Everyone is special

Walking on the road, you pass so many people. Some look confident, purposeful, well-dressed, well-maintained.

But the majorities appear so ordinary, wear ill-fitting clothes, unfashionable footwear, have too much fat or too little, nothing remarkable about them, nothing attractive.

But yet someone somewhere eagerly waits for this unimpressive man to come home every evening.
Someone's entire world turns around the strength of this frail-looking woman.
Someone's very purpose in life hinges on this brash youngster cutting through traffic.
Someone knows only the shelter of these old arms each time their world begins to crumble.
Someone will count hours, minutes, and weep like a child when this pock-marked face alights from a long-distance train.
Someone will cave in, crack up, and never be the same again if this one person disappears from the face of the world.

There are no ordinary people !!!

Some pictures from trip

The beautiful girl. She was always hopping around and always calling her mom for some thing or the other. Finally when she had her tummy filled, she slept with open mouth. Was very cute girl.

In Gujrat, before approaching some jungle area....

In Mumbai - Pune Rail route. Dense fog

In Motion....

These two pics are taken from both the rail tracks. Once on either side. This small dam is in MP.

The first one is my favorite as it shows the dam completely and also the man is seen walking.

On the way to rajasthan..

In Gujrat

This is the country side i was talking about in my blog.

This was on way to mumbai

the ghats

Regards,
http://antarikshv.blospot.com

Things to come

In my next few blogs I shall be describing the people who have put an un-erasable mark on my life, my thinking and all the aspects of my life. I met all these people at variety of stages of my life. I met them when I had everything and was fully satisfied with the way the life was carrying me. And then I met a few when I was of the opinion to change the way of life. And yet some met me when I was a “Thinking Powerhouse - a psychologist” guiding people in their life and eventually getting highly influencing beyond the permissible limits. I had no intentions of influencing people’s lives, but I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s now when I analyse my behavior that I understand I had in some means influenced them and their decisions.

I feel I have done some mistakes. I feel that I was quite childish in the manner I behaved when I was a psychologist. I felt that I have grown up in the manner of thinking. But I still feel that I haven’t grown up. There is lots of childishness still left in me. I haven’t yet understood the worldly manners. I was the “frog in the well”, my whole world was confined within the very few people who were around me. I had made the circle of trust. I had made a very thick “Great Wall Of China” around me.

Now that I am getting of age, I feel that a maturity of thoughts of owning a family is still at large. I have a long way to go. Lets hope in around 2-3 years when I will finally get married. I wonder whether girls need to think this much or how do they cope with all the emotional and mental maturity expected in them at this age as mine. I am 24 and I require another 2-3 years for understanding life. Do the girls have this option? Do they acquire this maturity? Do they need? Of course they need. Idiot! Who does not need the maturity for living with a person who is known to the spouse just few months back and now they are living together and sleeping together? You have given a free ticket to a nearly stranger. The stranger is the person with whom you have to spend your life, your happiness and your sorrows. What all limits shall you pose to this stranger? Are you ready to become a responsible person? You have to become the person having the responsibility to handle another person.

But then there is another question of your life. “Why are you born?” “What’s the purpose of your life?” Looking at the life from a very top level it seems you go through these stages:
Study in the best school.
Study to get the best marks so that you can get into the best college.
Study to get the best marks so that you can get into the best graduation college.
Get the best marks to get the best company to work with
Get the best salary so that you become the best bachelor.
Get the best wife, so that you get the best kids.
And then pose the same steps to your kids.
---- The cycle continues.

I had put these questions to many people and none have given any satisfactory reply to these. I admit that I had started asking these questions right at the age of 10, but then what do you expect any parent to say? My parents said that I have to become a very big and successful person in life. That’s my destiny. Hah. I feel that’s the mouse race everyone is falling into. And it seems there is no option from it. But its just the feeling that there might be something, what it is, don’t know! Feel “The Matrix” like situation may be true. Maybe there is something higher than what it seems. Something more important, something more than just Life.

People who haven’t thought about these things may take it two ways:
Ohh! He has become mature.
Ohh! What a crap maturity. These things do not get along in this world.
So it means that there will be many people who can confuse. You will not know what you need to do or where you need to go.

Here comes in “The Spirituality” into existence. It’s the man’s answers to his own questions. He brings into existence the Gods. In all the religions there is someone or something which the human race must follow or accept. The meaning of your existence lies with your beliefs. You believe in something and live your life for that.

Your existence depends on your beliefs.
And beliefs is everything...




Regards,
http://antarikshv.blospot.com

The Day Of Meetings:

4th September: We started off early in the morning to go and meet our relatives. The occasion was of 12th day after the death of my uncle. I had never attended such kind of things and didn’t knew what was expected of me and what needed to be done. Well then we all started off. My relative having a full knowledge of what all things might come up at the occasion and Me having absolutely no knowledge of the storm.

As we reached the house there were people who were ready to greet us at the door. (I think they were like the vultures, awaiting the bachelor to be snatched.) They didn’t had the warm welcome smiles but had those looks. As we entered the house and I bowed to say namaste, the unknown person too joined her hands said namaste. She had those looks, she scanned my complete body head to toe. I was being scanned and kept into the hard drive. I think an immediate siren must have been sounded at the time of my arrival. Maybe the day yesterday all the preparations must have been done. Maybe this was a planned scene to be enacted by all the people who were attending except for the near and dear ones. The “Extras” were just the fillers of the show and came in to check out the new marriage material in town.

These extras were from a wide variety of background. Some had a very huge business earning around a crore monthly, while some had hundreds of acres of agriculture land. One of the most unexpected was the Minister’s brother. He too had come in to check me. Damn! Seemed like my relative was announcing “Ladies and Gentleman. Here I present to you Antariksh.The eligible bachelor. Please have a look at the exibit. He shall be answering all the questions you ask about his family and himself. Please start one by one. I shall make arrangements for the proper movement of the exibit within the hall. Please keep 2 seats vacant near you.”

And so the day of interviewing started. It was all one sided. I didn’t even get the chance to see the girl nor the chance to know anything about the firl. It was like just answer the one line questions and move further. Meet all the people in the hall and say hello. Damn! I think I felt how it feels for a girl to be interviewed. How the people ask girl, “Beta, tum kya karte ho, kaha rehte ho, papa kya karte hai, kitna kamate ho, papa ka number kya hai” hey raam!! Bas aur kitna jhelenge dost… Jhelna to padega. Shaadi jo karni hai naa yaar.

All this was totally unexpected for me. Had gone to attend some serious stuff and came out with something unexpected and customary things.

Yeah yeah, have to get married. But is this the right age to get married? I feel like I am still a kid. Or is it the goose bumps? Who knows? I? No dude, I too don’t know whether I am ready for getting married so early. Look I am still 24. Yeah yeah I knoaw I have been working from past two years and have been earning good, but still I haven’t seen the other enjoyments of life. What enjoyments am I talking about? I don’t know, this is the standard answer what everyone says when not interested in getting married. Ok what about financial health? What you still don’t buy this argument? Hey I hardly end up with some amount at the end of the month in my account. It’s a different story that I invest the amount instead of keeping it idle, but still I am not left with any amount to spend.

Ok, there is one theory of mine which will help me get married in about 2-3 years down the lane instead of getting culled immediately. All the things in my favour are the things and the rituals made by our ancestors. Our ancestors have said that for getting married the boy’s and the girl’s kundali must match. Matching the kundalis is the job of parents. Getting a matched kundali takes time of around 6-9 months. Once matched and once a girl is selected, it comes down to me. I will get to see the selected girl after around 1 year. The control is shifted to mua. Ha ha ha. I have to then select the girl amongst the parent selected girls. So till now I have already spent around 1- 1.5 years.

But once I select the girl the control moves to the pandit. He tells the appropriate time when the wedding take place. Also the hindu calendar has a say in deciding the time of wedding. Actually there is a period of 6 months which is not the wedding season. So he selects the appropriate time for the marriage and the dates generally are after 6 – 7 months. And finally the D day arrives after 2 – 2.25 years from now. So I am happy to attain an age of 26 or 27 years and then get married.

Disclaimer: It’s completely my theory of what the timelines may be taken. But it’s comic and a bit realistic too. So hope for the best.

Pre-Quel to ‘The Day Of Meetings’

There is one discovery i made today.Hello Freinds i am now going to publish the more of the exciting stuff happened in my life. The all "First Timers" of my life.



3rd September: I reach ratlam from bombay. Its a place of our relatives. A small city of good people who just wanna satiate their taste buds with all the yummy dishes both veg and non-veg and both sweet and salty. The city where you will have "Sweet Kanda Pohe", "Sweet Samose" ,"Sweet Kachori", and everything has little sugar added to it. Its a a town situated near to Gujrat border and many people do come in for buisness and the major food stall vendors and Jain's. So they put sugar in everything. And their sweets are extra sweet. Ok , a cultural change.



In ratlam i saw some of the famous temples. The temples were very faaaaaarrr. Aroound 3-4 km from their house. The temples were indeed ald and famous. Only one temple was a relatively newer construction. It was built by a defunct company "Jain Vitamins Limited". The temple was really astonishing. The temple was built around 15 years ago, when the company was on the top and was earning heavy profits. Once the company started building the temple, the worker unions opposing it. They were demanding a less expenditure on the temple and better salary for the workers, even when the workers were earning the best in the market. Now the company has shifted and there is no industrialisation in ratlam. Well keeping the politics aside, the temple was an extraordinary example of craftmanship. It was really wonderful and beautiful. The temple had recently received a terror threat, so nobody could take in their cellphones. So i dont have the pictures of the temple. Its a group of temples. Shiv, Ram, Krishna, Ganpati, Hanuman and Durga temples. The architecture was really wonderful.


During this travel for seeing all the temples, my relative had to receive many calls. These many calls seemed to be a bit distracting and time consuming. But i thought that it was ok to attend the calls. Later in the evening he said to me that all those calls were for me. Those were the calls from parents of girls for me. They wanted my details. This was my first encounter with the interview process.

So my Relative was busy talking to the fathers of the prospective brides, and here I was feeling the heat – both on the outside in the sunny weather and inside as to what I need to do.

The day was filled with lots of festive food (The day being start of Ganesh Utsav - Ganesh Chaturthi), anxiety and ACIDITY. I had a terrible acidity with the food I had to take in. The food had lots of sweetness, lots of oil and lots of ghee. I may be sounding one of those extra calorie conscious psychopaths but I am not. I am one of those who eat a lot of these stuffs, but not to this extent of having acidity. It was really too much. It was the extreme. It all started in morning. In the morning I had to eat 2 plates full of “pohe” – the rice flakes. It’s the staple dish for breakfast in those parts of the country. Along with that I had to have 2 samosa and 2 kachori. Damn god, it was really too much. All this happened at around 11 am. And then when I hadn’t even digested my breakfast it was already time to have the lunch. Lunch had 2 sweets and dal, baati, churma. Lunch was served along with the side dishes too. Ohh god! Why did I make this rule for not leaving any food behind in the dish? It would had been a lot better if not for this rule. But anyways this was the start for the first time for “Days of Acidity”.

At night I slept tight and without any thought of what was coming ahead the next day. It was the silence before a storm.

The silence.

Interesting

Hello All,
I wish to write this blog as a general e-mail letter which i generally used to write. So the following format will be somewhat similar to that.
Actually i haven't written blog from last 2 weeks and was having the feeling of being negligent towards my very own blog. i had the sinking feeling of this odd deed i did.
Well from last week onwards i have been traveling and traveling a lot. i have been in 6 states of India already, had a plan for the seventh but as i was really too much tired my stamina for more traveling gave up. now i shall just return back home.

1St September: I started my travel from bangalore to mumbai. The purpose of the whole trip was to attend the death ceremony of my uncle. So i thought lets have a look at the friends on the way itself. So i started on and went ahead. Traveling to mumbai was starting phase of the very big travel. Bangalore had a wonderful weather to start with. It was raining in bangalore when i started. It was a wonderful weather. Train was at 3.25pm but i started from house at around 12.30 itself, for fears of water clogged roads or the more famous of bangalore traffic jams. (i did not wanted to miss this particular trip, and wanted a very good start for this one.) so i reached railway station well before time and then the railways came to rescue. The announcement was being made "Lokmanya tilak terminus express is running late by around 30 minutes". Gosh now i have to spend 2 hours on platform doing nothing.
But then i had to carry on with the boredom. And finally i heard those beautiful words, the train was approaching the. There was one thing i dread while traveling by train, and that is "Hijada's" (The third type of sex). I dunno why, but i get a weird feeling while they are around, and i always try to neglect them. And as luck shall provide it, these kinds of personalities were available at the station and were ready to board the same train as Me. Well then for the first time i didnt faced any problems from them during the journey so i felt good. Then the journey was good, except for the weather. I was sweating right from the time i left Bangalore boundaries. En-route to Mumbai, i had traveled in Andhra Pradesh also.
I had a wonderful company for my travel. They were so co-operative that they allowed me to finish reading my novel. They didnt even talked between themselves. Hats off to them. A Truly Wonderful Experience.

2nd September: Saving grace was the beautiful morning which was a damn good welcome for me. Took some pics of the beauty. The indian countryside. I had never seen the indian villages on my travel. I had seen them when i was a kid and then i had only seen the high trekking mountains and the beautiful valley. But this was more soothing. It was the place where our food is grown, its the place of life. Looking at the vast expanse of the fields, i felt a pinch of jealousy for not being able to be there. It right now is my dream to own a 50 acre of agriculture land and own a house in it. Give it to farmers for farming. I wanna have this thing.....

By Afternoon i was in the urban areas of Maharashtra. I was seeing all the dirt and the lethargy of the living. This was in stark difference to the nature i had seen in morning. By the time i had reached my final stop i was at the Kalyan station. Kalyan local station was just a passage ahead. I bought the local train ticket. It had a very good facility of a person shelling out the tickets using his smart card. I got down at CST i.e VT. From there my friend had come in to receive me. We then went on to Pizza Hut. I was damn hungry and also was bathing in my own sweat. Finally was able to get into the Air Conditioned room of Pizza Hut. With this experience i started becoming more appreciative of Bangalore Weather, or in short Bangalore. I was of the opinion for not settling down in bangalore due to the difference of languages, and the rising cost of living. But then weather was the breaking point of all the negativities.

My friend had already made the arrangements for my visit. I stayed at her house till evening and then i had to start for the next slab of my travel to the Dhaar. It was nice. She was amongst my "circle of trust". Details later. From there on i took a cab to the station of my boarding, the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus. I boarded the train and after half an hour it started. I had my dinner in the train. For the first time i had a good company to chat to. I had people who were willing to have some discussions and not sit like manequins. And then theres the end of the day.


Rest of the journey details shall be put up in the next blog. Keep reading.

Regards,
Antariksh.

My Trip

Hello Freinds in some days i shall be putting up the detailed report of my trip. I had taken a log break from my office. All the fun and the sorrows shall be listed out here. keep reading and commenting.

Regards,

Antariksh

Priceless Trick

Grandmother was pretending to be lost in prayer, but her prayer-beads were spinning at top speed. That meant she was either excited or upset.Mother put the receiver down. "Some American girl in his office, she's coming to stay with us for a week."She sounded as if she had a deep foreboding.Father had no such doubt. He knew the worst was to come. He had been matching horoscopes for a year, but my brother Vivek had found a million excuses for not being able to visit India, call any of the chosen Iyer girls, or in any other way advance father's cause.Father always wore four parallel lines of sacred ash on his forehead.Now there were eight, so deep were the furrows of worry on his forehead. I sat in a corner, supposedly lost in a book, but furiously text-messaging my brother with a vivid description of the scene before me.

A few days later I stood outside the airport with father. He tried not to look directly at any American woman going past, and held up the card reading "Barbara".Finallya large woman stepped out, waved wildly and shouted "Hiiii! Mr.Aayyyezh,how ARE you?"Everyone turned and looked at us. Father shrank visibly before my eyes.Barbara took three long steps and covered father in a tight embrace.Father's jiggling out of it was too funny to watch. I could hear him whispering "Shiva Shiva!" She shouted "you must be Vijaantee?" "Yes, Vyjayanthi"I said with a smile. I imagined little half-Indian children calling me"Vijaantee aunty!" Suddenly, my colourless existence in Madurai had perked up. For at least the next one week, life promised to be quite exciting.Soon we were eating lunch at home. Barbara had changed into an even shorter skirt. The low neckline of her blouse was just in line with father's eyes.He was glaring at mother as if she had conjured up Barbara just to torture him. Barbara was asking "You only have vegetarian food? Always??" as if the idea was shocking to her. "You know what really goes well with Indian food,especially chicken? Indian beer!" she said with a pleasant smile,seemingly oblivious to the apoplexy of the gentleman in front of her, or the choking sounds coming from mother. I had to quickly duck under the table to hide my giggles.Everyone tried to get the facts without asking the one question on all our minds: What was the exact nature of the relationship between Vivek and Barbara? She brought out a laptop computer. "I have some pictures of Vivek"she said. All of us crowded around her. The first picture was quite innocuous. Vivek was wearing shorts, and standing alone on the beach. Inthe next photo, he had Barbara draped all over him. She was wearing a skimpy bikini and leaning across, with her hand lovingly circling his neck.Father got up, and flicked the towel off his shoulder.It was a gesture we in the family had learned to fear.He literally ran to the door and went out.Barbara said "It must be hard for Mr. Aayyezh. He must be missing his son." We didn't have the heart to tell her that if the son had been within reach, father would have lovingly wrung his neck.

My parents and grandmother apparently had reached an un-spoken agreement. They would deal with Vivek later. Right now Barbara was a foreigner, a lone woman, and needed to be treated as an honored guest.It must be said that Barbara didn't make that one bit easy. Soon mother wore a perpetual frown.Father looked as though he could use some of that famous Indian beer.Vivek had said he would be in a conference in Guatemala all week, and wouldbe off both phone and email. But Barbara had long lovey-dovey conversations with two other men, one man named Steve and another named Keith. The restof us strained to hear every interesting word. "I miss you!" she said to both.She also kept talking with us about Vivek, and about the places they'd visited together. She had pictures to prove it, too. It was all very confusing.This was the best play I'd watched in a long time. It was even better than the day my cousin ran away with a Telugu Christian girl. My aunt had come howling through the door, though I noticed that she made it to the plushest sofa before falling in a faint. Father said that if it had been his child,the door would have been forever shut in his face.Aunt promptly revived and said "You'll know when it is your child!"

How my aunt would rejoice if she knew of Barbara!On day five of her visit, the family awoke to the awful sound of Barbara's retching. The bathroom door was shut, the water was running, but far louder was the sound of Barbara crying and throwing up at the same time. Mother and grandmother exchanged ominous glances. Barbara came out, and her face was red. "I don't know why", she said, "I feel queasy in the mornings now."If she had seen as many Indian movies as I'd seen, she'd know why.Motherwas standing as if turned to tone. Was she supposed to react with the compassion reserved for pregnant women? With the criticism reserved for pregnant unmarried women? With the fear reserved for pregnant unmarried foreign women who could embroil one's son in a paternity suit?Mother, who navigated familiar, flows of married life with the skill of a champion oarsman, now seemed completely taken off her moorings.She seemed to hope that if she didn't react it might all disappear like a bad dream.I made a mental note to not leave home at all for the next week.Whatevermy parents would say to Vivek when they finally got a-hold of him would be too interesting to miss. But they never got a chance.The day Barbara was to leave, we got a terse email from Vivek. "Sorry,still stuck in Guatemala. Just wanted to mention, another friend ofmine,Sameera Sheikh needs a place to stay. She'll fly in from Hyderabad tomorrowat 10am. Sorry for the trouble."

So there we were, father and I, with a board saying "Sameera". At last apretty young woman in salwar-khameez saw the board, gave the smallest ofsmiles, and walked quietly towards us. When she did 'Namaste' to father,Ithought I saw his eyes mist up.She took my hand in the friendliest way and said "Hello, Vyjayanthi,I've heard so much about you." I fell in love with her. In the car father was unusually friendly. She and Vivek had been in the same group of friends in Ohio University. She now worked as a Child Psychologist.She didn't seem to be too bad at family psychology either. She took out a shawl for grandmother, a saree for mother and Hyderabadi bangles for me."Just some small things. I have to meet a professor at Madurai University,and it's so nice of you to let me stay" she said. Everyone cheered up.Even grandmother smiled. At lunch she said "This is so nice. When I make sambar, it comes out like chole, and my chole tastes just like sambar".Mother was smiling. "Oh just watch for 2 days, you'll pick it up."Grandmother had never allowed a muslim to enter the kitchen. But mother seemed to have taken charge, and decided she would bring in who ever she felt was worthy. Sameera circumspectly stayed out of the puja room, but on the third day ,I was stunned to see father inviting her in and telling her which idols had come to him from his father. "God is one" he said.Sameera nodded sagely.By the fifth day, I could see the thought forming in the family's collective brains. If this fellow had to choose his own bride, why couldn't it be someone like Sameera? On the sixth day, when Vivek called from the airport saying he had cut short his Gautemala trip and was on his way home,all had a million things to discuss with him. He arrived by taxi at a time when Sameera had gone to the University."So, how was Barbara's visit?" he asked blithely. "How do you know her?"mother asked sternly. "She's my secretary" he said. "She works very hard,and she'll do anything to help." He turned and winked at me.Oh, I got the plot now! By the time Sameera returned home that evening,itwas almost as if her joining the family was the elders' idea. "Don't worry about anything", they said, "we'll talk with your parents."

On the wedding day a huge bouquet arrived from Barbara.

"Flight to India - $1500.
Indian kurta - $5.
Emetic to throw up - $1.
The look on your parents' faces - priceless" it said.