When times change

It's been a while since I last updated my blog. Yes, I have been very busy with the arrival of my little boy "Subir". Having him feels like the best thing that I have done so far. He is almost 2.5 months old & keeps us all more than busy. I am on a sabbatical from work & hence I should find some time to post my thoughts here.
Feels good to be back though.

Smita Patil Jr.

I just watched the new movie Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. I so wanted to check this movie out for various reasons; first & foremost for this had a cameo by Smita Patil’s son Prateik Babbar. A glimpse of this young man & you know he is her son; you don’t have to know his name for that matter! He has that grief in his eyes which was seen in hers. This young man brought back lots of sad memories about the yesteryear actress. In Maharashtrians they say a baby is fortunate if a boy looks like his mom & a girl looks like her dad. I feel sad for this boy, how can I say he is fortunate if he never ever got to see his mom or hold her hand? I mean I am sure God has better things in store for him & life will always make upto his loss, but can anything really make up for spending a childhood without his mother around? Can any kind of success make up for the trauma he must have faced as a kid/adolescent? Life can certainly be cruel at times, but still I am sure God will make upto him.

Global Turm"OIL"

Phew! Gas was $4.19/gallon this morning. Price of crude oil has doubled from $65 a barrel last summer to $135 per barrel this summer. Only if this wasn't bad enough; the cost of a barrel of gas is expected to skyrocket to $200 sometime by the end of this year. US is still one of the cheaper places (after Russia, UAE & Venezuela) to buy gas as compared to European countries & Asian moguls like Japan. Gas has crossed $10/gallon in Europe already. Petrol is still cheaper in India as compared to the rest of the world; about Rs 57 per litre because of the Government subsidies. These are simple statistics presented by Economic journals all over the world.

What do these numbers mean for the common man though? To me it means that it’s high time we start car-pooling & buy cars with high MPG. Using public transportation can help in a big way. I am sure Governments globally will think about improving public transportations in cities where it was not so developed in the past. I have developed a simple practice for myself; I club my errands around the same area & avoid frequent unnecessary trips to the mall. This situation more than anything has made me realize that gas is a perishable asset that controls global economy to a massive level. Looks like future has some shock in store for us, but we should be prepared for anything to everything. Just because some of us may be above median income level doesn’t mean we can waste gasoline as per our wish! It is our civic responsibility to use fuel efficiently. Conservation should be the mantra of the day, what say?

Confession of the day

Just some time ago, a friend of mine mentioned unitentionally that she found my blog a comparison between India & US. This struck me with more seriousness than probably what she intended. I would like to make it clear; it was never my motive to draw comparisons between India & US in my blogs! I always wrote my experiences, my opinions on life that I have experienced so far. My blogs are my personal opinions, interpretations, thoughts on changing times & societal functioning that I have seen so far. May be I have been right & wrong at times; like everybody else, but that doesn't mean I was trying to judge either cultures!

Baby "Blue"s

The news is out there! We are expecting & I am already in my 21st week of pregnancy. This is a very enthralling phase of life for me & Sanjay. Till now, it was all about us, now there is this never ending list of things to be done for our baby. BTW, it’s a Boy for us. My dad was against me finding out the sex of the baby, but I wanted to do to be prepared either ways, not that it really mattered but my curiosity took over listening to dad (once again!). There are so many things to be planned; his name, his day care, his school, maternity leave et. al. Right from coming up with a baby registry to deciding if we want to have his nursery done or not, there are so many decisions which need to be made. This reminds me of my young days, I mean we were born & raised with love but nobody ever bothered to have a nursery or selecting a theme of furniture for that matter! They say it takes a village to raise a kid, & I don’t want my son to be deprived of anything that a normal childhood boasts of.

This is going to be a huge step in life for me & Sanjay. From October onwards, we will have a permanent third resident in our home & lives forever & may be after that! Wish good luck to me my friends!!! These exclamations are witness to the fact of me being hormonal.

We don’t need no education

This morning, a colleague of mine who basically hails from Peru told me how most of the educated people in the states are; “foreigners”. In US it isn’t like in India; whether you are interested or not, you got to go to college or PG for that matter. To think of it, there are so many reasons why American society didn’t care for higher or education for that matter. Going back like 15 years or so, you could easily find a good hourly job after high school in a manufacturing facility or any local Government office which would help you make your ends meet. Insurance, gas, food was cheap & people didn’t always plan for retirement as they knew they could bank on their social security benefits. If people were talented, they worked their way up & got promotions. So today, I have some of these old school bosses who are at a higher position because of the years of experience they had. Families were bigger & with 4 or 5 siblings around, parents didn’t push kids to get college education if they were not getting scholarships. In any case, one could live a comfortable life without college education.
Well, this trend seems to be changing now. Now with the economic globalization, growing competition, sinking automotive market (which was a primary employer for most high school grads) & ever soaring cost of living, it has become absolutely impossible to make your ends meet without having college education which helps one make more money. Social security benefits all of a sudden seem to be finite & by the time our generation is ready to retire we may not get any SS check at all. This economic crisis is leading to some positive social changes though. In Indian society how educated you or your kids are linked to your social status, within no time we are going to witness this social change in US as well. So if Pink Floyd were to go back in time, they would never write “we don’t need no education”.

Analyze This, That & Them

Stocks have been soaring up & down as they please leaving all of us in turmoil. Hey, I am no Economist, but where is the world economy heading? Automotive manufacturing is going through the toughest times ever. Once it was a pride & joy to work, drive & live the Ford way. Today, Ford stock got listed as low as $6! This is grave, also an insult to one of the biggest manufacturer of the world. May be all this has a deeper meaning & things will get better. After all, it’s not always as bad as I think it is. Norms have changed socially & politically across the world & generations have got smaller. May be our generation has witnessed one of the most important transitions of the world in terms of globalization & industrialization.

Lee Iacoca published his new book, “ Where have the good leaders gone?” or something on similar lines. It is so true for the political scenario across the world right now. Americans are still not in a mental state to accept Hillary (female candidate) or Obama (Colored candidate) as their leader. Of course there is this vacuum where there is no hope to have another Gandhiji or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. I think on so many fronts; Indian politics may be corrupt, unstable, primitive but is lot ahead socially than American system. Even us Indians think far progressively than my American colleagues who could not digest the fact that I kept my maiden name after I got married. We accepted our leader in Indira Gandhi in 1960s & yes they have not had a Jhansi ki Rani yet for the record!

Roots

As a teenager, I always tried to make sense out of Alex Haley’s book “Roots” which my dad passed on to me for killing time on one summer vacation. My age & lack of experience prevented me from understanding the crux of Haley’s experience. I mean what’s the point of going through the entire heck to discover where your forefathers belong? I also noted it as a kid that my dad harnessed immense importance to his “Roots” or the place where our family actually belonged to in Madhya Pradesh. My only visit to our ancestral small town in MP was as a reluctant teenager & the only reason I visited the place was to make my dad happy. For me, my roots have always been in Nagpur. Place where I was born, grew up, made friends & spent the most valuable period of my life. No matter where I go in India or abroad, my heart calls only this place home. The more I traveled, the more I realized that as my life traces most of its attributes to my family; which again traces roots to MP, Nagpur, My mom’s side, My grandma’s side. So “Me” actually is a maze of all these places with whom I had this subtle connection that I was not aware of consciously. This is a theory, which applies to us all, & now Alex Haley’s hard work makes sense completely.

Holy Cow!

Just came back from my much awaited India trip, had a whale of a time. Just read in Shekhar Kapur’s blog; “ Abuse is the order of day in India”!! He is the man when it comes to composed literature so as to speak of!

My experience; yeah he is right again. No, I am not getting into this NRI veil & trying to criticize everything about India. I am trying to analyze facts here. College Registrar still gives a hard time to students for getting their transcripts signed, bathrooms in trains are still not clean, there are still very few public restrooms in decent sized cities like Nagpur for ex., people still catch jaundice & malaria due to polluted water, so many people still believe in inequality & cast system, intercaste marriages are still a taboo, child labor seems to be getting worse, law & order is still unheard of, female infanticide is still prevalent, & the list goes on.

Yes, India is shining in some few cities & in the living rooms of the educated! How about the underprivileged though? Do they not have the right to a safe, healthy, happy life?

BRB

With a clear heart & tired mind; I admit I missed blogging! Lack of time or bad time management kept me from writing my chronicles.

Coming year will hopefully be more productive!