I live in a different world ....

My daily routine: Home-->Office-->Home. I live in an apartment luxuriously. I get to have 3 meals a day. Actually any number I want… but then I restrict myself to 3. I can “choose” what I want to eat each time. I crib a lot about the taste of it and the contents of it… ah! I can never be satisfied!

I buy clothes as and when I want to, I do not wait for a festival or any “occasion”. My mother had warned me when I was living with my parents that she would kick me out of the house if one more set of clothes come in the house. But now that I live separately I don’t have anybody threatening me. P sometimes tries... but then he fails. He ends up buying more for me!

On weekdays, I travel luxuriously in my company bus. It’s a challenge to find new novels every week to read in the bus! So I end up reading anything and everything that comes to the market. On weekends, I travel to Mysore again luxuriously in P’s car. Or “struggle” and go in the Volvo busses, if P decides not to come. Ah! The AC is sometimes so high in these Volvo busses! And why can’t they put some nice movies? It’s always some old flop movies. When I am paying 160 bucks for the ticket, the least I deserve is a nice new movie na?

Ha! Looking at the above picture, I seem to be like a pampered girl. But then I share my own set of difficulties.

• I have to wake up early in the morning! Atleast by 6:30, so that I can get ready, eat breakfast, pack lunch and leave to office by 8 max
• I have unhealthy deadlines to meet in my project. Though not always... but there is always something or the other which needs to be done “yesterday”.
• I have to endure my father’s advice every weekend, about how to save more money and not spend it like how I do it. He has been trying for 5 years now… but he has not achieved much in changing me! So every weekend I have to think of a “valid” excuse to tell him as to why am I spending so much….
• And my mother is no way less… she is bent on making me a social animal. What with the 100s of visits that I am supposed to do. That “they” will feel bad if I don’t visit them. “They” will think that I have become headstrong after so many foreign trips!

Ah… see I don’t lead a luxurious life either. But I live in a “different” world than these people.

The video has really left me thinking. Have we progressed at all? It’s no wonder that these people are Brahmin haters. If I was treated the way they are being treated... I would have reacted in the same way as they do!

I live in a closed world. I do not see such discrimination around me. We have a house maid, and yes she is not allowed inside the kitchen. That is only because she would not have had bath before cleaning all our houses. But we give her food in the same dishes that we have food. So I thought times have changed and people are accepting other people more easily. But NO!

• Dalit children in schools are not allowed to sit together with other children. So all the fight that Gandhi and Ambedkar did was just a waste of time?
• They are not allowed to have food in the same plates as the upper castes. But then wait! They can wash the plates of upper castes and that does not make the upper castes any impure.
• Inter community marriages are a big NO NO. You can even get killed if you do any such foolish thing.
• The dalits are not only exploited by the upper castes, but they are also exploited by their “own” other classes. One is considered more superior than other! A toilet cleaner is definitely inferior as compared to a cobbler.

I think the situation is “better” in the big cities. But how many big cities do we have in India? The rural India still remains the same old caste divided communities, trying to find one reason or the other to fight against each other! People suffer day in and day out to get 2 square meals a day… and here I am fussing about more salt in today’s daal or half cooked rice!

I know it’s unfair to compare us. Some of us are more fortunate to have had parents who have given us good education and comforts. While some of us are not so fortunate. Just because there are millions out in the world without food... does not mean I should starve myself too. After all, each morsel of food that I eat is also hard earned.

But I can’t help myself feeling guilty when I sit in an AC room and generally blog about issues when I am not doing anything to help them. While on the other side of the world people don’t even know that there is something called this world.. where I live in. A different world. A comfortable world. A world filled with pleasure and happiness!
Thank you God, for giving me this wonderful life.

Update: The “wonderful thing” which I mentioned in my previous post has to wait due to some unavoidable circumstances :( Nevertheless the details will be up here as soon as things get confirmed!

TV, Me and SRK

You knew I would write about this. Didn’t you?
Ah! I have become so predictable… time for a change I guess. Anyway for the time being I will continue to be boringly predictable.

Is banning TV channels/programs the solution to uphold morality?

With the recent ban on AXN, I am sure lots of adults are cursing the government. After all they say, we are adults and we know what to see and what not to see. Who is the government to decide that?

• First of all, why ban it now? The show has been aired for 3 years now. So whatever damage was feared has already happened.
• This show was aired after 11pm, which I feel is a reasonable bargain. Most of such shows are aired after 11 so that only adults can watch and not children.
• If on top of that your children are watching it, this is not the channels fault. It is gross negligence on the part of parents.
• Moral policing can be acceptable from a govt body/person as long as that govt body/person is sticking to morals in the first place. When we see day light looting in front of our eyes by the same person, and he comes up with such a rule for a TV channel citing morality all we can do is boo him out!
• OK, for a moment lets agree that they are doing it for our own good. Then why have they left out fTV? What about all the cabaret numbers in the movies which are shown day in and day out? What about all the females clad in skimpy clothes in the name of designer stuff being VJs and DJs? Why not ban them all? Why only AXN?

I can’t help but think, they are expecting huge money from AXN and that’s why all this natak. I am sure these people are least bothered about morality and stuff like that!

Me

At this point in time, something wonderful is happening in my life. I am very excited. Details will be out soon.

SRK to host KBC

Why can’t people stop comparing? Why everything Shah Rukh Khan does have to be compared with Amitabh Bachchan? Amitabh is a legend. Obviously nobody can match him, not even his own son. Then where is SRK? But why deny a fair chance and an objective feedback to an actor just because he is doing some things which Amitabh did?
I am sick and tired of these endless comparisons!
But then as the saying goes “A mango tree with the maximum fruits attracts maximum stones”. So SRK will have to bear with all these stones

Am I really a vegetarian?

The usual topic of debate right? I was always defensive about me being a vegetarian. I would give 101 reasons as to why eating plant is vegetarianism and eating animals is non-vegetarianism. But this time, I did a serious retrospection within myself... and here are my findings.

• CURD: The one thing which I cannot live without. No meal is complete without curd-rice. But isn't curd full of yeast? A micro-organism?
• Mushroom: Though I have no idea how to cook it and all.. and have hardly cooked at home. I like to eat it when I go out for dinner. But mushroom is classified as fungi. Another micro-organism.
• Egg: Though I agree it's not considered "purely-vegetarian" if you eat egg. After all it's chicken in the making. But my father being very orthodox didn't object us to eating it. On top of that, forget about eating directly. Even if I can avoid it, how about all those nice yummy cakes and pastries? Don't they have chicken-in-the-making?
• Bread: Again, it's formed by yeast. So should I stop eating all bakery products?
• Milk: Who can live without it? Actually the milk we drink is not meant for us, it is meant for the calf. But we still take it. So aren't we indirectly hurting the animal? So should I just stop having all dairy products?
• Plants: The good old dialog, "plants have life" too. So is it OK if I kill one form of life but not other?
• Medicines: They are direct killers. The so called anti-biotic. The things which kill bacteria and virus. So is that OK? Or is it also a sin and I should stop taking medicines?

My point is not veg vs non-veg. My point is people associating religion with it. Pronouncing that eating meat is equivalent to sin.

I very well understand from Hindu mythology point of view. All our gods and goddesses have one or the other animal as their vehicles. We worship these gods and goddesses along with their "vaahanaas" and hence it is difficult for us to kill and eat them. It's as though we are killing a part of our God.

But, I am against the definition of vegetarianism = sanctity. I think veg or non-veg is just a classification. One group is plant-eating and the other group is animal-eating. No one is higher or lower than the other.

P.S: I am a strict vegetarian. But recently I found that some kinds of cheese (specially used in Pizzas in USA) have cow's gelatin. As that is supposed to make it more cheese-like. After knowing this, I am forced to think... what about the countless Pizzas I had already savoured? Indirectly I have had a piece of our sacred animal. Will I even get a place in hell? Or will I be banished from hell too????????