Reality bytes. (Dedicated to Kaykay.)

It was pouring last evening - like nature was dealing whiplashes to all of us on Earth because we deserved it. Every single auto we (K and i) asked wanted 150 bucks and more to take us to our destination. After much hunting, though (thank God, PK had a car and we just had to roll down the window) we found an autowallah willing to take us. I decided to not act like the aggressive woman i am and quietly got into the auto.

Two things struck me - one, that the driver had made no demands for any extra money while everybody else was trying to capitalise on the rain; two, he made a conscious effort to avoid puddles and not splash all three of us (him, K and me. Duh!) with dirty water. So imagine our surprise when, close to Cunningham Road, an impatient boor zips past in his car (a Maruti van too, not even a Swift or a Merc) and leaves in his wake three victims soaked in yucky water. K and i escaped with little damage, but the autowallah didn't. The right side of his uniform (and his face) was dripping. He cussed all the way - just because the boor had a car, didn't mean that he could do what he wanted; there was no cause for him to be inconsiderate and do what he did. In a way, what the autowallah said made sense. I felt sorry for him, riding in the cold rain with his uniform offering him next to no protection.

About a 100 yards away from my dropping K off, the auto broke down. Some clutch problem. So our man got out - bare feet - in the pouring rain, and got to work trying to fix the problem. I felt like a heel, sitting there cocooned while he ventured into water. There isn't much i could do, but that didn't stop me from feeling the way i did. 20 minutes later, he came back, gave me a smile, said that the clutch was broken and started the auto. I didn't pay too much attention to what he was saying because i was aghast at his state - it looked like he had just got out of a washing machine without the tumble dry feature!

As i sat there, feeling worse by the minute (no it wasn't my fault, but i felt terrible for the chap), i counted my blessings. Each and every one of them. It would be uncomfortable to live like that, and i'm grateful to God for having made me who i am, for giving me all that he did. It's like Kaykay used to say always: we sit and crib about little things like work, and how little money we're getting, life sucks and blah blah. And then when we look at people like the autowallah, their living conditions, the fact that they manage to smile through it all, and then we can't help but feel like the scum at the bottom of the pond. Makes us wonder who's the better off of the two. Us or them.

P.S: Yes, i do seem to be bestowed with the power to communicate fairly decently with auto drivers - that's provided i get to sit in their auto first. Struck up a conversation with him, found out he used to do welding work. Fell off from a buildign where he was working and hurt himself badly enough to discontinue the labour. Chose to ride an auto instead because, ironically, he thought it was less work, and his body can't take much strain. 30 years old, married with three children, was planning to give up riding and start a business of his own (I think starting a business without money in your pocket is a bad, bad idea, but i didn't tell him that). He didn't ask for an extra pie (sceptics would say that after the sob sorry, he wouldn't need to), and for just that i gave him a 100 rupee note. Better spent on decent drivers who don't ask for it than the goddarn leching, pompous pricks who do.

Senses.

No bellydancing on Wednesday. My instructor's dance company - Tarantismo - was putting up a theatrical dance show at Alliance Francaise. Yesterday was the first of a series of five shows, and i was there. (So were some of the Page 3 people, but they're not my concern.)

I hurried through my gymming like the world was on fire, and reached just in time to be shuffled into the hall. Five minutes of shifting seats from one row to another, and we were ready for 'Senses' - the name and theme of their performance. PK -who's going to be part of the troupe soon - was in charge of sound, lights and music. Her name was mentioned in the brochures being passed around - with a spello, of course. So her surname was actually printed Katari (In a sort of rustic hindi, it means knife). We couldn't stop laughing.

The show started with a brief narrative by A, with the rest of the troupe on stage. It's amazing how different people look with make-up and shimmering gold bodysuits on. Like the name of the show suggests, the dancers took us through the five senses - sight, touch, taste, smell and sound (not in order).

I found the concept extremely interesting. For 'Sight', the dancers performed blindfold. Perfect co-ordination, flawless dancing and formations - despite the temporary impairment of their vision, they didn't once falter or lose their place on stage. It was quite remarkable. 'Touch' was the longest piece - exploring same-sex love, broken relationships, the bond between a woman and her just-born, sexual abuse and man-woman happiness. 'Taste' could have explored plenty such situations and emotions as well but they stuck to food. 'Sound' was good fun - a melange of belly dancers (waistbands with coins and mini-cymbals in the hand), bharatnatyam (ghungroos), dandiya and a junior shivamani (!)

Smell was probably the most dramatic, and perhaps, horrifying. Of this, there's only one thing i remember feeling - a chill creep up my spine as A ended her narrative with "The aroma of lust, and the stench of a dead animal."

Entertaining evening, on the whole. I'm looking forward to more shows of this sort.

danah boyd.

I was sent this link today to browse through. I might sound unintelligent saying this, but being unintelligent is a choice i've made: she's brilliant. And not coldly so, if you know what i mean. Most people who are brilliant are estranged from the basest of feelings (Sex and hunger drives not included), but not her. I guess that what makes her breed of brilliance - the exceptionally high levels of emotional intelligence combined with what all of us refer to normally as IQ.

She has done so much, so much in her life so far - the list is quite endless. Makes me feel quite worthless. In one of her posts, she speaks of whether all of us have the opportunity to travel and learn but eliminate it because of our lack of interest, and perhaps she strove to avoid falling into the trap, hence she is what she is - well-travelled, an authority on virtual social networking, etc. I don't know about anybody else out there, but i felt like she was talking about me - i am one of those people she refers to. I could have travelled, i could have learnt. Rather than leverage my thinking capacity - which, i know without trying to sound pompous, is way above average - i decided to let it go. I could have been anything i wanted to be, i could have been as perfect as i wanted to be. But i decided not to.

Most people don't understand this about me, this desire for perfection. It has nothing to do with professional ambition, and everything to do with personal satisfaction, peace for my own soul. I don't intend to compete with anybody, i intend only to challenge myself. And keep challenging, till i know there's no more i can do. I want to be the person i can look up to and never find fault with. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone.

I've been a coward innumerable times and have given up just too easily on a number of things that i could have been great at, if i had just pushed myself. And reading danah boyd's blog just brought it all back with such incredible clarity and force that i'm feeling quite vulnerable right now. And there's nobody to blame for that but me.

Right now, i'm wishing that i could go back to doing all those things and carrying the same zest for life i had years ago. But i know that if i sit still for a while or find means of distracting myself, this feeling will pass. I'll be back to being the coward i am.

Losing my religion. Sort of.

I go for dance classes - jazz funk and bellydancing - that happen in the evenings on the terrace of a play school in Richmond Town. (Phew. Talk about endless sentences.) I met a little girl here whose Mommy was part of the Salsa class happening just before my bellydancing. I struck a conversation with little Tanishka to make her feel better about being left to fend for herself while her mother danced - school, friends, what she likes etc. A brief interlude of silence followed, where i didn't know what else to ask her. Out of the blue she goes, "You know, I'm a Hindu." Wha?! Assuming i'd heard wrong from her 4-year old mouth, i asked her to repeat it. And she did. "I'm a Hindu", she said.

I had asked her nothing at all about her faith. Naturally, no person would ask something of the sort from one so young. Yet, she thought it important enough to be part of a conversation she might have with anybody.

My first reaction was panic. I'm not sure she fully understood what she was saying, or the enormity of the statement she was making. It was scary that she was growing in an atmosphere where her religion was being drilled into her not just as words, but as behaviour and more importantly, as a foundation for her future beliefs and actions. Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just that with the way things are going right now, i wouldn't be surprised if all this tutoring makes her something of an educated zealot.

This isn't just true of her, you know. I have my own cousins, all of them not more than 11 years of age. Already, when they meet their non-Muslim friends, they go chee when they see idols and all that. I'm stunned into silence, because it's such a wrong way to behave. Religion is something each of us has the independence to practice in our own way. Imposing one's beliefs on others is just so...uncouth, and such an exploitation.

And yet, is it any surprise that these things happen in our households, while the same occurs on a larger scale across the nation? Is it any surprise, when moral police from the religions fighting for domination in India hash and re-hash and ruin educational material, introducing conflict in content? Is it any surprise that each of us is religiously afraid of each other thanks to some bloody people somewhere who decided to start a fight and blow it out of proportion? I mean, think about this: for years, the Taj Mahal was admired for its beauty, and heralded by all and sundry as the one thing India and Indians should be culturally proud of. Suddenly, we have people who claim that the foundation was laid over an ancient temple. Innumerable texts and pamphlets were circulated, e-mails passed around. People had protests all over, and then they evolved into fights. The Raj Kumar protests are another example: the man died from natural causes, and Bangalore went berserk with grief. If it was possible, they would have stoned the Gods to death for taking away their beloved annavaru. Some places, buses were burnt and public property damaged. A boy was killed in some sort of stampede. His religious identity then started a semi-war between Hindus and Muslims.

It's like, people are waiting for an opportunity to bring out swords and fight in the name of God. And they're readying armies of the future by instilling thoughts in the heads of children as young as Tanishka.

It worries me no end. I hope i'm not around to see the last defining act of this degenerative process.

Garbage - Stupid Girl

One of my all-time favourites. (I vowed never to indulge in putting up videos and clips on my blog. Guess i have to chew on my own hard-boiled words now.)

Started out intensely disliking Garbage and their music, and then it just grew on me. I think it was the videos that freaked me out more than anything else.

Random thoughts that are not so random.

I met Y for lunch today. We got talking about things, like hair colour, when my maid entered into the conversation. And i told Y about how she was bringing up three children all on her own. She left her husband years ago because he was an alcoholic, beat her and gave her a lot of grief. Before the words quite escaped from my lips, Y said, "It's so funny that we are educated people, yet when it comes to marriage and domestic issues, we prefer to stay in it and sort it out."

It's true. I know of a couple - R and F - who've had problems ever since they tied the knot, but have stuck on for donkey's years despite domestic violence and what-not. And these are the same people who persuaded my previous maid to leave her husband when she came home at 1 in the morning with a bandaged head. She left him, and to this day the other couple do nothing more than applaud my maid's courage. Likewise my present maid too. They were proud of her for having taken the brave step of leaving hubby behind. Makes me wonder, who's really empowered?

Does all of this mean that educated people are cowards when it comes to opting out of dissatisfactory marriages? Does it mean that they've got much more to lose than my maid or somebody else who isn't so well-to-do? What stops them anyway, the fact that they have social circles who wag tongues freely to deliver whiplashes of hurt and misery? Or are they duty-bound to their families, the people who attended their glorious weddings and the people they are married to? For that matter, what made my maids leave their husbands? It couldn't have been easy for them, not with their social backgrounds where morality is held in highest regard and leading a 'pure' life is so much more important. (This, by the way, is fodder for another post. I believe that when people have nothing else to hold on to, they clutch on to their morality. It's subjective... and not open to debate.) Yet these women did it. And they survived. And today, they're happy. Happy. Did they do it because, like Y says, they had nothing more to lose? They had seen the worst in life, and there was nothing else that could happen?

Frankly, i don't know. Which is why it scares me plenty to think that if i get married, i will be joining millions of the educated class on the bandwagon. And predictably, i know where that will land me too.