What's happening?

I am finally able to express the mish-mash of emotions that I have been going through since last Thursday - it's what you feel when someone tries to pull the ground from under your feet. 

First you're increduous: "what the hell is happening?" Then you try to resist: "Stop! Let me be!" Then you're scared: "This is not going to stop, is it?" Then you panic: "What am I going to stand on now?"

Am I ready for this? Do I want to be ready for this? Leave student life forever? Become a "responsible adult"? :P

Institutionalization

I first heard this term as a part of a team for Cactus Flower, the annual campus magazine in Pilani. The thought was that after four years in a protected and as-close-to-ideal environment as Pilani, one feels lost, a sense of rootlessness when one has to leave it for the Big Bad World. Somehow it didn't happen to me then. 

But now it has. In a different place. At a different time.

Imagine being in the most vibrant city in India, and that too in a killer location (stretch your hand and you can touch the mall, the cinema, the beach and umpteen good restaurants of all budgets and cuisines). Over the past year the mind and stomach have attuned to being within the hallowed portals of our residence before the evil hour of 11pm. Now, either over alacrity at the prospect of us leaving in less than a month or in a desperate attempt to assert that they are human after all, the powers that be have graciously allowed a 30 minute extension. Oh! 

(Cup mouth with hands as the eyes sting with tears. Hug those at the left and the right. Recover just in time to flash a perfect smile with perfect, white gleaming teeth. Mouth "Thank you, thank you" a number of times. Look dazed and poised at the same time.)

Right.

Now that it has been dispensed with, what do I do with these extra 30 minutes? What do people do between 11pm and 11.30pm in Mumbai, the commercial capital, the fashion capital, the city that never sleeps? I have not thought about it in over one and a half years. And suddenly, I feel like I am standing in front of this whirlpool and it is sucking me in. 

P.S. One movie that comes to mind is Shawshank Redemption. Not very encouraging but it would have to do :P

Who am I?

An article I read in mint prompted me to write this post.

The author expresses an inability to defend why the notions of "Indian Culture" as espoused by Sri Ram Sene and Shiv Sena are wrong or misguided. She feels that if we, the common (wo)man, as a polity define Indian culture through a set of qualities or adjectives then that will make us more equipped to deal with such "fundamentalist" behaviour. Predictably enough, "Indian culture" does not have a universal definition, and any attempt to create one will stymie its natural evolutionary process and in a perverse way, serve the fundamentalists' cause.

I must confess that the article prompted me to ask myself how connected I felt I was to Indian culture. My immediate reaction was that a person whose upbringing and background were more traditional than mine has more authority on the topic. But then, I am not any lesser an Indian than the next person. I might think in English and have my "roots" in a city that no longer knows what it stands for but what the heck, I wouldn't feel so at home anywhere else. 

We are the moderate majority, but we are also the fringe elements. Educated and qualified, we would rather spend our lives earning money and moving up on the income strata than making the country a better place to live in. As champions of the private enterprise, we consider the public sector and the government as a necessary evil. It's been this way for generations now. We are very happy in the cocoons of our lives, going to work, coming back to family, planning for the next big holiday or the next house or car. Who wants to tell a bunch of hooligans what Indian culture means to us? We have better things to do.