Getting my Number

First my apologies for being extremely lax (again) in updating the blog even though a number of things could have found their way on this page... I leave that for some other time but for now, I've had an epiphany that had to be shared... Read on...

I never thought the day would come when I would give the importance of an identity to a 10-digit number. But it came, yesterday, when my old number that I have been using for over 6 years was activated after a week's futile attempts at getting my micro-SIM started. (The futile attempts are a subject for another post altogether).
Coming back to the importance of my old number; To begin with, six long years of being a way of identifying me; who I call, who I message and whose calls I don't answer... This number became a part of who I was. When did this happen? I really don't know, but I realized it only last week when a temporary number that was assigned to me in its stead just didn't seem right. It was like calling me by another name...
It's not that this is my first mobile number; If I'm not mistaken its probably my third or fourth, but what sets it apart is that it has been with me for the longest time.
Call me looney if you will, but I love my mobile number and don't want to change it for anything in this world...

Where are you this New Year's Eve?

It was one of that usual lunch time banter. Since the day was 31st December, the conversation revolved around "So what are you doing tonight?"

The answers to that ubiquitous question one asks, either to make conversation or just out of curiosity, especially on this particular day were:

1. I'm having a house-party with close friends coming over.

2. I'm going to a close friend's house-party.

3. I'm at home... gonna catch up on some sleep.

4. I'll be attending the New Year's mass at Church.

5. I'm going to spend the evening with my parents and siblings at home.

My mind went back to a similar conversation a couple of years ago. My lunch mates -- similar in their lifestyle and backgrounds. But the answers were:

1. Oh I'm heading out of Mumbai for that Bollywood Party in Pune.

2. I'm going to JW Marriott for the New Year party.

3. I'm going to party-hop between a friend's house party, then on to a party at the Renaissance and from then on to a farm-party on the outskirts on Mumbai.

4. Oh I'm going to this farm-house party with a friend, and her friends (I still can't figure that one out)...

5. I'm going for a dinner at my cousin's place (That was me... feeling a little out of place with all the party animals around me)

So what's different this time around. Is the world suddenly turning into a home-body like me? Or is this a new trend?

I saw the futility of New Year parties after attending one (which was quite a few years ago). Here's what I concluded after going to that do:

1. Half the time you don't know the people and therefore conversation is almost always stilted.

2. The food, almost always, is BAD. It is cold, congealed and yes, there's hardly anything for the vegetarian.

3. You see strangers, high on the free booze, making a complete ass of themselves all around you. While that may be highly entertaining in the beginning, it gets a tad monotonous after sometime.

4. It's so crowded that you most often tend to get kissed by the wrong person when midnight strikes, and in many cases that's deliberate.

5. The prospects of ringing in the new year in your car as you try to outmaneuver your neighboring vehicle in the mother of all traffic jams is very real.

6. Unless it is 31st December 2010, the next day is a week-day which means going to work bleary eyed and beginning your New Year with endless cups of coffee / tea to just keep yourself awake.

My list could go on. But let me stop here, before I'm labelled the party pooper. Like me, this year, a lot more people have seen the light and are preferring to stay home. At least that's what I gather from my little survey.

But well, for those of you who are heading out, looks like there's going to be less traffic jams this year and your parties are going to be a little less claustrophobic. So you might as well drink up to that !!!!

Here's wishing everyone a very happy 2011.

Remembering Dadu

We were expecting it for a long time. But when the news came, they still felt completely unexpected. Reaching Pune, I saw her -- her face serene as I always remembered it. I wanted to shake her, like I did when I was a kid and she would play dead just to get to me. But I knew this time there would be no waking up with a smile, while I pouted. There would be no movement. She was lost to me -- forever.
Strangely, my mind went back to those long nights in the hospital room about 6 years ago when I had written about how I wanted her to stay on for just a little bit more. How I wanted God to give that frail body, which held a great spirit just some more time, just a few more years. I guess He was looking over my shoulder when I wrote that note. For not only did she hold on, but recovered from an illness, even if it was for some years.
My mind wandered to the times we had together as I kept vigil through the night. To the shared pastry I hid and got for her in hospital to celebrate her Birthday. To the smile that lit up her countenance every time I would come home -- making it feel like a homecoming in the true sense. It wandered to my days as a child, an adolescent and an adult where she had been a constant presence in my life. To the times when she would sit with me to watch the Grammies -- just to see her favourites -- MJ and Tina Turner perform.
My mind went back to the times she would think I'm fast asleep and would touch my eyes, my face just to feel her precious granddaughter breathing next to her.
It went back to the times when she made a face when I placed a plate of pasta in front of her, only to fall in love with the dish once she tasted it.
I thought of the two of us making smart comments whenever Mum and Dad had an argument. I went back to the time we went for a drive in the car we'd just bought -- just the two of us.
Now looking at that body that had lost my dadu's, I felt it would be tough not to miss her. For Dadu had always told me that you can't miss a person who's always in your thoughts, your memories -- they live on there forever and ever.
And yet, I'll miss my dadu and I'll never get over missing that special homecoming smile reserved just for me.
May you rest in peace dadu. I'll love you today and forever.

Cynical... all over again

Despite all those good intentions, I haven't been blogging for almost a year. Bad girl that I may have been, I realize that the commitment fundas I had written about in my previous blog stand true even today. For the record -- gymming stopped within three months, I piled on the kilos again and well I'm back to being just me.
Without really dwelling over the past months, let me now fast forward to the present -- and to what's bothering me enough to write a blog on it.
One of my first blogs was on how many senior journalists are so cynical. Well, that is possibly what someone half my age would call me today if they were to hear me speaking on the industry.
So rather than becoming one of the cynics, I thought it best to find a form of journalism that let's me stay close to my love for writing meaningful stuff and yet not get drawn into the whole deadline-for-story-so-I'll-quote-the-first-guy-who-picks-up-the-phone syndrome.
Nine years is a long time in journalism and I've seen the industry changing.
You could call me a product of the middle-school of journalism.
Let me explain: You have old-school journalism where ideals, rights and pen is mightier than the sword hold sway. Then there's the new school, where everything is driven by marketing, by ad revenues, clients, social media, advertising and oh by-the-way-journalism, that becomes a mere tool to achieve those ends.
And then, there's the middle school: While people belonging to this type of thinking do understand and appreciate the role of marketing and ad revenues in the whole scheme of things that's journalism, they have still not forgotten some of the old-school rules.
People like me, and I know of many who left this field because of the sheer disgust at what the industry is becoming, still feel that something like editorial sanctity exists.
But then, we are cynics...

Commitment

You need to be committed or addicted to blogging if you are to write a blog regularly. I have successfully stayed away from addictions of any kind be it smoking, alcohol, work... you get the gist? And am happy to remain that way as long as I live.
Commitment? Now that's a different ball game altogether. I have come to realise that I'm a commitment phobic and was surprised when I made the first big commitment of my life by taking the plunge after 3 years of dating a man who was patient enough to let me be when I was scared of committing (I think that's what tipped the scale in his favour...)
I've hardly ever remained committed to anything... I have changed gyms and workouts because I could never stay committed to one, have changed hairstyles every six months for most of my life because I couldn't make up my mind whether long hair or short hair looked better, I have tried all the diets in the book without really completing any one of them and these are just some tiny examples.
So the question keeps coming back to niggle me. Will I be committed enough to write a book, the idea for which is just buzzing around in my mind? Will I be proactive enough to commit myself to writing at least a page everyday?
To tell you the truth, I have my doubts. But then I had doubts about gymming regularly and that's changing... They say people change and I would really like to change, if not for anything else, just to tell the world a story that is just waiting to be told...

Wrinkles? Who cares!

There's this procedure of inserting a needle into those fine wrinkles on your face to relax your muscles and in turn smoothen those crow's feet, laugh lines, and frown lines on your face to make you look younger. But there's a catch. You would need to do this every 4-6 months, or may be more often as you grow older and those wrinkles really set in.

I always wonder, why would anyone want to do that? In the quest to look perennially young, don't you think you're playing around with your own self esteem? I don't know about others, but for me, looking good is not the same as looking young. You change as a person as you grow, then why should you not want to change the way you look? I wouldn't want needle jabs all over my face (the claim is that it feels like a tiny ant bite... now as age progresses and wrinkles increase with it, just imagine the number of ant bites you would need to suffer). No I wouldn't want that. Talk of a fit healthy body and that's a quest everyone should look for as long as they live. Talk of a mind that's young at heart, that's willing to adopt change and that makes leeway for a newer generation... and that's exactly the type of person I would want to be when I get older -- Fit in mind and body-- So what if I have a few wrinkles? They're just going to add character.

Save the earth

I got this on my email today and feel compelled to share it with you. The speech that's transcripted below was given many years ago but still holds true today. Do read it.
This beautiful speech was given by a 12 year old girl to save Mother Earth. The following is the transcript of the speech that Severn Suzuki gave to the Plenary Session at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio Centro, Brazil. Severn was twelve years old then.
Hello, I'm Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O. - The Environmental Children's Organisation. We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference:Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money ourselves to come six thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future.Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come.I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard.I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go. We cannot afford to be not heard.I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air because I don't know what chemicals are in it.I used to go fishing in Vancouver with my dad until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear about animals and plants going exinct every day -- vanishing forever.In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterfilies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see.Did you have to worry about these little things when you were my age?All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but I want you to realise, neither do you!You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert.If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it! Here, you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organisers, reporters or poiticians - but really you are mothers and fathers, brothers and sister, aunts and uncles - and all of you are somebody's child.I'm only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong, in fact, 30 million species strong and we all share the same air, water and soil -- borders and governments will never change that. I'm only a child yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal.In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid to tell the world how I feel.In my country, we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, and yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to share.In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter -- we have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets.Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with some children living on the streets. And this is what one child told us: "I wish I was rich and if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter and love and affection."If a child on the street who has nothing, is willing to share, why are we who have everyting still so greedy?I can't stop thinking that these children are my age, that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born, that I could be one of those children living in the Favellas of Rio; I could be a child starving in Somalia; a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India.I'm only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this earth would be!At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us to behave in the world. You teach us:not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures to share - not be greedy.Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? Do not forget why you're attending these conferences, who you're doing this for -- we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying "everyting's going to be alright" , "we're doing the best we can" and "it's not the end of the world".But I don't think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My father always says "You are what you do, not what you say."Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you for listening
(Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been active in environmental and social justice work ever since kindergarten. She was twelve years old when she gave this speech, and she received a standing ovation. Now 23, Cullis-Suzuki spearheads The SkyFish Project and continues to speak to schools and corporations, and at many conferences and international meetings. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.)