Reflection on rails

Trains are fascinating things. There’s just some sort of a charm that seems to attract people to them. How else do you explain booking tickets months in advance just to get a seat on one to carry you home? As a child I used to love long journeys from Delhi to Kerala and spent all my time with my nose stuck to the window gazing at scenery. But a more settled lifestyle in later years cut short time spent this way and the charm started to wear off, until once again opportunity arose, this time in the form of trips to college.

An overnight train journey gives quite a view into our culture and allows for plenty of time to mull over things. While admiring the sun setting and leaving a golden glow on the waters of many a lake and seeing ports and rapidly developing skylines coming up with good music playing, it makes you realize where those travelling sequences and songs in movies take root from. And as night falls, with a twinge of sadness, farewell is bid to the hills and valleys of home and the eye is greeted by the industrial lights of a different land. But the alienation of a new place is quickly forgotten upon seeing the hustle and bustle that seems a trademark of our country, brilliantly set off with a backdrop of dry, rolling hills and flat plains.

For those who possess a penchant for observation, a train ride offers plenty to see and hear, from the coffee vendors to the people nearby chattering away among themselves. Some overheard conversations can even be fun and informative, such as how Ayurveda cures thyroid problems much better than ‘English’ medicine, and how people depending on such silly medicines have been fools not to realize this fact yet! It’s a place where ideas and opinions mingle, the rich and the not so rich rub shoulders and bonds are formed between strangers, all this as the lumbering beast trundles along on its merry way.

But these are the big long distance trains, so what about their smaller counterparts, the locals? These are in some ways even more interesting. A recent ride on one of these around dinner time in an unpleasant mood made me observe happenings around me more than usual. Right down from the idle wait at the station, listening to the same old advertisements on the platform television and actually paying attention to its attempts at improving the common man’s general knowledge (Did you know that 138 pyramids were discovered in Egypt in 2008?).

Finally the train arrives bang on time, spews out and loads more people within a few seconds and sets off from the station, with an electric whine and quick acceleration as people begin to settle down, headphones plug in, and some even play music aloud for the benefit of others. As it screeches its way to a halt at the station closest to the shopping district, a couple with arms laden with shopping bags and their child step in, the toddler chattering away in her father’s arms and him listening to her patiently with a smile on his face. Scenes like this can bring a smile to the face regardless of foul moods. What things had this man seen over the course of years spent in this world, all leading him to this moment? How many stations had his life been through, how many times was the chain pulled or the whistle blown on him? Makes you wonder how everyone leads life in different ways and by different means, overlapping for brief periods thanks to this wonder of public transportation.

Crowds thin, seats are freed, and the tiny local is overtaken many a time by one of the long distance ones, all taking people places, some with plans in mind and others with mere hopes and dreams. As the train comes to its usual screechy stop at my destination, I get off and embark on a solitary journey home, all things forgotten for a while in the company of people unknown, all thanks to a machine that knows and feels none of these emotions human.

Gaming Explained (for dummies!)

There are some things girls do that guys don’t get. Shopping, gossiping, dressing up in a million different ways and styles and on and on and on. Now guys, being simpler creatures, are more easier for the fairer sex to unravel, except for one thing, a passion for the game (I’ll be talking about computer games here, so if you’re looking for another sports article, point your mouse at that back button, and take your virtual surfboard elsewhere before you’re wiped out by disappointment).

Let’s admit, we guys are addicted to action. Given a choice, I would seriously consider going back to the time of kings and warriors, where dying by the sword was a thing of honour and all men were opponents. That’s just how we work, because we’re not satisfied sitting and admiring pretty things and doing the gardening. But fortunately or unfortunately, the world went and decided to get developed, and the days of the good ol’ fights were lost and left behind to become the stuff of legend and epic movies. However, all the technological advancement gave us the other things that women just don’t understand….gadgets!

So when the computer, one of the most preferred gadgets of us lazy, jobless bums, gives us the ability to immerse ourselves in worlds not dreamed of in a long time, isn’t it obvious what happens? Going on quests, slaying dragons, participating in the historic events of the World Wars, racing cars we’ll probably never lay our hands on, and drooling at female characters is all part of the appeal. Another thing is, and parents definitely won’t agree with this fact, games are actually educational. What better way to understand the World War than by fighting in it? Learning about civilizations by watching them develop and conquer and improving a few reflexes along the way. And the good game that comes along every so often is such a spine tingling or heart racing experience that it brightens up our miserable modern lives in ways a million classic movies couldn’t.

It’s pretty obvious that it still won’t make sense to the fairer sex as to why we do the things we do, but just consider it revenge for asking our opinions on curtain designs and embroidery! This is all the explanation you deserve for the dreariest hours of every male child those were wasted away at dress shops around the world. As for us, we say cheers to the ale drinking, pipeweed smoking warriors, the nameless, faceless characters of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, and the Bugatti Veyron!

Equality or imbalance?

We keep hearing about gender equality, and how women have as much right as men to showcase their skills to the world. These pleas have been largely answered, with women now occupying many important positions and matching men every step of the way in all fields. But has this thirst for equality and independence gone too far?

Before any feminists start hunting me down and baying for my blood, let me make it clear that I have nothing against treating women the same as men. They are not meant to be pretty things to look at that are kept locked inside houses. My only question is what happened to the real female? The care-giver, nurturer and protector of all things?

Now we see working families with both husband and wife contributing to family earnings, looking after the household and kids and what not. But let’s not forget the fact that there are just some things women do better. They multi task better, look after things better and can bring up children way better than the new species of creatures called ‘house husbands’.

At least in the olden days, there was no confusion as to how things were done. Today, the newly empowered woman is still getting used to her newfound freedom, and some egos have grown bigger. Now we have unattended households, spoilt kids who do not receive proper care, work pressures, crumbling relationships and the works. In times like this, credit goes to the woman who manages to wake up in the morning, cook for the family, go to work and still manage to find time for the husband and kids. Not easy, I know, but that’s why God gave you multitasking!

The fact is, lines that held things together in the past have blurred now. Both men and women are confused by their responsibilities. It’s time we all understood what we do best. Sure women can work and earn and all that, but don’t expect us to do as good a job holding a family together. Career is fine, but it’s not the be all and end all of all things. Ambition is good, but responsibilities are equally important. I sincerely hope the modern woman can understand these values, because we can do the working and earning fine, but there are some things men just simply suck at. In a nutshell, enjoy the freedom, but don’t abandon the good old wife, mother and sister in the process. Because we need you!

Life….in a hostel

It’s been nearly six months and I’ve been mentioning, or rather droning on, about what life in college is like. But while having a nice warm meal in the hostel mess a day ago, it hit me that I haven’t said much about hostel itself. So I suppose the time is right to publish a post on the day to day life of a hostelite.

It was on the slightly hot day of 8th August last year that I began my life as a hostel ‘inmate’. My father had come to drop me off at Chennai and had to leave the same day, so goodbyes were rushed and procedures barely completed. It was around twilight when I made my way back to the room I’d been allotted, room 508, though somebody had managed to scratch a ‘1’ at the end and give us a unique four digit room number. That night was the only time I felt the tiniest of twinges of leaving home for the first time and staying somewhere new. With just a mattress, some bags, a Bisleri bottle and a pack of biscuits for company, I slept off quite comfortably alone in my new room.

The next day was my first experience of the mess. After having heard horror stories about hostel food from cousins who attended college around the country, I must say I was apprehensive. But what greeted me was something totally unexpected. Yes, the food was good! I had expected my digestive system to take a week or two to get adjusted to the change but thankfully it settled in without complaint.

The same day I met my first roommate (who is also a classmate) and started getting acquainted with him, a fascinating experience as he hails from Manipur. This gave me an idea of the cultural exposure I was soon to receive here and also an understanding that maybe those horror stories were not a universal truth. Within a week or two, we were joined by another of our classmates, thus completing the trio and settling in to our new lifestyle. Or so we thought, until we realized that one more of our mates was in a different room at the same hostel and invited him over now and then, which has now reached the point where we now have four people in the room at all times(we’re charging rent from next month Bunty!!)

Coming back to the topic at hand, our hostel, like all other ones in our campus, has a weird name. It’s called Sannasi (we think). Because every time we tell someone where we stay, they say its name is something different. It’s been called A block, mess block and even staff quarters! At just five floors, it’s also among the smaller ones. But the advantage is that it’s one of the oldest too, meaning we have a properly working wi-fi connection and even attached bathrooms.

The funny thing is, every day I spend here I see someone new. It’s been a while, but other than recognizing a few faces and returning the occasional smile, it’s almost an alien place. Yet, there’s a sense of belonging among us all. It’s a unique feeling, a group of unconnected strangers, with bleary eyes and tousled hair, eating a late breakfast together on a Sunday morning. We come from different backgrounds and different parts of the country, yet we fit in somehow, almost like family.

Then there’s the sheer madness of hundreds of young people cooped up in a single building. Loud music playing, the sounds of swords clashing and engines revving from the many laptops in each room, hyena like laughter from god knows where, screams and shouts from midnight birthday celebrations, you name it.

As for us, we contribute to all the above mentioned things in proper hostel spirit. Watching cricket matches in the TV room, cheering with everyone who managed to fit in, planning to hit the gym at 6 in the morning and missing first period of class instead, fighting for bathrooms, flicking each other’s deodorant and burning holes in wallets at the food court. That Is not counting midnight walks in campus after tipping the guard and going for coffee. There’s so much more, but you get the idea!
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that hostels don’t sleep. No matter what time it is, a little stroll in the hallways to re-fill the water bottle will find guys walking around talking to girlfriends and relatives (in that order), watching movies, and very rarely, undertaking late night study sessions. And over the past few months, I’ve joined this strange species that’s always awake and doing something or the other.

The thing is, it’s not such a bad place to be. If you have some passion for staying on your own and managing your own stuff, can wash your own clothes and have a spirit for adventure, then life is here. Of course, the food here is great, so that’s a huge factor you should make sure of before deciding to become an ‘inmate’.

So if you’ve heard horror stories too, take them with a pinch of salt. All the stuff I mentioned here is true, since exaggeration really isn’t necessary when it comes to this.

That’ll be it for this post then, any longer and my roommates will throw me out. It’s my turn to re-fill the water you see…

Blah Blah Blah….

This time I really have no idea what I’m going on about. It appears I’ve recently become a lot more talkative than usual. I remember my teachers in kinder garden and during my early years in school saying that I talk too much. In fact, I remember a comment on my report card saying “Has a loud voice and does not hesitate to use it”. But somewhere down the line I guess I just lost all that. Any of my friends today will tell you that I’m a silent kind of person who doesn’t open up too fast. Though that still holds, interaction with certain people over the past few months has slowly made my talkative side resurface (you’ve awoken a monster!!). And now I just can’t seem to stop blabbering half the time. Anyway, that isn’t really relevant, what is relevant is the people who’ve turned me back into the more talkative person.

Whenever I’ve seen those pics on orkut or facebook which have personality tags where you can tag your friends, I’ve always been skeptical that there are actually so many different kinds of people out there. Recent experience has taught me differently. Believe me, it can be a weird feeling when you’re suddenly exposed to people who can start arguments for no reason, who won’t take advice, can stare at themselves in the mirror for hours, eat like hell or answer every sentence with, “You want to die?” But meeting people like this is really something that can’t be compared to any other experience. All of a sudden I’m in the company of people who’ve become like family to me in less than a year. There are those I couldn’t care less about, but then there are those who I would rather trade anything for than see hurt, the kind you think about before you think about yourself. And so I do tend to spend a lot of time socializing than in the pursuit of knowledge, but then I’ll justify that with the same argument I use for watching movies and playing games, that it is informative and helps me grow as a person by exposing me to new ideas!

Even today one of my classmates, who happens to be senior to me by a few years, invited us over to his place and made lunch for us as his birthday treat. Probably some of the most delicious food I’ve ever had. Definitely a more interesting activity than sitting and reading books alone if you ask me.

On an unrelated topic, I miss proper winters all of a sudden. Sure I’m dreading the heat waves that’ll accompany the summer, but we’ve had some wonderful showers and just enough cold in the past month or so to wish for a bit more. Envy all my mates here who went back home to much colder climates. Don’t really know what prompted this sudden wistfulness, but what the hey?

And I’ve gone off on another nonsense blabbering spree, which is what happens when I sit down and try to write something with nothing particular in mind. But since everyone writes about new and interesting things happening to them, writing about nothing in particular is a novel idea if you ask me.
I started off this post saying that I’ve become a lot more talkative than I used to be………see what I mean??

The Concept of Home

It’s funny how, if you Google the word ‘home’ and look for images, it returns thousands of pictures of nice big houses with well manicured lawns and all the stuff that comes up in our mental picture when we think of the word. But then isn’t what you would call a house? Maybe it’s because I attended one class too many on Communication Theory and the way we use words, but this got me thinking.

So after nearly five months of college, I got to spend close to a month back home in Trivandrum. But it was just around the time that I stepped onto the suburban train that was the first step on my journey back, that my overactive brain (which keeps throwing up philosophical ideas of all kinds, though rarely anything of use) started whirring. At the same time I realized that I had strange constricted sensation somewhere in my chest too, but thankfully that went away before I could start suspecting a heart attack.

Over the next twenty plus days in Trivandrum, I visited relatives, met up with my close friends, ate like crazy, slept like a pig and did just about everything college students on a break do. However some part of me always longed to be back in my hostel room. Sure, it isn’t big and I share it with two more people, but there’s something about being there that one starts to miss, and miss it I did. Stuck at home, munching away on Hide N Seek biscuits and watching movies, I started missing the people I’d met less than half a year ago, despite being with the people who’d looked after me my entire life. Then came the visit to my father’s house at Ambalapuzha. Honestly, this was the only time I appreciated being back. Even after all these years, when I took a walk through the neighborhood, I noticed that it was still the same place I used to play in as a kid, even though younger cousins had taken my place.

More people were visited, more views on life were heard, and for the first time I got to analyze a difference in the way people live, work and think depending on the place they live in, the culture they’re exposed to. It was like seeing for the first time all the wondrous things read about in books written by much wiser men and women.
So as my visit draws to a close, I finally realize some things that had always been there in the back of my mind. A better understanding of the way I see the world and the way others see it. How my take on relationships and bonds were different than many others. Though I’m sure many of my family members, and probably my parents would think all this is utter nonsense coming from someone who has a very high opinion of himself, this is the way I see it. And I must say, whoever said ‘Home is where the heart is’, was a very wise person. Because we humans aren’t really just drawn to a building or even just our families. We seek places where we feel at home. Home isn’t something we have to go to; it’s something that comes with us, it’s a place where we feel complete.

So this brings me back to the sudden brain activity and constricted chest that accompanied me onto the train to Trivandrum. And now, upon reflection, I think it’s because, somewhere, deep down, I understood that I wasn’t really going home, I was leaving it.

Pseudo Study

Yes, once again, a very obvious title. Don’t ask me why I’ve developed this habit, it’s like I’ve lost the ability to come up with imaginative titles (provided I could do that in the first place! ).

Ok so this is me sitting in the reading and study area of the college library supposedly studying for my semester exams. And as the fact that I’ve been able to type out this post clearly suggests, I have better things to do. So with everyone around me discussing portions, twirling pens and staring into laptops, I’ve decided to spend my time blogging!

I’ve had the feeling recently that this blog has become very self centred, and the lack of comments for some time has just proved that people have better things to than sit around reading my take on the world. That’s why I’ve been attempting to make it a bit lighter over the past few posts, and what better way to do that than bunk a study session? I think the weather is a good factor to blame for my unfortunate inability to concentrate on my notes . It’s not really my fault the one time I make an attempt to learn it goes cool and cloudy (In case you’re wondering, yes I’m still in Chennai).

But the funny thing is, there may be hope for the seemingly studious people around me after all. When you’re sitting in a quiet room where the loudest noise comes from huge fans that put helicopter rotors to shame, you start noticing things. And it’s now that I notice that the dude in the red t shirt has his earphones plugged in and the bespectacled guy sitting across me is discreetly texting away. Hopefully their answer papers for the sems will have their professors tearing the hair out of their noses. Bless the poor souls.




Finally, people start to yawn and stretch, water bottles and coffee cups come out, signs of just another study session. And I’ve just noticed that my ‘study partner’ has set aside World War 2 and gone online Facebooking. Maybe now is the time to convince her to take another coffee break.
I’ve just realized that this may count as another self centred post, but then, others can deal with it.

Pens have started twirling again and i see a scary diagram in one guy’s book. Looks like these people are back to work.
As for me, I’m off to enjoy the weather (sooner or later). See ya!