Things I really miss about India

Who doesn't miss their family, friends, food and favorite hang-outs?. Everyone does and they always will. Living in United States for few years now, have made me not miss them too much. I have found and accepted a different way of living. As such this a great place to live for most Indians. But there are things, however trivial, that cannot be substituted. The following are those things I still wish could still have even when I am quite aware that they may not mean the same thing anymore.

The morning news papers - I was made to read out loud the local newspapers everyday by my uncle as soon as I was old enough to read. His idea was that its a good way to learn the grammar. By doing that he made me a compulsive reader. Later when I was in college breakfast didn't taste the same without that morning newspaper. I remember holidays (there are lots of them in India) when newspaper was not printed and I felt like I was missing something. I became habitual reader of international column. But, first to be read was the sports page which was most part about Cricket and then internationals and then front page and then editorials. I miss the news about people I knew and news about the places I knew and grew up. News papers here in US seems to be about people I don't know and places I don't know. Online news sites or even ePapers doesn't come even close to having a big sheet of newspaper in front of me.

Festivals - Time of the year from Thanks-giving to Christmas is festive here alright, but not close to any festivals in India. It depends on where in India you come from to say how many festivals there are, But surely there are lots of them and they occur different times of the year at regular intervals. The best thing about the festivals was people are happy, even the grumpy ones. The atmosphere gets almost heavenly and they all forgot day=to-day life's trials and trivials, even though for a day. In small towns like mine just to going to the market place and see how festive the atmosphere was to be an experience in itself. Those big city (Bangalore) people will probably never get this one.

Veda/Bhagwatha/Gimini Bharatha Patayana - I know, this sounds too Brahamnistic which I am not. This one may also be a bit nostalgic but this is something I really miss. We had an old Iyengar couple stay right in front of our house. The old lady did the recital of the one of the Vedas/Bhagwathas/Gimini Bharatha (close to what "mantra" means for most Americans but not exactly) every day between breakfast and lunch. We called her 'HeDuru Mane Ajji' and she exactly looked like M. S. Subbalaksmi (another Iyengar of course). She read the recitals out loud which we could hear even at the back of our house. As I was educated in a school where all those things were thought I knew what she read. I can still remember what days she read them. She did read them on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Here in US, once in a while when I take a weekday off of work and stay in my apartment till noon, I listen to similar things on the net. That's how much I miss it.

People on the streets - Did you Americans know its O.K. to have people walking on the street in a non-city setting? In sub-urban America you rarely see people walking on the street, In India you have to search for a place where there are no people. Why do I miss seeing people on the street? Because I think the place is alive when people are walking about. It makes me feel I am not the only piece of sh** on that stretch of the road who is having a hard day. Seeing other people in public, walking or doing whatever they do, puts things in perspective. I don't have to go to local mall to see if rest of the town is alive, just taking a walk for 5 minutes from my house I will see more people than I can ever see at Wall-mart the whole of a Saturday afternoon.

Hanging out with friends on street side - Going to a mall to hang out with friends is good. But, just to hang out with friends on a street corner or near the entrance to the stadium where we played Cricket or on the street where street vendors sold evening snacks (chaat) or near entrance to our college campus. To while away time on the street-side stores drinking tea with your buddies was as much a part of the day as anything else we did for fun.

Riding my motorcycle - There is a whole new way of transportation in most of India. Instead of driving from point A to point B at 50 miles per hour here, Its complete different experience riding my motorcycle at 30 miles per hour to get around anywhere. Of course I am not talking about big city traffic-jams. But just to ride motorcycle at that laid-back speed instead of flying at great speeds is more relaxing. (I know it sucks when it comes to going to work everyday that way)

Test Match Cricket

After many days I am watching Test Match Cricket. How much better can it be when the Test matches are in England? The grounds are green, the buildings are white, people are quite (you hear few Desis shouting "jindabad...jindabad...", the commentary is good (and "English"). All in all, its conditions where cricket is pure, to play and watch. Its such a pity that India tours England only twice every decade and its even worse if you live in US as you don't get to watch English Cricket season on TV.

By the time I sorted out the issues with my laptop to watch the 1st test between India and England at Lord's it was the 3rd day of the Test match. It was such a beautiful summer day here in US and what better way to start the day and spend most of it watching Cricket? It is such a good feeling, early in the morning, snuggled up under a blanket and dosing off every few minutes to be woken up by occasional cheer for a boundary or a wicket. It was the same wonderful experience I had then, when India toured Australia in 2000 and I was watching it in India and now, living on this side of the Atlantic, India touring England.

There has to be very good reason why the quality of TV pictures are so good of cricket matches played in England, Australia, New Zealand and even in South Africa. But the pictures from the Indian subcontinent looks dusty and humid. May be this has something to do with the countries being in tropical climates. But whatever the reasons the pictures look colorful, crisp and pristine in England.

As far the noisy crowd goes I think its just showing their enthusiasm in different ways. Spectators in England just clap at the end of the over or when a boundary is hit or when a wicket falls. Where as in Australia they are more involved and in south Africa there are more bikinis in the crowd than anywhere else. And spectators in India, I was one for a few matches in Bangalore, just shout and make noise. I watched an ice-hockey game when Carolina Hurricanes played knock-offs in RBC Center here Raleigh during their Stanley Cup wining season in 2006. And the Arena has this big Flashy Marquee and whenever there was a break or time-out in play, there was a message/request on it encouraging people to make some 'Noise'. I was thinking, may be these people should watch a cricket match in Bangalore when 50 thousand people are shouting at the top of their voice.

Then there is Cricket commentary. It doesn't get better than David Gower, Ion Botham, David Lloyd, Michael Holding and whole lot of others. Its not just about describing what is going in the field, you see that yourself. Its more to do with adding something to the pictures we are already seeing. I like to think of it as narrating. Like the exchange between David Gower and Ion Botham on 4th Day of Lords Test. There were talking about the highest successful run chases in Tests at Lords and they show the list of run chases and when they happened. West Indies chasing England's 344 in 1984 was the highest.

David Gower : For some reason West Indies chasing 344 in 1984 is at the top of the list.
Ion Botham : Because you played in that game.
David Gower : And you bowled in that game.

These are the simple little things that make Test Match Cricket worth watching. The other thing about Test Match Cricket is the timeless-ness of it. I felt like nothing has changed since I started watching Test cricket 13-14 years back.

Laptop, cellphone and a Cricket Match

I was looking forward for India's tour of England for sometime. And I was mad-as-hell to find the day before the 1st Test Match that the live video streaming is not supported on my new MacBook. This is has been the only time I needed Windows since I bought a MacBook 6 months ago. By the end of the second day's play, I couldn't take it any more and installed Boot Camp and Windows XP on my MacBook and bought the online package for live video streaming for rest of the series. I spent rest of that Friday evening/night trying to connect the Windows XP display on MacBook to the TV through the mini-DVI-to-Video adapter. After couple hours trying various things I found out that this is one of the unsupported features of Boot Camp. So much for "intel-Mac-Windows"!

By the time I went to bed it was 1:30AM and I had to wake up at 6:00AM to watch 3rd day's play. I setup the alarm clock in my cell phone and Motorola being Motorola, not only I had to setup the alarm but also I had to *enable* it! What kind of an Idiot wants to setup the alarm if he had no intention of enabling it? Shouldn't editing the alarm clock mean, set the time and enable the damn thing? Anyways, I setup the alarm but forgot to enable it.

Guess what?! when I opened my eyes next day the clock next to my bed read "5:56". I exactly knew what it meant and what I have to do next. This was right out of sleep! It is like someone inside you waking you up. It's the same thing that happens to me when I wake up just before the alarm goes off if I have to catch a flight or start a trip early in the morning. How come that never happens when I have to go to Work? Everyday I have to drag myself out of the bed at 8:00 AM and then curse rest of the world for me having to wake up that early. It is such a *shitty* feeling.

Once I was up at 5:56AM, I switched on my MacBook. As I start watching the Cricket, I got curious why my cellphone alarm didn't go off at 6:00 and found out that I forgot to *enable* the alarm. I was gald that I made it without the alarm.

You shitt-heads at Motorola are not stopping me from getting up early in the morning to watch Ganguly completely clueless against Anderson.

I got my Sixth Sense right!

Spoiler WARNING : If you have not seen M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, please don't read further. Its a wonderful movie and you must see it.

Way back when the movie came out on the (Video) CD, I rented to watch it on my Desktop. I was using that crappy Windows Media Player to watch movies as I didn't know any better. The Media Player used to hang in the middle of the movie. That was a usual problem for which I had a standard solution. The problem was scratches on the CD. My solution was to eject the CD out and clean it and put it back in and continue watching the movie from the point it was broken. If it didn't work, repeat the same thing each time advancing the time a little bit so that I didn't miss much. There were times when nothing could work and I ended up watching parts of a movie.

As I was watching the movie The Sixth Sense (Nope, I didn't see any dead people!) it got hung couple of times at different points in the movie. So I did what I always did, making sure (I hoped) that I didn't miss much. Towards the end of the movie it happened again. This is the scene in the movie where Bruce Willies comes home to see his wife watching their wedding video. The whole twist in the movie is in that 2-3 minutes, when he realizes what he is. I tried cleaning the CD and the best I could do was start it from 2-3 minutes later when it looked like something dawned on him and he seems to have accepted it and looked like he was saying good-bye to his wife. The movie ended very soon after that. I thought of it as a movie with interpretive endings, which intentionally doesn't have a clear ending. My interpretation (on the basis of what I seen) was that he finally realizes that he can't save his marriage and the kid convinces his mom that he could really see the dead people. I know it doesn't make any sense, I thought the same thing then - it doesn't make any sense, completely unaware of what I have missed.

The reason clearly I remember the details is that,soon after, whenever some of my friends in college got together to watch a movie, this movie's name came up inevitably. Only myself and just this other friend had seen it by then. My friend said this movie has a great ending and (I clearly remember him saying) we should not discuss further so that we don't spoil it for others. He assumed that I knew the ending. Being the brat I was, I used to always tease others who had not seen the movie by repeatedly saying that I would spoil the movie for them. Eventually they got around to watch the movie and said it was really an awesome ending. For some reason I didn't show interest in discussing it or caring what they really thought of the movie.

After seven years, I finally got to watch the movie in my quest to watch all the movies ranked in imdb's top 250. I sat through the movie remembering my friends and long gone college days. Then, I was shocked to see what I always thought the ending was not. I couldn't wait to email my friends and tell them. Only one of them seemed to understand and said that it would have been hilarious if I had went ahead spoiled the movie to others back then with what I understood, only to have looked like an idiot. Others thought I was stupid to see the movie any other way.

I am not surprised by how stupid I can think or how ignorant I can be. The things that hit me hard are - How, through out seven years since then of watching, talking and discussing about movies, this one was never touched? How come The Sixth Sense was never part of those long hours of drinking when everything that ever was and ever will be was theorized and argued over?

At least, I got my Sixth Sense right!

Home is where Television is?

Look what new things I learnt just this past week watching TV.

The scientists now believe that the true purpose of sleep may be to rerun the maze of the problems that one faced that day and try to find a solution to the problem. So there may be some truth to the saying 'sleeping on a problem'.

The ground was broken for The Pentagon on September 11, 1941.

The DNA of a criminal was extracted from a wall 7 years after the wall has been re-painted. And he was caught

I am not saying I couldn't have learnt these things in any other way. It's not like I started the evening wanting to learn what sleep is or when building The Pentagon started. I could have easily logged on to wikipedia and probably would have ended up knowing more than I ever wanted on each topic. But I did it in between eating dinner and wallowing on my couch. The thing with TV is you are just watching your favorite show and then comes that ever annoying commercial break. You just meddle the remote control to see what else is going on and then these things hit you. Some of them stick some don't. Watching a whole season of UEFA Champion's league or South Park or Formula One or Daily Show is one thing. But watching Science or History Channel or PBS or NGC or 'nothing News' for few minutes here and there and to see what new things you learn about the World...its the Magic of TV!

You know, I have a little bit of history with TV like most others of my age from India. TV became a affordable commodity just as I was growing up. I vaguely remember the time where Radio and Cassette player were the main sources of entertainment. My family bought our first TV when I was 8 years old. After 2 years of watching TV in our national language that I didn't understand then, I was sent off to a residential school where 2-3 hour 'TV Shows' were the high-points of the weekends. It was like sanctioning our fundamental rights as a citizen of socialist India to watch the state-run crappy TV.

By time I finished first year of school and come home for Summer/Winter vacations, people on TV could actually speak my regional language. 'Spiderman' was right after a wild animals show (documentaries mostly set in African plains). 'He-man and Masters of the Universe' was right before the Indian epic 'Ramayana'. Saturday evening - a movie in my regional language, Sunday evening - a movie in the national language and on Sunday afternoon a movie in God-Knows-What-Language (apparently, a award winning movie which no child could ever understand). People eagerly waited to watch the movie songs once week in 'Chitrahaar'. Major news broadcast was once-a-day in three different Languages, English news was after Hindi news and everyone seemed to know the names of all the news readers. When one of the news readers was off air for 3 months everyone knew she was on Maternity leave and they even knew what baby she had when she came back.

Malgudi Days and its unforgettable title song got etched into every child's mind. The synopsis of Sunday's Mahabharata was published in Friday's newspapers. There were TV programs all day long. Soon after, a VHS player makes its own place right next to the TV. We could rent the movies we wanted instead of waiting for it to be on TV. 20 feet long antenna on the terrace gets reduced the height of an umbrella. News of more than one channel of TV spreads around. Couple of years later the antenna is no longer needed. All you ever needed was a Cable through the window of the living room. The remote control which was not used till now finds itself choosing any of 10-15 channels. Everyone could watch TV in my regional language all day.

I finished my High school and came back home to figure out what I should in life. We boys used peep at 'Bay watch' or 'Bold and Beautiful' when nobody is around in the living room. There are English movies and more importantly ESPN, Discovery and BBC. All of a sudden watching TV becomes best way to know the world. Thus, TV becomes default activity when I was home. Couple of years in pre-university college away from home put me through to the Engineering college back in my hometown.

Once you have so many channels to choose from and with few other members of the family having the power to overrule you any given moment, you sure need a personal TV. A personal TV for a someone in 2nd year of College in India does not come easily. You needed to wait for a event so big, the power that be in the family agrees that the only way to have the event go peacefully is to buy you a small personal TV. Cricket World Cup 99 was such an event. Watching your own small little TV needs little separate room which was also a long time demand. And after the World Cup the TV,just decides to stay put in my room. Thus began my life with TV. And of course what good is a TV without Cable, right? There comes the Cable and with it all the HBO, ESPN,Discovery, NGC and BBC I ever wanted.

A computer and the internet on the back of it, still doesn't change watching TV being the default activity. In between I find enough time to graduate out of college. Some days there were 3-4 movies to be watched back to back from 7:30pm to 3:00 am. Other days 'Discovery Profiles' from 11:00 pm put me to sleep. BBC had unmissable documentaries on weekends. Budding India news channels provided all the political debate ever needed. Indianized MTV and Channel V had all the Generation X stuff. Indian pop music with its cool mix of traditional and western music was played all day and night. Regional languages put out 'Mid Night Masala' right after 1:00 am.

Another Cricket World Cup comes and goes And I come to US for studies. For few months TV was forgotten. The TV in US without the cable did not interest me. Then, me having nothing to do with it :), My roommates decide to get a Cable connection. And I reluctantly start watching few channels still missing the Magic of TV back home. I went as far as to assert programming in American TV channels are much better in India, than they actually are in the US. So TV was not same thing anymore mainly due to broadband internet on a personal laptop.

It took 2 years to graduate and find a job and move into a new place. Once in a new place, starting life alone could be difficult. A flat screen TV with a Cable connection can move in with anytime. Slowly, The Simpsons seemed fun to watch, Jay Leno was funny, South Park became one of things to watch, Science Channel was worth watching daily, C-SPAN keept me interested from time to time, watching FOX news and Bill Oreilly made watching Jon Stewart really funny and gratifying. History Channel showed all - everything that happened and that did not happen in World War II. Discovery channel dedicated a whole weekend to JFK's 'magic bullet theory'.

But there came another problem. With so many shows and programs to watch and a day job in hand, life could be chaotic. A call to the Cable provider brought a DVR to the apartment with few dollars extra per month. Now life became worth living as there are recorded TV shows to suit any mood anytime of the Day. Formula One races can be watched skipping all the commercials, 'Meet The Press' on Sunday morning gives me all the political caffeine to last a week and Science Channel programs on Space, Universe and Cosmos put me into sleep very gently at night.

"Home is where the heart is". I agree. But is it also true for me that "Home is where Television is?" - May be!

Less Ordinary

I started blogging in earnest couple of years back. But every single time I start, the blogs went on to take on confrontational tone. When it got too hot to handle and I just deleted the blog only to start on something else few weeks later. It took me a while realize that may be I am biting too much than I can chew. Not for nothing the things I blogged about are here for centuries and not one single argument ever won. Of course, I was blogging about God,Religion and Politics.

It took me sometime to realize that may be I don't have enough academic or other-wise training and knowledge to tackle these issues. So I told myself I am gona let these things go now and start a blog completely on something which does not automatically lead into an argument. I feel that life is simple if you take it not seriously. I appear casual person in life but I think seriously. I hope to keep myself casual in this blogging attempt. I have seen many blogs which do that and make a real good reading. Talking about simple little things which makes life that more enjoyable.

For most parts I consider myself just an ordinary guy. But I have the tendency to see and describe simple mundane things as more than extra-ordinary. That is the idea behind this title anyway.

Does life necessarily become boring for someone who is too ordinary? or Does all other things become more enjoyable because his/her life is so ordinary? Debatable???. Nope, I am not even tempted to get into that one. I just feel that May be both are right and both are wrong. (May be they teach these kind of things in Diplomacy Class, if there is one)

Long time ago, When I was in high school I had a desire to start a Diary. I remember the main motivation behind that being that I put in words I what I wanted to remember later. But it never realized mainly due to telling myself If it is so important I will remember it anyway. How wrong and naive was I? Whenever I think about it I feel real guilty for having that great idea and then failing to discipline myself to do it. I was lazy then, I am lazy now. Whats more, I love beer now. So Its gotten much worse :(