I said to a friend earlier today - "I feel like doing very Indian things today. I feel like dressing up in dhinch Indian clothes, listening to Bhangra music and attending some Indian wedding." This was with 'Mahi Ve' from 'Kal Ho Na Ho' playing in the background, and having made that statement I proceeded to sing out aloud with it with great fervor, completely undeterred by my absolute tunelessness. I topped this off with renting and subsequently attempting to watch a fairly painful Hindi movie, '71/2 Phere', and guess what's it all about! An overly dramatic Indian wedding. I guess it has hit me finally - the missing home syndrome. I should have seen it coming though. Last week I saw a girl in office dressed in a salwar kameez and spent some time wondering why exactly it had struck me as odd. Until I remembered that it was certainly uncommon and pretty cool as well. Unfortunately the only salwar kameezes I brought along are dressy ones - shining colors, golden threadwork and so on. Not quite business casual, our suggested dress-code here. Yesterday I had an enthusiastic discussion on 'Mughal Indian architecture and languages' with a team-mate. Yesterday, thus was also when I referred back to my school history lessons in a long long time. Its surprising how easily I can remember arbitrary details that interest me when I have such a tough time remembering names, faces, roads, even conversations (usually work related ones).
All this sudden appearance of 'missing India' could also be the oft predicted culture shock finally kicking in. So far I've been blatantly refusing to acknowledge its existence. In a certain round of introductions for a class, an American woman talked about how she is experiencing a culture shock after returning home from a several years long stay in Australia. Another guy spoke about the culture shock he experienced after moving to Richmond from some other city he was studying in but when after my introduction I was sympathetically asked - 'So you must be experiencing something similar', I happily quipped - 'Not really'. I think the answer disappointed most people there. Maybe I haven't been defining culture shock right.
Just a clarification - I wrote most of this post, especially the first paragraph, on saturday. I couldn't finish it because I had started watching 'Kal Ho Na Ho' with some friends, so finally putting it up today.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Somethings I know ... and some I don't
I like New York. Its big. Its crowded. You can find people walking on the streets late in the night. It has public transport.
I was hanging around with friends from college and it felt so much like being back in Bombay again. Strangely though I enjoyed getting lost on the subway and walking around times square with people in crazy hats, shopping off roadsides and people watching a lot more than all the big NY attractions we checked out. That was fun too. But more than anything I was soaking in how alive the city felt.
Sometime back I told a friend that I have become fairly uncompetitive lately in life and that worries me a little. Not that I don't care about doing things well or that I don't enjoy it when I do better or much better than average but I really couldn't be bothered to take it to a personal level. And all this coupled with all the 'I don't know what my long-term goals are's, 'I don't know where I want to be five years from now's, can scare you at times. But then clever people have said that some of the best of us never find out what they want out of life.
The last book I read was 'A feast for crows' by GRRM. It took me a lot longer than the other three books in the series to finish. That was partly because I was spending less time than usual reading and partly because the book simply crawls for the greatest part. The climax however makes up for almost everything and its all the more bugging that I'll have to wait for not one but two books to find out what happens next.
I have quite a bit of work at work now and I'm quite enjoying it. I hope that lasts. Good to end the first post of the new year on a positive note.
I was hanging around with friends from college and it felt so much like being back in Bombay again. Strangely though I enjoyed getting lost on the subway and walking around times square with people in crazy hats, shopping off roadsides and people watching a lot more than all the big NY attractions we checked out. That was fun too. But more than anything I was soaking in how alive the city felt.
Sometime back I told a friend that I have become fairly uncompetitive lately in life and that worries me a little. Not that I don't care about doing things well or that I don't enjoy it when I do better or much better than average but I really couldn't be bothered to take it to a personal level. And all this coupled with all the 'I don't know what my long-term goals are's, 'I don't know where I want to be five years from now's, can scare you at times. But then clever people have said that some of the best of us never find out what they want out of life.
The last book I read was 'A feast for crows' by GRRM. It took me a lot longer than the other three books in the series to finish. That was partly because I was spending less time than usual reading and partly because the book simply crawls for the greatest part. The climax however makes up for almost everything and its all the more bugging that I'll have to wait for not one but two books to find out what happens next.
I have quite a bit of work at work now and I'm quite enjoying it. I hope that lasts. Good to end the first post of the new year on a positive note.
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