Duh!

Takes more than a quarter of a century to realize that life is war, that only indifference can bring you peace.
Seriously, how dumb can one get?

I-day

That Choudhary's wife, hahaha, she is actually worshiping the flag with flowers and Rangoli. Touching the foot of the pole, asking it for blessings, reported my uncle to general laughter. And your aunt is making modaks for the Mahatma, he said, something my aunt hotly denied from the kitchen. Public display of patriotism has always been ridiculed in the circles i move in, expect if it is during a cricket match. Independence day, Republic day, Gandhi Jayanti have all been reduced to public holidays in which TV channels have record ratings and malls have record sales. Not that i am in a position to judge, its been a long long time since these days stopped feeling special. But once in a while, i catch Vande Mataram or Saare jahan se achcha or Ae mere vatan ke logon or Jana Gana Mana being played somewhere and i feel a part of something bigger. I guess it is the sort of feeling people get during Dussera or Diwali. Who knows, thousands of years from now, Gandhi might have morphed into a legend, who came to earth to deliver us from the evil British! We'd have to come up with better super powers for him though. Ability to abstain from food, not very impressive!

(Gandhi bashing seems to be the flavour of the season. Gandhi My Father apart, it is only when I saw Cheeni Kum that i realized how utterly frustrating it must be when somebody reacts to a situation by going on a fast!)

There is one in my head!

You know TV has conquered your senses when you mentally curse something and it comes out as as a beep!

Cheers!

As a patch for my F.R.I.E.N.D.S addiction, i have hooked on to another series, Cheers. Nothing can ever come close to the one, of course, but this one does promise to keep me occupied for a while. Which is a big deal really, if you look at the volume of stuff that didn't make it. Sienfeld, How I met your mother, Two guys, a girl and a pizza place, Fraiser, Dharma and Greg, Everybody loves Raymond, Different Strokes, I dream Of Jeannie, Bewitched, Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, Silver Spoon, Nanny and the Professor (at least thats what i think it was called!), Whos the boss, The Drew Carrey Show, South Park (this was when i was feeling really really adventurous and also, desperate), Futurama (good, but not good enough) and more i cant remember the names of.

One of the things i love about Cheers, apart from the fact that it has Fraiser, who now feels like a long lost family member because i caught a few episodes of the show several years ago, is the title song.

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

Very cheerful, no?

However, right now i want exactly the opposite. To be in a place where no one knows me. I want a pastless, futureless existence where I wake up each morning with a clean slate and spend the whole day being whoever i want to be. I want to be able to be unforgivably rude today and wake up tomorrow as the friendliest soul you ever met. I want to be able to see the the world in black and white today, knowing that tomorrow i can turn it into grey. And maybe after i have been everyone and noone, i will be more at peace with being the someone i am, in a place where everybody knows my name. Maybe.

Or maybe, i will stop writing crap.

Notes to myself

101 reason why you should jog: #43

Aunties dont jog. So when you jog, you are automatically promoted from aunty to didi! Unknown kids on your jogging route yell out "didi jogging" and wave. Do you know how long its been since someone called you that? Well, just over a year ago, to be honest. But then, that is because you were in college and aunties dont go to college either.
When you get too old to jog, look into that PhD.