Indian culture and the gaping hole

It has been an eventful week. Kinda surprised myself with that much productivity in exchange for around 6hrs of sleep everyday, which is atleast 50% short for my standards. Nevertheless, I feel happily depleted. 

A new week has started and as I munch on my corn flakes, I realize the change in me. I was never a fan of bread or flakes for that matter and used to eat anything but them. It used to my diet when I got sick and had kinda built up an aversion for them. Now I've better things to worry about, and a yummy breakfast doesn't even feature in the top ten. However, I wouldn't mind getting up to 12 Idlis or 4 Masala Dosas. Guess these dishes are gona take me for a ride in my dreams today along with the usual Princess Leia in her gold bikini.

I really love to interact with people from different cultures and try out new things especially with food. There is no doubt that Indian food is the best. I'm not being patriotic, but its a fact that every little place in India has its own specialty and delicacies. I can say it with 99% confidence that it is impossible for any Indian in his lifetime to let alone experience the culture, but try out all possible delicacies from every nook and corner of the country.

We as Indians have always been proud of our culture and equally hypocritical. People go ga ga over the fact that the young generation is becoming westernized. Do they crib when infrastructure is matching up? NO. Do they whine when huge advances are being made in terms of technology and medical care? NO. Do they have any qualms when the GDP is raising and the rupee is being appreciated? NO. If it wasn't for the westernization, we wouldn't be speaking English or playing cricket. We would have looked like a country with language skills like that of China and nutrition like that of Africa even though parts of the country are still like this.

So why am I accusing people of being hypocritical? For starters, people have developed the attitude of "When I do it, its right and when you do it, its wrong". It is ok for you to start drinking at 20 but not when your son does the same. For what we know, we ourselves are not aware of our culture. India is the land of KamaSutra and how many times have you heard any one of those self proclaimed gurus of culture talking about it in public. The funniest of them all is, as a teenager you are not even supposed to know anything about sex or even look at women, but are expected to do it and score a 10 on the wedding night. I really find it hard to understand the logic behind it. 


Our culture has also been to suppress the women and torture them when her hubby dies. It is ok for a guy to move on but when a girl does the same, she is branded as a slut. Female infanticide is our culture but are we really ready to do something about it? For no fault of the rape victim, she is the one bearing the brunt of the society and we hold up the rapists and even make them our leaders. Women are supposed to keep their mouths shut when they are raped by their husbands just because they have the 'married' tag attached.

We even talk about being racially abused abroad and not being treated equally. I believe we lost the right to say it long back. Whether it is Australia or US or UK, the students have been known to create a ruckus and behave as everything is at their disposal. "When in Rome, be a Roman". I'm not asking people to change but the least we can do is respect their culture and abide by their rules and norms.


When Richard Gere gave Shilpa Shetty a peck on stage, the media went berserk over the need for teaching the former about our culture, who gives a damn when Indians who go abroad rape the girls with their eyes by staring at them like they have never seen a chick before and pass utterly  offensive comments when they walk on the road. Hell, we lost that right to say anything when we couldn't do anything about the communal riots inside our country. We cant even stand the people from neighbouring states and the age old fights between people from North and South is the 2nd most talked about topic after cricket. It is ok for us to be racists among ourselves but it isn't when we are given a taste of our own medicine?

P.S : To end it on a happy note, I bow down to Sachin Tendulkar for his historical feat of 50 test centuries. Bring on the ODIs, u're next. Doing this at the world cup will be the fitting end to his career. 

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Hi, my name is Vikas and I'm an addict

It was back in the good old engineering days that it all started. The magic number of 15 in the internals was the only aim and to top it all up, there was always T4 to make up for it, if anything went wrong with the divine plan. 

It started with Prison Break and all the night long gaming was replaced by Scofield marathon. The break time talk was totally devoted to this and people actually started to shoo away others who had no idea about Bellick's belly and thus became self proclaimed members of league of extraordinary gentlemen. The Prison Break DVDs were so much in demand that at one point I felt that I might actually loose my exotica porn DVD market. But then again, it was just a passing phase and people came back to the daddy of all DVDs and this actually proves the first mover advantage.

A new competitor entered soon in the name of 24 and its advantage was that it already had 6 seasons. This took the battle of nature vs nurture to a totally different level. At some point, people had to get fed up of the concept of Jack Bauer can't die and even if he dies, he'll come back in the next season as a ghost. Even though the Naughty America series has a pretty much predictable ending, people actually get to see different people doing a lot more than real life Jack could ever think of doing in his lifetime.

During my final year, I got hooked onto Dexter and to be frank its 1st season and the most recent 4th season are the best ever. I try to put myself under house arrest after watching Dexter as the temptation to see blood is at its peak. If at all it becomes uncontrollable, for the man I am, I bring home a homeless person and chop him up into pieces. Nine pieces to be exact and dump him in the nearby pig farm. For more information on using pigs for this purpose, I suggest the movie Snatch.

If at all you believed everything about this blood thirsty nature of me, then I'm sure I have a great future as a story writer.

Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory followed soon after and the latter is on track to becoming one of the best sitcoms ever and I'll always have a special place for the former. It was only a matter of time when Dr.House entered my brains and started fiddling with them thus leading to aneurysms. To relieve myself of this, I watch any random episode of Friends and it never fails to assert the fact that old is gold. To give an example of how the world has changed over the past decade or so, Chandler in one the older episodes boasts about his lappy having features like 12MB RAM and 512MB hard disk. 

Its one of those simple things that tell us how technology has changed everything around us. I'm sure atleast half of the online population will have a stroke if Facebook or Twitter goes down just for a day. There is a funny South Park episode that actually depicts this scenario.

Nevertheless, I'm proud to confess my addiction for all the above mentioned series and probably many more to come. Have you?

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Cricket, Commentators and KP

The most awaited Ashes rivalry is back and does England look a better team or what. Pietersen has got his old touch back. Guess his antibodies act only against the Aussies. Its also good to see that India have finally, after months and months of research and consultancy and after BCCI outsourcing its brains to a some island in Fiji, finally decided that the future of the Indian cricket lies in playing against any other team other than Sri Lanka. Hope New Zealand isn't the new Sri Lanka.

With a new opponent comes new guests in the studio. Vengsarkar is actually making Amarnath, Arun Lal and even Arnold(Russel) look like Boycott, Greig and Jackman. Even 15 minutes of Vengsarkar might make you feel like blowing your brains out. When we all thought the era of bad players turned bad commentators ended with Aamir Sohail, the world got a taste of Russel Arnold who raised the bar to a totally different level. Infact the bar has gone so low that even the best limbo dancers are shying away from the challenge.

I've had my fair share of playing cricket and captaining a team as well. But its actually an understatement to see that Ponting's best day this year has been worse than my worst hungover day. The bowling attack looks the weakest it has ever been and the punter doesn't have Hayden to go and hide behind him. Guess he has also run out of bars to go and pick fights within. Surely his career is over and the only thing that can salvage his dying cause will be when he can finally set a record for getting through a test match on a single chewing gum. 

The tattooed Johnson was dropped after the selectors finally realized that he couldn't pitch anything even remotely close to the batsman's half. They should have probably realized this when he couldn't even get Ishant Sharma out who looks like someone wearing stilletoes and panty hoses while batting.

With all the mocking apart, India look great even with this 2nd choice team and McCullum needs to start playing those scoops to get back into the groove. Cook is dishing out centuries like fish and chips in a takeaway. Guess his purple patch for getting laid has started. While Pietersen looks like he can score another hundred with one hand tied behind his back, wouldn't it be great to see Warney back for an over, atleast in the commentary box?

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