour due to some technical error seems a very excellent choice.

7) There is always a scope for painting the answer sheet with story line of chennai express! Don't give me that look! The teacher had specially said to write something! So that he has a scope for giving passing marks!

8) The "farras and sticky notes on the insides of your shirt do not work when you have essay type questions and need to fill atleast 10-12 pages of your answer sheet. -_-

9) With only 10 questions for 100 marks, you really can't do much as engineering students can. You just sit back and enjoy the fright on the innocent faces of girls who after the exam discuss " Yaar... Us Caverus sinus wale note me uski applied anatomy me carcinoma ke baare me likhna bhul gayi"
I have two questions- What is cavernus sinus? Secondly, ye wala question kaha tha paper me? O_o

10) And after exam you have to console your girlfriend who is weeping uncontrollably because she could not make diagrams for the lack of time. Kya hoga is duniya ka? Yahan.. question attempt karne pe laddu bat  rahe hain aur inko dekho!

P.S- Exams are fun. You get a week off !

P.P.S- For the first time, I used internet on my mobile to something actually useful !

:)

Upper Lake, Bhopal

I lie in my bed, thinking about my crest

The crest seemed too high, now I am just carrying on with my life

After sinking to a new low, I found on my face a big-big blow

The renaissance is well past over me, now what do I do to get free?

This poem is not my cup of tea, but I still write it to impress all of you thee! 

I should bunk my head under a pillow

But who would then hone my willow?

I have to study, my exams are nearby

So I bid all of you a hearty goodbye!

High on morning freshness!

Mornings, for some they are the mournings but even they would agree, it's the most beautiful time of the day. The freshness in the air, the dim, optimistic sunlight just rejuvenates you for the rest of the day. The exquisiteness of a city is seen on two occasions- when it's bustling with activity and when it's not. Mornings are the best time to see any city I would say. Being an avid walker myself, it comes naturally to me to get up early and witness the marvelous, breathtaking sunrise each day. Bhopal doesn't have parks in every locality. The culture of parks, I speculate is not developed in smaller cities. Because they had already been so greener and full of grounds, so who would have needed parks anyway. But now, as they are under the spell of urbanisation, the free space is shrinking and so are people's options. For me it was a big case really. I had been used to parks eversince and suddenly I have no place to jog? It was an unwelcoming change. So, I decided to take up gym. But when you run 5 kms on a treadmill, your knees and your lower back do not remain yours anymore. Gym goers would probably understand this ;) And my runs are my way of meditating. But in gym, you have high decibel music, playing havoc in your meditated run. I could no longer bear it. It was doing me more harm than good. So, finally I buckled myself up and the next morning I stepped outside my comfort zone and headed for a run. On roads! It felt like I was training for something because I had been the only one. But then on a Sunday I realised that I wasn't. I was just earlier than the rest. People here do go for morning walks. On roads only. But quite late. Even the elders. I get up at around 4:30 am and by 5 I am already skipping in my shoes! It's jut wonderful at that time. The run on roads has been quite an experience. It has overall been quite an experience. 

      Bhopal starts up quite late incidentally. Delhi is already bustling with elderly people going to parks and temples for morning prayers but here, I am the only living soul that I see. It feels quite amazing actually. Like you're the only person in this world for a few hours and this time is just yours and yours only. Even the runs are refreshing. I try to see as many things possible. I try to be as alert about my surroundings. Because there is something always beautiful almost everywhere. I try to explore much. Sometimes it is worth it, sometimes it isn't. But it is fun everytime. On my way back at around six, I see people finally getting up. Newspaper walas sleepily tying the newspapers, milkman opening his shop and the universal phenomenon- mothers shouting at their children to get up! The experience and an excitement of seeing something new everyday makes my day! And the fun part is to see an embarrassed nightwatchman who had been sleeping on duty, springing up to his senses on seeing someone this early! There can be no meditation better than this. And not even as beautiful as this!  

A society well educated?

All thanks to the new diseases I keep encountering each and everyday, I encountered something quite horrendous, if I may say so. My Parotid gland swelled up, which is a salivary gland right across the cheek before the ear. It happens due to mumps or some other infection but in my case, I ate a sour flavour of Nachos, felt a twinge across my face, which all of you must have experienced from time to time and next thing I know, my face looks like half a pear. It was quite unexpected and inexplicable. For me as well, though being a student of dentistry, I do study about salivary glands but this was only one of its kind. But being such an intelligent specimen of such a disastrous species that I am , I did not panic at all :P And I came to home instantly in Delhi :P So not panicky :P

                Now, I am not here to make a big issue of my illness or anything, but I am here to speculate about a stark; I don’t know what to call it, the state of Delhi and its people. The state of Delhi, has deteriorated so much over the past years, there is no doubt over it. I am not talking about the beauty of Delhi, or on the developmental lines but I am talking here about the soul of Delhi which has been marred and is being marred everday by the people who reside in Delhi.

I am not much of a metro traveler, or even a public transport user, because first of all, I don’t bloody like it and secondly, I don’t require it. But when you suddenly have to step out of your comfort zone, which  I kind of had to today, it really left me aghast too see as to what has become of us these days. I am walking down the street and I see all kind of maniacs here. The civil maniacs. There is a bunch of young boys maybe in class 6^th or so, speeding on their scooties. One of them was louder than the group and much of a show off. So in his high which he might be getting, he attempted a wheelie and unfortunately, he ended up hitting an elderly woman. Now these are the times when you really don’t know what to do. You can’t scold the boy. He was already petrified at his accident and you can’t even let it go. With all the crowd gathered around him, he was bloody terrified. And people yelling and shouting at his inane behaviour, there was more a sense of desperation in these people rather than any concern for that old lady. And this is not the first time such things have happened. So many road rage incidents and brawls on trivial issues, what has become of us these days? I was watching the movie 'fight club’ the other day and found quite an amusing scene where each of the member of fight club has been given a task of indulging into a fight with total stranger. And guess what, it showed people actually do not dare to fight. That was about 15 years ago. So people did have some civility 15 years ago. But where has all of that gone? People nowadays are just waiting for a fight to happen. They are looking for an excuse to fight rather than avoid it. Even in your workplace, it’s a common phenomenon that people rake up really small issues and hold a grudge against you. A small difference of opinion between you and someone else’s nowadays means you’re intrinsically an asshole and do not deserve a place to live in this world. Respecting someone’s opinion and not not contesting someone’s opinion are two very different things and people have lost this fundamental sense completely.

    Talking about Delhi specifically, the people here are, mostly, immigrants and all the Delhites want to force this change on them. But I really want to speculate here. Whether they are the real issue here for all the destruction of our values? Is it all due to them? Or we all are missing something bigger here? I mean with delhi being a mega city, there are people here belonging to most vivid cultures. Here you can find a Dhoti clad Tau on a chaar poyi, a turban clad sardar in a Jaguar but who still bows before Bangla Sahib, a bright, colourful saaree clad woman who smokes hookah, or even just another Bihari going naked in the street to finish off his daily ritual of offering water to the Sun. Delhi has everything. Now when people relocate, they bring their cultures to that place. It seems fair to attribute the loss of Delhi’s original culture due to this intermingling. But is that one hundred percent right? I don’t think so. Because everywhere, this thing is happening. Maybe at a slower pace in some other areas but this is just not indigenous Delhi, it’s a global phenomenon. The examples come to light every now and then. Countries are strong armed.  But why is such a thing happening?Are people these days are sitting at the end of volcanoes? Because just one stimulus and they erupts like anything. Is this the kind of environment we really want to live in? There are self crowned idealists, some of them hold debates on national TV, some roam around wearing Nehru caps, and some go to such an extent that they start comparing themselves to Gandhi. But that is not what this article is about. This article is sololely and specifically about why is there so much anguish among the common man? Why is he not satisfied with his life and why is he letting his sense shadowed under the cloud of his ego? The world needs peace more than ever. We have all kinds of weapons of mass destruction and we have seen people losing the respect for human lives. To hell with mass destruction, I say angry potheads with a 5 ton car are potential threat to our security in general. I am actually pained to see our values, our humility being diminished. We have all been forced to believe that we are here to do something big. We are forced to look at the things in an impractical fashion. And that’s why I find a person’s own desperation, guilt, remorse, failed dreams and an impaired sense of judgement coming into force during an argument. It seems they are on a vendetta to link everything with their own cause. They fight to run away from pain. And the worst of all is, these people see humility as a sign of weakness and so do dumb spectators who are too scared to voice their own opinions. Why? Because they think it might not sound cool or maybe it will make them the target. But I am sick of people giving such excuses at why they did not react in the right fashion. For god’s sake stop blaming other people for your cowardness. And these people are contagious. It’s necessary you stay away from them and shun them out with a full pounding force and wake up from their sleep so that they realise that they are wrong. Doing nothing is just as good as doing wrong. I am disappointed how the slightest of the values of human nature have perished altogether by our uncouth, loutish egos that have simply got out of our hands to deal with.  I am not here to be the yardstick of being the superior model of calmness and sense or moral judgement. But this, sir, lack of humility and your boiling attitude, will not be tolerated. Confrontations don’t happen. We make it happen. We hunt for blood. Everywhere. But where does it end finally? The outbursts, the frenzy, the exhaustion, the powerlessness ultimately leaves you crippled. I feel terrified, not humiliated, not shameful but terrified to be associated with such society with such hypocrisy. Terrified. Because when you are dealing with angry men, it's better to stay away. But for how long are we going to tolerate this kind of absurdity of being the recipient of your own insecurities? I have been an ardent supporter of this word "humility", because your act of humility can brave you through any situation. With your pride and dignity intact. But it is even more important that the bloody motherfucking common man understands this word, its gesture, its meaning and its motive. Politeness, humility look poised when they are understood well. But in today's society, I barely find a place where it is not misunderstood. Misunderstood as ego or pride or to some more clever people as some cheap trick to be seen as pretentious and idealistic. We really need to pause for a second to see where we're heading to. We are losing our ideals to something that is more bigoted than cheap.