of friends and friendship....

Life is so fast paced these days that one does not really have a lot of time outside of work. We may have heard our friends and colleagues say in the recent years that they have been so busy with work that they have not found time to do the simplest of things... Sometimes, I feel that life is just racing past me and I am afraid that one day, I am going to look back and see many years behind me - years that I hardly noticed go by!

In this fast paced environment, one does not have time to even talk to parents, let alone friends. So, how does one maintain these relationships? Isn't "keeping in touch" via phone or email or meeting in person essential to all relationships? The answer, surprisingly, is NO.

In all these years, I have realized that you don't really have to see or talk to each other frequently to stay in touch. A simple thought is all that counts. A remembrance about a silly incident, a memory of an emotional moment together is enough to bring a smile to the lips or a tear to the eye. And, in that moment, you have established contact with the person you were thinking about and thus, kept "in touch"!

I have never kept in constant touch with my friends.... I am bad at returning phone calls and emails. It just slips my mind every time I decide to email or call a person later. Like they say, tomorrow never comes. But, I always think about calling them, talk about them, reminisce about our sweet moments together.... But I know that, somehow, it does not matter... The simple thought has done the necessary work!

Of "PHONY" accents..

Just yesterday, I was talking to Deep about my accent and if he thought I was "putting on" one.... It was just a random thought and I wanted to get his opinion on it....His response to it was that, while it certainly blended with the way everyone else in the country talks, it kind of stands out when I talk to a fellow country-man (or woman) with the same roll in my R's and twirl in my L's. He said people like to hear you talk the way they do, else, it is difficult to bond with them...He also went on to say that our brothers and sisters from India would stay away from me for the simple reason that they think of me as a "wannabe" American.

Needless to say, I found this utterly hard to digest! Seriously, people stop mixing with you just because you talk the way locals do? So, I am supposed to change my accent, the way I speak normally for the sake of being accepted by a community?

Several people may argue that for someone who was born and brought up in a country like mine, this way of speaking is certainly not normal. That may be true. But, I have stayed in this country long enough and worked around locals longer enough for me to consider this as the normal way of speaking. While the way I say some words are typically British in nature, most of my vocabulary is now markedly American. Why or where it changed to being this way is hard to pinpoint, but I may have started to "put on" (or, in normal terms, adopt) an American accent when I began working in an all-American workplace about 5 years ago. And, there has been no looking back. Slowly, my way of talking has progressively become Americanized to an extent that I don't switch back and forth between accents.

I have come across older people who have lived here for the past 30 odd years, but whose accents remain untarnished and "purely" Indian. I am amazed by this phenomenon. I do not know the reason why their accents have not changed even after living here for so long. Maybe, they made a conscious effort to maintain their Indian identity. Or, maybe, somehow, they just did not pick up the accent. Or, maybe, they make it a point to speak English minimally, only as required, while speaking their respective Indian languages for the rest of the time (which I do not do). I don't know why or how this came to happen.

But, I do know that I do not purposely "put on" an accent and that this is normal by my standards. I am sorry that I do not talk like most of my country men out here, but I don't see why people need to judge me based on my accent. As far as I am concerned, if they refuse to accept me the way I choose to be, maybe, that is not the community I want to be belong to, either.

FUNtastic San Diego!!

Deep and I have been working so hard lately, that we hardly find time to completely let go and relax.... Of course, we have our weekends and in recent times, I have made it a point NEVER to work over the weekends, but we sorely missed a nice, long vacation where we could leave behind our cares and not think about anything for a good amount of time.... So, when the date for our proposed trip to SD came nearer, we both could feel excitement building within us in anticipation of all the fun we expected to have....Boy, was that one of the best vacations of this year!!

Apart from the obvious reasons like glorious weather, constant sunshine and gorgeous beaches, what we loved most about SD was the "quaint-little-town" feeling that we got from the entire city. The influence from across the border was heavy and it could be seen in everything, going from architecture to food to shopping. As we were taking a walk through Gaslamp quarter, I could not help going "wow" every single minute. It was so exciting to see Victorian architecture and look at stuff that used to be in existence about 100 years ago still kept going on...Our trips to the 2 beaches - I forget their names now, were just mind blowing....And the time when we did the biking along with Span and Sumita (Span is Deep's friend from way back) in Coronado Island was just absolutely unforgettable. And not to forget the HUGE banana split ice-cream that I could barely eat at the ice cream shop there....

One other unforgettable and hilarious incident was when we decided to grab a bite late in the night after watching the 4th of July fireworks at Seaport Village. Little did we know that the restaurant had already closed when we just walked in because we found every other restaurant door locked. Because he could not ask us to get out after seating us, the waiter opted for the next best strategy - he kept asking us to order and eat fast in addition to the occasional inquiry - "you don't want dessert, do you?" or "You don't want more rotis, do you?". I have never seen Deep eat so fast (he takes his own sweet time to eat under normal circumstances). The minute he started eating, he did not even look up to take a sip of water!!! It was HILARIOUS!! After we exited the restaurant, all four of us burst out laughing and could not stop until we reached the dessert place.

A trip to San Diego zoo proved to be very enjoyable (for Deep, who does not like animals, as well). The rocky terrain gave us our much needed exercise and the koalas and chimps and gorrillas were adorable to watch. The high point of that trip, however, is neatly framed and sits on my side table now - Deep feeding the giraffes! For one who wrinkles up his nose at the very mention of any animal, that was something for him to do!

By the end of the 4th day, after a lovely dinner get-together with Deep's friends, I was thoroughly convinced that we should just move to San Diego without further delay!!! So fulfilling was the experience, that even after coming back to Chicago, I did not get out of the San Diego/holiday mood for a couple of weeks!!!

Arguably, the best place to have a relaxing week, leaving all the worldly cares behind and forgetting that a life exists beyond San Diego!

Home, "sweet" home?

After 6 long years, I am finally home! Home, the city where I was born and brought up, the metro where I have spent more than 80% of my life, the city where all the people dear to my heart reside....I am here finally....after 6 years of pining for their company, dreaming about the looks on their faces when they see me, reliving old memories from college and school, thinking of all those places that I used to know and hang out at.... Boy, was I in for a rude shock!

Home? What home? Mom, I have come back to a strange town... It seems vaguely familiar, but nothing like the place that occupies most of my memories! I have seen cities evolve, growing to be a metro from a small town... But this change seems almost grotesque, for lack of a better word! From the metro that still had a small town feeling, with almost no night life and untouched by the "western" influence, this place is now a typical "wannabe New York"!

Love the extravagance of the United States? Look no further! You name it, we have it....the over priced clothes, the rich "italian" ice-cream, the malls, cell phones, cars, the list goes on to cover a lot more consumer items.... but, the comparison stops right there! For someone who has spent 21 of her 26 years in this city, I am still shocked by the noise, pollution, crowd and most importantly, the total lack of sophistication! You can look like an American with the plethora of choices that this city offers, but can you act** like one? Even with the numerous cell phones in the hands of every Tom, Dick and Harry (in this case, Muniandi, Karuthamma and Pichaimuthu), etiquette is one topic that has eluded the public here... It has been the same story for a long time... I had the same complaints even before I left to the Wild, Wild West, but now they just seem magnified 100 times! And now, if I complain about them, I am branded an "American". And since I look like most of them here, people just give me a weird look if I practise and exhibit some form of social etiquette!

Is this the same place that I left behind? Or have I changed that much? I never expected to feel like a misfit in my own homeown. I wonder if anyone else feels the same as I do or am I all alone here too?




** Act = Behave

Formality

We have often heard the sentence, "please don't be formal with me, you can ask for anything and we will try and help you", said in between friends and relatives.

To what extent should one take this statement to heart? Can you indeed be totally informal with anyone? Come to think of it, formality is present in every single relationship - from parents-children, siblings, friends, clients, customers and so on....We like it if someone says "thank you" and "welcome"and "excuse me", don't we? Is that just courtesy or part of being formal? Where does one draw the line between being "formal" and being "family"?

One other sentence that we hear often is "you know, there are limits to every relationship, one has to stick to them and not cross those lines"....Now that I am married, I often wonder where those lines exist between my husband and me. I used to be worried about someone invading my "space" and now I feel like I don't even need one! Should I be formal with my husband as well? Doesn't that put some distance between us? Is that good or bad for the relationship?

Whenever I thank my parents for anything, they say, "Don't be formal with us"... was I just being courteous or formal? My husband has this habit of asking my permission for even the simplest of things and he also thanks me often if I do something for him (way too often, if you ask me)... Sometimes, I feel very odd when he does that and I have told him not to thank me so often.... But, he says, if he doesn't say it, it goes to show that he is taking me for granted....

I don't agree with him 100% but I am still confused as to the extent to which we should exercise formality in close relationships.

The dirty world of politics

Politics is that evil that has permeated every space on the face of this earth. Be it at home, office or on a larger scale, the country and the continents, politics has ruined several relationships on the way to taking root there.

One might wonder if we really have politics at home, where we are surrounded by our parents, the people who have loved us from the very first moment of our lives on this planet, our siblings, whom we have grown up with for these many years, shared many of those unforgettable moments with.... Sadly, it is true... In the case of a man, enter his wife and the politics begin - his mom trying to outsmart his wife, to prove her wrong, to maintain her supreme status in the house as THE only person who knows him the best, playing dirty games to turn him against his own wife! In the case of a woman, enter her husband and the politics start - with her trying to prove that her love is better than his mom's, competing for the smallest of things, playing dirty games to try and distance him and herself from her in-laws.....Mind you, this is just one face of this dirty game....

Moving outside of one's home, the next place where people spend most of their lives - the work place. Aaahhh, what office doesn't have politics? Please tell me and I will go work there!! What starts as constructive criticism eventually morphs into ugly, nasty remarks with the sole intention of making the other person look bad and incompetent in front of the seniors. When there is a clean path ahead of the person where he can choose to prove himself by achieving higher goals and targets, more often than not, he chooses to trod down the dirty path, getting his hand wet in the all too familiar game of "office politics". In the end, whether he has earned a good name or not, he has smeared all the mud that he possibly can on the other person, who wanted nothing to do with this game in the first place. It is said that if you don't play the game, you lose. Whether you want to or not is besides the point. The game is being played and in order to protect yourself from all that mud, you better learn to join in. You dont have to scoop mud in your hands and smear it all over the opponent, you just need to do know how to dodge when he tries to do it on you!

Of course, the next level of politics is all too well known - the local, national and international governments have nothing to do but play this game on a daily basis. Imagine, about 70% of the time, governments engage in this game and only for the rest of the time, they listen to people and problems and try to resolve them. [1] Isn't this all too sad?

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that politics is really a game of power. It's all about who gets to sit on the throne and wield power, be it in the house, office or in the world. Having experienced it at two of the three levels, all I can say is, I am as disgusted with it as I was when I was just a mute by-stander.

[1] Statistics come from individual observations, not from any statistical report, apologize in advance if this is wrong!