Educated illiteracy

One day on a chat:
Indian1: wow, your tour snaps are great. Everyplace is beautiful, except India :(
Indian2: That's not fair, I love India n its beauty. Just because other places are new to us, they have a diff charm.
Indian1: lol, I meant clean
Indian2: yeah India will get cleaner day by day; it's up to us to not throw garbage on the roads
Indian1: where is de place on roads to throw anything, he he, jk. But yea you are right, India rocks.

Another Indian has stated her status to be: Once a Indian, always one...., cant grow out of it!!!!

The point is; are we ever going to grow out it? Out of being a typical Indian! We all love our country and want the best for our country and our countrymen so we always complain about the lack of cleanliness and need of better infrastructure. But do we contribute towards it? So dont we become educated illiterates?

No, I’m not in a mood to give a lecture about it, or for that matter play the blame game (uneducated people / lower class people create the litter) or the excuse game (I don’t want to litter on the road but I don’t have an option or how can I stop everyone else).

Nope, I would prefer to be practical and discuss ways in which it is genuinely possible for an Indian to behave as a literate and make our country litter free.
1. Doesn’t mean you have lecture around everyone throwing litter, but would help you could to encourage use of dustbins or garbage bags in your friend circle.
2. Carry your own garbage bag. That could be an inspiration to others.
3. Don’t just preach but use the dustbins available on the station platform and bus depots, even though it means walking a bit.
4. If there are no dustbins available and you really need to throw, look around for a corner where other’s like you have thrown the litter (spreading the litter has les chances of getting cleaned) A corner with litter has more chances of getting cleaned. (doesn’t mean u use it as an option always)
5. Behave like a literate, READ signboards and FOLLOW them. Following instructions is more than half the work done.

I don’t think it’s really so difficult to behave like a literate and not like a ‘LITTER’ate.

Arranged marriage VS Love marriage VS Bachelorhood

Arranged marriage VS Love marriage VS Bachelorhood

Mine was a love marriage. But I’m really not sure how much difference it made? I mean I feel arranged / love it’s all the same in the end. It’s marriage.

For e.g. You see a guy you get attracted to him, you like the way he makes you feel, the gifts, the galore, you get along and so you marry him.

Well, after marriage things change, suddenly the girl isn’t a girlfriend/fiancé any more but a wife, and the boy isn't a boyfriend/fiancé any more but a husband. She nags and he hates it. He expects n she hates it. Isn’t the end result the same in any kind of marriage: adjustment? So what’s the big difference in love and arranged marriages. Now look here we are in 2009, so let’s not discuss our parent’s marriages where in their arranged marriages they had not even seen each other till their marriage day, we are talking about the generation today.

Usually the criteria’s for selection for both types of marriage can be behaviour, physical chemistry, looks, family background and professional/financial background

A handsome/beautiful spouse : trust me give them 5 yrs and they’ll all have a paunch, and not cause they’ve put on some fats, it’s because of some loose muscles :P

A rich spouse: nowadays there are marraiges where the girls earn more than the guy, so I won’t take that into consideration.

Family background: Trust me with the kind of leverage our Indian government give to the so called backward class now people are profited if they are backward class

Behaviour: that’s never constant; it changes with change in everybody. So what colour a marriage can bring in a person’s behaviour the wisest can also not predict

Physical attraction: No comments on that dear, you can create and say whatever you like.

And yet I have friends my age and even elder to me complaining that they haven’t found the right guy/gal yet, and so they prefer bachelorhood. Who’s the right guy/gal? What’s a right guy/gal? It's all the same in the end!

Let's talk about bachelorhood? What’s the end result there? Guess you have a lot of freedom, but at the end of the day you either have the television / laptop / mobile / book / dog for your company! Eating alone, no one to ask how am I looking just after checking yourself in the mirror! You depend for your daily piece of conversation/argument on your friends and their free time. Isn't all this adjustment too?

So what’s left except adjustments!! Guess that’s what life’s about? It’s all about 4 people sitting on a bench meant for 3, about going to school in your dad’s car but having to get down and walk before you reach school cause there’s a traffic jam, it about eating a bhelpuri cause the panipuri’s are over, it’s about studying a subject you hate cause it’s a compulsory subject in the curriculum, it’s about going to a mall cause now garden don’t have friends to play with, it’s about being friends with someone you don’t like so much cause s/he lives close to your place, it’s about sacrificing everyday homemade food cause you’ve had to relocate for a better job, it’s about coming home to a lonely apartment cause you don’t want to compromise your life with another person, it’s about tolerating the boss cause the pay is too good, it’s about loving another person cause you want to be loved back.

So tell me who wins the debate?

Arranged marriage VS Love marriage VS Bachelorhood

Child is the father of man (part1)

Hyperactive behaviour: A term very loosely used in the current days. Hyperactivity can be described as a physical state in which a person is abnormally and easily excitable or exuberant. I myself use it very often to describe my childhood and my daughter’s. About 9% of kids are hyperactive.
But today I realized the true meaning of a hyperactive child.
Today being a Sunday, as a ritual, we have ice-cream for dessert after dinner. And while sailing (sailors would be aware) we have dinner at about 6:00 PM. But my daughter as every child does at her age, dragged her dinner for an hour or so. And therefore to get her to finish her dinner I promised her the next available enticement to finish her dinner: the chocolate Ice-cream with chocolate syrup topping once she finishes. Whether she completely finished her dinner, is not the question here, but she got her ice-cream eventually by 8:00 PM Oh!! Did I mention this before; it was chocolate ice-cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup as a topping! (Psst: won’t ever forget that). Now experienced mothers would definitely be nodding their head understanding my plight further.
But this after effect was the first for me as my 4 yrs old daughter has just recently taken to ice-cream. While, Khushnum (if you’ve read my earlier blog you’ll know the characters/individuals in concern) and I were chitchatting , which we can do for hours, I realized my daughter was running around, room to room, laughing loudly at the silliest option available and even if it wasn’t silly enough. I assumed, she’s bored and she’s trying to entertain herself. She was running from the officer’s dining room, to the crew dining room, passing weird n funny comments to anyone who’d listen to her or even if not.
She came to me claiming that one of the crew members onboard was the same one with whom we had sailed earlier in the previous ship (which is not the case). When we all tried to explain that is wasn’t so, she started screaming though still in a happy tone. I’ve not known my daughter to do that ever. So I excused it as a one time incident, and asked her to go to our cabin, to which she willingly agreed (I was pleasantly surprised). Soon in a while we heard her shrieking at the top of her voice. Afraid that she might have her hurt herself we all rushed to her and found her jumping up and down the stairs. She was as happy as a kid in a carnival. When asked why she was shrieking, she answered just like that while I was jumping around I thought I’ll scream too.
Phew!!! I wondered what’s got into her. What’s wrong? And Khusnum a mother more experienced then me with her 9 yr old daughter understood my knotted eyebrows and explained that this is the doing of chocolate ice-cream. And this behaviour is hyperactive behaviour. Oh!! Yes, the mystery was solved for me. I could clearly associate.
Let me also mention, my daughter was so hyper, she actually came back to the cabin and in the bargain of not wanting to go to bed she sat and completed a page of her homework. Oh! Yes, she did do that. Some loss, some gain ;)
Hyperactivity can cause kids to act in different ways, depending on who has it. Most hyper kids have problems concentrating and paying attention. Some kids might also have trouble sitting still in class and waiting for their turn. They might yell out the answers before other kids have a chance to raise their hands.
Sometimes they can be disorganized, distracted, or forgetful. They might lose things and have trouble finishing assignments. They may wiggle around in their seats, move around a lot, talk too much, or interrupt other people's conversations.
It's important to remember that everybody does these things once in a while. It doesn't mean that the child is hyper as we all tend to assume it to be.
After seeing a hyper Ira today, I’ve realized that I’m a very proud mother of a normal child, and further on I’m not going to complain about her (this is just a momentary promise, no one is allowed to hold a mother to it). Also I thoroughly sympathize with mothers who actually have to live with hyperactive behaviours day in and day out.
So here’s to Ira, my sweetheart, for teaching me another lesson in life. After all as my mom never forgets to remind me, ‘Child is the father of man’.