Bhopal Gas Tragedy: I am a Bhopali

Peter Griffin asks us all to declare ourselves Bhopali, to help bring attention to the gas leak tragedy that happened 25 years ago, on the blog he has started about this.

I have no hesitation calling myself a Bhopali, especially since my paternal grandparents were settled in Bhopal - well, Bairagarh - and my uncle still lives there.

As I wrote on his post:

I am indeed a Bhopali.

My mother was 6 months pregnant with me, and my father, based in Lagos, had sent her home to Bhopal to stay with my paternal grandparents till my birth. She refused to stay without him, and in the face of opposition from everyone in the family, went back to Lagos a couple of weeks before the gas leak happened.

I always say I get my stubbornness from my mother, and she always bemoans that fact. But her stubbornness gave me life, and you can't take that away.

Doesn't your heart go out for the scores who weren't that lucky?

(Link via India Uncut)

Boundaries

This morning, I got into office to see a mail from a colleague, marked to almost everyone in the office, informing us that she had deleted us from her Facebook account. Her reason was straightforward and simple: she wants to delink her personal and professional lives.

With the onslaught of social media/social networking/whatever you choose to call it, these lines have got increasingly blurred in the past few years. Everyone's blogging, tweeting, uploading photos on Facebook, adding connections on LinkedIn, to the point where virtual friends have begun taking precedence over real-life friends, and there really is no boundary between the personal and professional spaces.

I so far haven't really gone one way or the other. I have colleagues on my Facebook list, but there are those who get to see stuff and those who are on Limited profile. My blogs are listed on LinkedIn, but twitter isn't linked, and I'm contemplating removing the blogs too. In fact, my other blog, which was started essentially to crib about my job, never really took off, because paranoia about clients coming across the damn thing stopped me from putting almost anything I wanted to.

Even when I started this blog, or joined twitter for that matter, the original intention was to keep my real name completely out of it. Since almost all my readers in the initial stages (and even now, for that matter) were people who knew me in the real world, however, their addressing me by my name in the comments pretty much gave it away.

I know people who are very comfortable with having no distinction between their personal and professional lives, and in fact use one to further the other. Which I have no issues with; it's just I would never be completely comfortable doing that.

And my respect for my colleague has gone up tremendously for having it in her to tell us outright how she feels about it and that she intends to remove us from her list.

Here vs. there

Some months back, I visited an incredibly beautiful place, which happens to house the Santa Maria de Montserrat cathedral. Mass was just ending, and a priest was handing out what seemed to be their equivalent of prasaad, so my colleague and I went up to him. He asked in Spanish if we were Christian, and when we said no, shook his head and turned away.

Yesterday, on Guru Purab, I visited a gurdwara after a long, long time. As I was leaving, the priest sitting near the door stopped me and sent me back inside, because I hadn't noticed that prasaad was being handed out inside.

And, no I'm not a Sikh either.

What a difference.

And yet, there are complete asses in this world who will say such things about their own country.

Yes, I know the two things probably aren't comparable. But still.

Thoughts of the Day

a) I am clearly following the wrong people on twitter.

b) I get the maximum tweetable/bloggable thoughts when I'm travelling and have absolutely no access to the Internet.

c) At least the Jet and IA in-flight magazines have things worth reading. Kingfisher, on the other hand, persists in distributing that God-awful Hi! magazine. WHY would I want to stare at picture of people who seem to have nothing better to do than pose for photos in clothes and accessories that a, I can't afford, and b, look downright weird and uncomfortable half the time?

d) Why do things seem to happen when I go to Bangalore?!? Last time I was there, the CM of Andhra Pradesh disappeared. Today, a train with more than a 1000 passengers got hijacked and was held hostage for 5 hours. And yet, all the twitterati of India seems to be talking about is iPhones and some Fashion Week that seems to be on.

My rant against twitter really is due, innit?

Also, an open letter à la India Uncut:

Dear man in the hotel room in the Radisson,

When your room is directly in front of a flyover, it would be truly appreciated if you didn't stand in front of your television in your underwear with your curtains wide open. It wasn't a particularly pleasant sight in my half-asleep state.

Thank you.

And it begins...

I've been expecting this ever since my cousin announced her engagement earlier this year. I am, after all, the next in line.

However, naive person that I am, I expected it to start with subtle hints. You know, my age being mentioned a few times, my plans being asked about, and so on and so forth.

What I did not expect was being taken aside by aunts and uncles and being told outright that "it is time". I could deal with the teasing from cousins, no sweat, and laugh off their offers to find me someone, but how on earth do you stand and continue to smile politely in front of the elder generation?

The highlight of last night, however, came when my aunt, someone I am very fond of, in her attempts to convince me that I should lose no time getting married, decided to tell me about someone she knows. Apparently, this lady put off getting married till a late age (probably late-20s - that's ancient, innit?), and some 3-year-old chit of a girl saw the bride and exclaimed, "But she doesn't look like a bride, she looks like a budhi!"

I would like to announce at this stage that there will be no children allowed at my wedding.

The other highlight of last night, of course, came from the fact that everyone who had seen me last month at another family gathering, exactly a week before this, exclaimed on how I've lost so much weight. Of course, they also commented on the stark contrast between the drained me who had come straight from a client site in a fairly ghati outfit last time, and the me who came all dressed up yesterday, but we shall not go there.

However, I would rather gain back those lost kilos than deal with completely non-subtle Bengalis again. Thank you.

Weekend rants

I know I've said this before, and I'll probably say it countless times in the future as well, but I hate shopping.

What with Pujo round the corner, as well as sundry occasions coming up in the extended family as well as friend circle, shopping has been something of a priority for the past few weeks. And with barely a week to go for Pujo, I am as usual scrambling to get things ready in time.

If I have to go shopping, however, I like it to be focused - I go knowing exactly what I need to buy, find it, and exit. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work, especially since my idea of a good buy is never in keeping with what is in "fashion". Tell me, are fashions made with complete and utter discomfort kept in mind?

Getting my hair cut is always a fairly traumatic experience. As readers of this blog will know, my hair is the one thing about myself that I am actually vain about. And every time I see those inches of hair falling to the ground, I swear, a little piece of me dies. However, sheer boredom with my current style finally demanded that I agree to shortening my hair by at least three inches, and so, the deed was done yesterday. I also decided to get it nicely set in curls for the family function last evening; alas, my hair is so freakin' gorgeously straight that the curls open up within an hour.

On another note, why does everyone in a hair salon have such weird hairstyles? With the spikes and the strange colours? Is it compulsory to take advantage of the services their workplace offer, or are they trying to advertise their services. Because I gotta tell you, if it's the latter, it's not working. In any salon I've ever been to.

The first time

More than a decade ago, the family and I were at a coffee shop in some hotel in Chandigarh fairly late in the night - why we were there of all places I have no idea; it wasn't a very frequent haunt for us.

When the bill came, my dad looked at me, grinned, and asked, "Do you want to see it take really long for the bill to get cleared?" Intrigued, I nodded, and he whipped out his credit card, and gave it to the waiter. And he was right; they took nearly half an hour to swipe that card and bring back the bill for him to sign.

I went shopping earlier today and took out my card to pay for the one shirt I ended up buying; I was at the counter for less than a minute.

I have never yet been able to use my card without remembering the first time I ever heard of this thing called a credit card.

I'm a sucker for nostalgia.

Rants from the Sickbed

Fifth. Day. Running.

This is NOT good. My fever keeps fluctuating, and my grumpiness has reached new levels. I have spent quite some time berating my poor exhausted family over past grudges, mostly the change in my room's layout some months back (I hate it when that's done) and me not being allowed to buy something I've really wanted for the last five freakin' years. I'm fairly sure that if the gal pals were around, I would start screaming at them about the infamous incident from our third year; luckily, so far, only one of them has been brave enough to call and ask how I am.

If there is anything I have hated about this illness, it is the visits to the doc. First off, I don't like my doc. Her accent is all pretentious, and she talks to us as if we're 5-year-olds. Which really isn't wise around my dad, because ze father knows as much about medicines as most doctors. Very cool ze father is. So there.

Secondly, if I have to watch that damn LiveMedia screen in the clinic's waiting room one more time, I will just scream. Number one, it is clearly not "Live" if my two visits over the space of 48 hours had the same jokes being run. In fact, given that I was back in the waiting room after seeing the doc while my dad went to pick up medicines, and the same stuff from an hour back was being played, they clearly need a new name for themselves. Number two, not one of their jokes was funny. Zilch. Nada. AND, to add insult to injury, ALL their so-called jokes were grammatically wrong!!! There is major gnashing of teeth happening here.

On another note, what is with bloggers starting their posts with an apology for how long the post is? How do you actually know when you start the post how long it's going to be? I have never till date written a post which was exactly identical to how it seemed in my head before I actually started typing it; they always, always take a shape and form of their own. Plus, how does apologizing for the length make people want to read on till the end. Either they'll read the whole thing or they'll get bored halfway and leave - your regret at making them read such a long thing won't change their mind either way, because chances are, if the post is really as long as that, by the time they've reached that halfway point, they'll have forgotten all about your apology anyway.

I think I'm going to stop now.

The universal conspiracy strikes again

I officially hate lizards.

I got stranded in the rain today yet again (what is it with sudden rainstorms and me walking on the road?). It was past 8.30 PM and not a single rickshaw on the road. I managed to reach a nearby market and take shelter there.

These poor moths were getting attracted by the light of the ATM, flying towards it, banging into the glass door and sliding down. And these four huge lizards were sitting there, waiting to bring out their tongue and grab the next moth to fall.

Ugh.

Of policies and degrees...

The father raised an interesting point this morning.

One of the leading investment firms in India asks for various documents when you invest with them. As proof of birth, they accept only the Class X certificate that CBSE hands out to all those who clear the Boards. Useful document this one is; we all used it as our date of birth proof when applying to college, since I don't know many people who know where their actual birth certificate is lying today.

But here's the father's point (which I think is extremely valid):

"i wonder if this is legally tenable - in the sense that {this firm} is denying non-10th pass/fail adults, who may have investible surpluses, the right to invest in their funds."

Are we saying that people who haven't cleared their Class X Boards can't make these kind of investements? Rather a bizarre assumption, isn't it, that people who haven't studied past a certain level won't have the money to put into the market?

This reminds me of the story by Somerset Maugham (and for the life of me I can't recall the story's name). The janitor of a church, who has worked there since he was a teenager, is suddenly asked to leave by the new vicar simply because the latter has discovered that the janitor is uneducated. While walking home, the janitor tries to think of what he should tell his wife when he sees a tobacco shop and comes up with the bright idea of setting one up himself. It turns into a raging success, and over the next few years, he has a whole chain of stores and ends up a fairly wealthy man. The story ends with his bank manager advising him to invest his idle money somewhere to which he responds saying he can't since he can't read or write. The astonished bank manager says something to the effect of "if you've made so much money with knowing how to read or write what would you be doing if you could." "I'd be the janitor in St. Peter's Church."

There you go.

Update: The father very kindly pointed me to the link of the story - The Verger.