London! The land of my dreams! Amazing how the thing you yearn most for can be staring right at you and yet you don't see it. I never imagined there'd actually be such a place. Paradise! Though I generally turn up my nose at settling abroad, London is something else. It'd be very difficult to pass up such a chance. Be it a call center job or a waitress at an Indian Dhaba - it'd be very difficult to pass up, as long as its there. If you are up there and listening, please please let me be a Londonwasi in all my future incarnations.

I hear it is quite respectable there to bathe just once a week.


P.S. I realize this is a recurring topic, but it is a recurring problem.

Another trip. This time to a jungle (redefined to mean a few bushes on a mountain) and a waterfall. Some thoughts follow.

When will the Kumbh Mela be held?

Why do Indians consider the cow to be sacred?

What is the difference between different newspapers like The Hindu, Hindustan Times ... Do they have political leanings?

All questions asked by a French exchange student traveling with us.

Kumbh mela? Yes, I remember reading about it in A Suitable Boy. Its supposed to be held near Sangam, I think. The mela where thousands of babies are lost and hundreds of movies are made. No, no idea when or where or why.

Cow? Sacred? Well, yes. But I mean, what nonsense! We don't believe in all that. We are the new generation. We throw all old beliefs out the window, no questions asked.

The Hindu, well, I think it is a little boring. The Times of India is too populist. Of course newspapers have leanings. No paper is impartial. What are the leanings of these newspapers? Well.. umm... err... I don't really know.

No Past. No present. Will we have a future?

Heard this line in a movie once:

Most of us don't have to face the fact that given the right circumstances, we are capable of anything. Anything.

Terrifying. And the only lines that kept coming to my mind when I was watching Schindler's List a few days ago. I've read about the atrocities in numerous books, watched it in several movies and what scares me the most is that it was all carried out by ordinary people! That given the "right" motivation, you and I are capable of such inhuman acts puts a big question mark of the future of our "civilization".

The question is not Will we have a future, but Should we have a future.

The holiday season is upon us. Let us go around spreading joy and cheer! Joy and cheer? All I seem to be able to do now-a-days is mutter threats under my breath and throw dark looks at anyone I remotely suspect is going home. Why am I never the one who gets to go home while the world remains behind to work? This time, I don't even know why I am not going!
The standard way of dealing with this is to tell yourself that you will avenge it all by doing ground-breaking research in 10 days, publish a paper or two. However, by now yourself has heard this so many times, it refuses to be taken in and screams back - WHOM ARE YOU KIDDING?
What scares me most though, is the Diwali-depression. Yay, I get to remain back during Diwali too, to carry out "change-the-way-the-world-works" research while the world wastes its time on fireworks and sweets. Lucky me!

I hate pseudo-holidays.