Honesty in love and sexuality...

Why women are afraid of the word 'date'? And why cant a guy come over to a girl's house to pick her up for a movie/pub/dinner etc. I feel that Indians (men & women) are not honest about their feelings on love and sexuality...I believe this opinion of mine holds true to the majority of the urban population.

Now, why did I mention just women in the first sentence of this post? Why not men...well...I guess its quite obvious that its the men who are expected to be proactive in such things...but why? Why cant some girl walk upto a guy and ask him out? Hehe...too progressive eh...maybe...but the guy will be so surprised that he just might say yes!! So, girls...take that as a tip! ;)

Nowadays, its pretty cool I guess...some women are coming out of their shell...some are already in the second generation of being outta that same shell. That's cool...but this doesn't apply throughout the length, breadth, height or whatever of the spectrum of Indian urban women. As for the men, its simple...they are all the same...promiscuous creatures...if some claim they never had some "thoughts", they are plain hypocrites!!

I guess even in the developed west, some of the taboos of the east hold...but then it boils down to a question of the individuals personality...if the person is shy, it doesn't matter whether its the east or the west...but then, in the east, are we not giving too much attention to the needs of the society...which is influenced by peer pressure and the burgeoning population? Cannot someone exist at peace with the society and yet lead a life of owns own rules and thought?? C'mon...no one will crucify or burn you at the stake!! Damn invisible walls...

This brings me to an interesting point...those people, who are thus restricted live out their fantasies and wishes through the www. Some are just plain honest...and some exceed the line. But for the honest ones, it should not be so tough to take that step in real life...why is it so hard? Interestingly nowadays, its so easy to fall in love online...maybe I should blog about this sometime later...

Anyways, guys and gals...please be honest. It will make you better people...I can tell you that for sure!! ;)

Roots...not the earthy variety...

No...not even close to "Roots" by Alex Haley...but something similar I have to say...infact, something similar to the authors feelings...

Have you ever been proud of your roots? Your ancestry? How you happened to be...in this world...in this time...?? Tempted to answer in the positive aren't you?? :)

Well...in my case, I had loads pride in being a national of my country. But never did it occur to me to be proud of my religion...to be proud of my ancestry...I was just proud of being who I am...the person...my thoughts...my actions....how blessed I am with my cool parents...how I turned out because of them and lot others. But...I never gave a serious thought to this thing about my...roots.

I am agnostic...I believe I am responsible for my own destiny and that, the things I do shape my thought and the things I think guide my action...well...it seems not to be so simple...cos I started thinking...thinking...only very recently in my short time spent on this planet...a very short time indeed...

What was I doing until then...I dunno...following the crowd maybe...just another rat in that race...just another brick in the wall...I dunno...and I dont wanna ponder on that as well. But my point is this, in the time before my cocoon burst, circumstances have shaped me in both the positive and negative side of things...so, there are still some things with respect to my thought process that I am still not in control of...

Let me come back to the main idea of this blog entry...
I was talking of things that I am not in control of anymore...for example, recently here in a foreign country (where I am going to spend some part of my near future...), I met some people from my native country. Ok...fine. It was nice to see so many people...but whatha hell, my country is more than a billion...so, not so surprised. Ah ha...but some were from my regional state within my country, we share the same mother tongue...again, no big surprise. Ah ha...but again, some were from the same college as my undergrad univ...guess what, still I was not so surprised...because those people who are really interested in this field have good chances of landing up here where I am studying right now. Hmm...I bet you are now wondering...does this guy actually have any feeling for nostalgia and all that...haha!! Believe me, I do...I was just expressing my lack of surprise.

But then...there was something that surprised me...I was surprised by my own reactions and feelings after being exposed to one teeny weeny fact. Some people here are from my own religious subsect. Creed if you will...Tirunelveli Sivapillai to be exact. This kind of this never happened to me before...never when I was in my native country. Now, I am agnostic...I dont pray voluntarily...god is just a concept for me...I hate any religious propaganda...I love unity, fairness and peace. But such a person would not expect himself or herself to be affected in an emotional level with something as stupid as meeting another person from the same sub caste or whatever that shit is called...but I was. It felt warm...to listen to these people reminiscing about our common city of ancestry...about the street next to the temple where our grandfathers used to play...I mean, I have not seen my fathers native place more than a coupla times...I was not stirred much by its sight till date...but listening to a relative stranger talk about it shook and stirred something inside me...

Was it me being in a foreign country...?? Was it my own growing maturity?? Was it due to all the family members who I met before flying out of my country?? Was it the insignificance of the mathematical figure deciding the probability of meeting such people in such a place at such a time?? Maybe...might be...maybe...

Your roots...I guess, the knowledge of it is enough to instill a subconscious pride of your lineage. Of course, none of us are descendants of the Eldar, the elves of the light. Haha...but this pride...damn, its cool! My roots...it does not matter if my great great great grand mom was the product of a foreign chromosome...whatever...it doesn't matter. Its now...your roots...its still something still very much in the present...but gains it charm from the past. Stupid thing to say right? No, I think not...you are already a branch of that tree, whether you like it or not. If you are lucky, you can be proud of it as much as you are proud of yourself...how you turned out. Its a wonderful thought thinking of this...evolution damn!!! Have you read that book that I mentioned in the first sentence of this entry??? One of my favs...maybe I feel this way cos I was easily able to appreciate that book.

Anyways, I wish both you and your tree the very best. So goes the ending...

Cultural Gentlemen...

Well...

I am right now outside my country...living with these people...people from all over the place. People representing most of the continents...diverse...varied...coloured...and black and white. Amazing period of time for me.

When one is with such people...and when no one knows anyone else...one would like to start a conversation. And normally, one starts a conversation by asking the other something about the person or something that he/she does...but...in this case, the smart people should realise that one cant really pinpoint how the culture and mental makeup of a person from a foreign land might be...so, what's the solution?

Be nice...sport a smile...greet the person each time he/she passes you by in the corridor...I don't remember doing that even when I was working at this respectable firm back home. But here, am able to be extra nice and stuff...dunno why...its not me. But then, it has to be me...cos no one told me how to behave...its just manifested itself at the time...makes me wonder as to how many facets of behavior has got imbibed into a person during a lifetime of mistakes and learning...of experiences and sweet pain...sigh...life is a lesson.

...am diverging...

Actually, I did blog this article yesterday...but due to an amazingly stupid coincidence of some probability functions in the mindblowingly flabbergastingly simple algos governing E-Blogger, my article was lost...no, not all of it...interestingly, only the most interesting parts and the climax of the damn article...damn...where, excuse me bragging a little, I wrote an interesting para...good humor...twas very funny...

To be or not to be rewritten...well, am still thinking...bet I cant reproduce it like I wrote it the first time...but sigh, should I give it a shot...hmmm...am listening to Coldplay...their music touches me each time at a subconscious level...also their latest album X&Y happened in my life when I was going through a lot of...personal issues...and unfortunately, the music around me leaves a permanent mark in my mind when something important or memorable is happening in my life. The tunes of the past influences me more than the melodies of the current...

For instance, in my third year of undergrad, when I was reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I had "Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory" running in the background throughout...and nowadays, when I listen to one of those songs, I see Gandalf the Grey riding across the open fields brandishing a glowing Glamdring on one hand and his staff alight with lightning on the other...shadowfax...a blur, almost an isle of pristine purity in a sea of dark death...I still get goosepimples seeing that!!

...I diverged again...

Hehe...my readers, please pardon me...am sorta tired after a long day and pissed with my article being cut in half and put out to dry...so, please forgive the random mumbling...anyways, lemme get back to the point where I diverged out first...

Now that I am listening to Coldplay...already 4 songs are done...I am getting such memories that I would not like to get but am stuck with it for sometime, atleast until I can learn to forget...I think I am almost there... :) Hey, I am feeling better already....think I better get back to Cultural Gentlemen.

Anyways, my point is...one will inherently be careful when dealing with someone new. Atleast more careful that before...that's relative...but even that might lead to disaster as I have witnessed here with a coupla people...sigh...even martians might not be better than humans at this...lemme explain...

Imagine that a martian landed in your backyard...
He is here on a mission of peace...his mission is to provide the human race with technology that would solve many of the current problems that's slowly but surely destroying the face of the planet...for example, the inability to wirelessly transmit power, the greenhouse problem, the efficacy of cancer to evolve enough to avoid being trapped by a cure...blabla...

His mission, if mankind chooses to receive it, will ensure a lifetime of availability...heaven on earth...but, he has to get through the formalities first doesn't he? Of course, owing to his superior technology, he was able to observe these humans long enough to decipher that a hand shake is a gesture of greeting and of peace...so, that's exactly what he tried to start out with. But unfortunately, his 13th tentacle came in the way of the other 12 when he was trying to perform this relatively simple maneuver. It was not a very pretty or peaceful sight...what with his green scales and blood red eyes not at all helping matters...also those flashing lights from the tips of the tentacles looked like a mad cowboy from the wild west setting the town on fire!! Not at all good...unfortunately, human technology was primitively advanced enough to detect the UV and invisible waves also being thrown out at random from the martian dude...and thanks to an electrical short circuit somewhere thanks to the previous night's thunderstorm, the equipment malfunctioned and elevated the threat level due to radiation to the levels of those on the sun!!! Of course, the bigwigs at Houston launched the missiles to counter attack...and BOOM!!

He was not happy...the martian that is...although his force field made him look positively happy when actually he was cursing the earthlings in the most horrendous martian...damn...the first doofus politician who misread this as a sign of submission and walked up to the dude got vapourised...republicans down by one more...shit, it was not a bush!!! a bush down the drain is worth a thousand other politicians down the same drain too!! but what the hell...something is better than nothing eh...anyways, thus started the war of the worlds and all that doomsday stuff...

Well, you see what I mean...one can easily tick off others of whom one knows not. Whether one likes it or not, I beleive everyone are more or less cultural gentlemen by evolution...and manifests into one by circumstance. I rest my extremely wandering case...amen...and please excuse this nomad for this once...