R A N D O M N E S S

Board Game Bash

2009-12-04T00:16:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago i had attended this event which aimed at bringing people who enjoy playing board games together and actually try to craete a community of sorts. A lot of people actually enjoying playing these games starting off from playing scrabble as a kid graduating to monoply and so forth. Even as of now , a group of my friends get together for what we call "game night" and the competetion actually gets fierce.
I met up with a journalist who had come to cover the event and the evening progressed from there. A friend from work had also decided to attend the event , showing me how people were actually looking for something different. There was a scattering of people on various tables and i wondered how it was going to work. The organiser then came out with a bunch of games handing them around , explaining the rules and getting people from different tables to interact and join up to play games of their interest. Our group joint the table which was playing taboo. Introductions were made the game started i was pleasently suprised to see everyone genuinely having a good time. It also showed me how small events like this get strangers to interact which is almost against our city s unfriendly culture. For a change there were no unfriendly glares just people looking to have fun.
In our saturated city I hope that we have some more events like these offering people an alternative to our traditional customs.

STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART

2009-11-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

The worst feeling in the whole world is to not care about yourself , about who you and wheter it is all worth it.....The reason I am writing this is because a few months ago thats exactly where I was and fortunately those unseen forces placed people around me that slowy got me out of that slump by experience.
I started work apprehensive as hell, wondering if if i would survive or if my temper would get ahold of me and drag me deep into places i didnt want to be.

The following few months i worked with 3 girls and it made me realise that life is all about experiences and it is up to us and the people around us to make it pleasent. You could be a fashion diva with an infectious laugh or the laziest person in bbay or someone who can converse about pretty much every thing under the sun and still pull out suprises like rabbits out of a hat, but if you ve got a good heart it makes the experience well worth it. Every place around us - Our home, a resturant, a shop, our work place, a park, a club - its the people who are these places who can define an experience .
Needless to say that after a long depressing period in my life ,the changes started occuring and at first i thought it was because of work but then i realised it was the people around who made that experience worth remembering !! Thanks Divya , Priyanka n Sabiha ...............

MINDSET

2009-08-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, a friend said " the most important thing we need to change here in our country is the mindset of people", and this i think is so important and also very dificult. This i say after spending 27 in our and city and in that time about 6 years travelling around.
I agree that after a certain while it becomes hard to change the very habits which your used to for the past decade but it is not impossible when you see the benifits you get.
To be able to change from being a third world country we need to stop doing things which do not make sense, for example barging into an empty compartment of a train or bus and loads of other things. Nothing in this world is impossible and one thing which will help us progress is opening our minds to the extremely fast changing environment around us.

THE POWER OF A SMILE

2009-08-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

Well I am your typical pessimist , just like most of our city and I find it reallly sad how people in our city dont have the time to even smile at each other. I have lived abroad for about a year and here was the first time i saw random people being actually pleasent to one another. For example the leaving the door open for the person behind was nothing out of the ordinary and replying to this action with a simple "cheers" and a smile (i was staying in Glasgow).
I ve realised how much a simple smile can make a big difference to another person. I rescently started working in an agency and it was my first job after a long long time. Also, this being my first attempt to switch indusries, I was scared senseless with a million questions going through my mind. I was led in and pointed out to my team. I looked up and saw two girls who waved and smiled. A lot of my fear immediately dropped away, "at least they are not unfriendly" i thought, and things went a lot better from there.
A smile,can make such a difference to you maybe to the other person. It makes you realise that there are people in this city who care, who do give a dam. Well maybe not but maybe we can fool ourselves into thinking that anyway!!

Where are we heading?

2009-07-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

Officially turned 27 , a year older and a bit wiser. Well, i don't know how true that is, but i heard this story today which i wanted to write about. I had a nice quiet birthday , chilling on my terrace with a few close friends. Then one friend started talking about the company he works with making us realise how deep corruption in our country runs.
This is one conversation i have repeatedly with people getting the same result. A feeling of utter fustration. Do we really live in a city where corruption is unbreakable? People in Bombay are so upset about our living conditions , and theres no one to vent our fustrations on except the people around us which makes our city like a boiling kettle ready to pop its lid!
My friend works with a company which deals with infrastructure for our city.This co is currently carrying out a lot of projects for our city. It is partly government owned which is reason behind them acquiring tenders even thoough it is supposed to given to the lowest bidder
Even though the project can be carried out , for example within ten lakhs , the tender still goes to this company which has bid one and a half crores. This is where our taxes go and these are the people who decide the level of comfort we live in.
To conclude this .... A long time ago i was sitting in an autorikshaw happily swearing at the government for the miserable job they have done our roads as the rick bounced and swayed all over. Then the driver said something im gonna remember for a long time. He told me that from his point of vew it wasn't only the governments fault but also the people of Bombay. We should stop talking and doing something about it. He said the Govenrment does a shoddy job on the roads because they can. Corruption runs this deep into our system because it is allowed to.
Maybe it s time for us to examine where we are heading and do something to control it so that we dont have to worry about the futire of our city!!

The Company has no real owner except shareholders all over the world . The parent comapny is owned by a lot of major banks operating in India which in turn is owned by the shareholders. My friend also shared with us that the corruption in this company is unbelevable.

RACIALLY AND CULTURALLY DIFFERENT

2009-07-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

I was just watching Russel Peters talking about being an Indian and yet being so culturally different because he was brought up in a different country. For some odd reason even after living in bombay all my life, i still feel the same way. Being raised in a house where the only spoken language was English and my travelling experience being limited to Mahim by the School bus. In fact the first time i travelled by train was in the 12th. In my school again ...English was the "spoken " language. i actually learnt how to speak hindi when i started my career,on ship.
It actually feels really strange to live in a place and feel like such a stranger to its traditions and customs.
So its easy for me to understand how it feels for a person a certain race, living in a different culture. Bandra is a place which seems to have a different culture than the rest of the city. Here the whole feel you get from the place is different. I take a walk on a Saturday night and you actually find well dressed dunk people staggering around as opposed to the rest of the city where u'd find crowds outside nightclubs only. Walk a little further you hear the sounds echoing off someones balcony. Come Sunday morning and the revellers go nurse their hangovers at this small iranian joint called goodluck. Its really suprising how you find so many tatooed youngsters with piercings all over, You wonder if your in the right city.
My view is that is doesnt matter what race your from, it depends where your intrests lie which play a great deal in defining the kind of person you are also the type of culture you follow.It doesnt matter what cultural backround your from , its about being the kind of person you want to be!!!

COLOUR CONCIOUS OR CLOSE MINDED ?

2009-07-18T23:28:00.000-07:00

I am writing this because of article i read rescently in a magazine. Here it stated Indians are not only colour concious but also racist. The article described how Africans in our country face racism and in partiucilar a partiucilar incident about how a young Nigerian national went to a shop to buy a soap and was handed a face whitening one which he tried to exchange and was then told that it would do him good.
Now i need you to imagine how ridiculous this is in our city. There are 200 different languages spoken in our city, many different cultures exsisting under one roof and our we are reffered to as the melting pot. Now this brings to mind an incident which happened years ago at Leopold Cafe, where two black stewardesses were not allowed to enter.
Now from my own personal experiences i wish to write on the topic of racism. I have been around the world ,travelled to a lot of places and stayed in Scotland for about a year. I can let people draw their own judgement from all that i am about to write. The first day we reached Glasgow which is in Scotland where i had gone to study we had bottles chucked at us by some ex-soldiers from the army. How do you think that would make a person feel, the very first day you touch ground in somebody else's country thats the welcome you get. Following that ive had pepperments thrown on me , been asked by a vagabond if i had come there because my country wasnt good enough? Apart from these incidents there this one time i was in a phone booth deep in a coversation and when iv looked up, i see these 5 huge Scotts outside the booth banging on the pane calling me a nigger. Now , Russel Peters can joke about racism and culture all he wants but this still hurts.
I worked in a bar part time in Glasgow. There was this one time when they caught an Indian stealing money and fired all the Indians working in the bar. In my own college there was this underlying sense of racism. When will we wake up and realise that whatever the colour of our skin is to the Western world we are still black and come from a third world country. I have a cousin whose half white and half Indian and still suffers from racial discrimination in UK.
The article says that India suffers from a Colonial "hangover" , well its really time to get over it because a person really cannot be judged on the colour of their skin. Its what in your mind and heart that counts. Closemindedness or in Sociological terms "Ethnocentrism" leads to wars and brings about the unravelling of our society!!!!

KEYS TO OUR MEMORIES

2009-06-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

Some time ago,I ran into an old school friend on one of those days where you party till the break of dawn. Its really nice to see old faces of people youve known all your life ....
Well ,in one conversation she started talking about how people hold keys to our memories which i found interesting and so accurate. Sometimes you have these incidents hidden deep down in your subconcious and suddenly you meet a person having a memory of the incident or rather the key and that person unlocks it for you.
I have heard a sayin "Memories never die , just fade away" , well i guess these keys dont allow them to fade away. Sometimes i think thats what life is all about ..building up on good memories wheter it is with your family , your love friends ......its all about the memories !!! so heres to making new and amazing ones in times ahead !!!

Mumbai ... the rudest city in the world ? maybe ...maybe not!!

2009-06-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

I once read an article saying that our city is the rudest in the world. Well to some level i cannot disagree with that statement while on other levels i can. Today as i was serenly crossing the road in the daze i am normally in, file in hand a cabbie rudely woke me up making me sprint. Now in doing this I upset some loose papers in my file causing them to scatter all over the road. I was in turmoil because the papers were pretty important. Suddenly to my suprise two passer-bys have not only stopped the oncoming traffic but assisted me in running after the scattered papers. I was really thankful not only for the papers but also for helping me to restore some of the faith in the people of our dear city. Its true, on the road in the train people shove you but its because they have to . In our city its survival of the fittest. Circumstances make people act the way they are . The conditions set down by our government makes people in our city cranky thus leading to bursts of road rage etc.
I guess sometimes we need to look at the better side of things and coming from a pessimist like me that means something ....lol ....peace!!!!!!

Patchy!!

2009-05-28T23:27:00.000-07:00

I actually had no idea what to start off this blog with, so I chose the simplest thing. The one thing that can make me smile no matter how depressed I am; Patchy. People meet the dog that doesn't bark and could reform dog haters worlwide. She isnt living anymore but will always have a place in my heart and all those who loved her. She touched my life at a time i needed it the most. They say animals have a calming effect on people, its true. The best thing you can get when you wake up is a dogs unconditional love. Born down the road thus is a bandra dog at heart , she will never be forgotten....love you sweety R.I.P.