Some more snow, this time at the crossroads...

I am at the cross roads. Did I hear some one sigh and whisper “not again”? Well, ok, I admit, yes, yet again. It’s not my fault you know, I try choosing the straight roads with minimum intersections, but damnit, I always end up with ones with the maximum. But what the hell, if that is what destiny has in store for me, so be it.

There have been so many of those in recent years that I have almost come to a point where I shy away from decisions. I try procrastinating to the extent possible. Till the point when I really cant run away anymore. I wasn’t always like this, but there is a limit to which a guy can make random gut-based decisions in his life. Phew! Believe me I have had my share. But it just keeps piling on like there is no tomorrow.

So here it is once again. After innumerable promises to my family, my friends and most of all to MBF and myself, of returning back to India for good, here I am rethinking it all over again. I can see the despair in everyones eyes as I say this, but I hope they can see the angst in mine. Its not easy you know. To keep hopping… mind you, not just cities, but from life to life. (More of this HERE, HERE and HERE, seems to be my fave topic on this blog). Whether I like it or not, Stockholm, yes the Stockholm you see in the picture above, is the place which I call home. And though its tough because deep inside my mind home still means India, I still have to know this is where I am most settled in right now. Maybe, some day I shall move back, but now I think I can allow myself the luxury of feeling upset about leaving my current home, Stockholm. Call it the Stockholm syndrome if you will.

Finally the weekend is here. I have successfully completed a week in Sweden. Its tough to imagine that exactly a week back I was in Bangalore, whizzing around in a car in shorts under the hot sun and 18 degrees with the air conditioning turned on maximum and loud music from the car stereo trying to drown out the traffic sounds. Tough to imagine now, sitting here (still in shorts though :P at least inside home) with minus ten degrees, a divine silence engulfing everything and snow all around. I had serious doubts if I will survive a week in Sweden, I almost thought that I will land at the airport take a look around, and head to the counter to finalize my trip back. But it was quite the contrary. I got completely awed by the beautiful snow. No, its not that nice to trudge through, and very unpleasant when it gets in your shoes and mixes with dirt to become a muddy mass at your apartment entrance. Its not nice when it settles at the tip of your nose and manages to give you a bad cold. But gotta admit, its still beautiful.

Weekend plans include badminton, a small party on Saturday and gadget shopping on Sunday. And if time permits, some more blogging!! Heres a toast to getting back to blogging :).. and to a fabulous weekend!

Snow, Stockholm, Sweden and some other things :)

The sea is frozen, the chill in the wind bites through your clothes and the sun hesitatingly comes out once every few hours in a day. The dress code in the city is unanimously shades of black and grey, the mood is unanimously dreary. There is a strange silence as I sit on the train on the way to office. As the train comes out of the tunnel sometimes, the city is covered in a beautiful quilt of snow. Its like when you accidentally spill a can of paint in the kitchen, the color of nature is unanimously white. Its beautiful to say the least. It kind of takes your breath away. It makes up for the minus ten degrees temperature, the biting wind, the lack of color and the lack of laughter. You cannot enjoy the winter if you don’t let your mind take the bend of the philosophical and let it find the hidden message in those hexagonal snowflakes. Let your eyes wander on that vast white expanse, and then rest it on that single man dressed in black trudging across the snow to his workplace.

Yes, I am back. To Sweden, and to a winter which they say is colder than it has been in the last decade, or maybe more. Though it has snowed every winter, I haven’t seen this much snow in the last 2 and a half years I have been here. I guess the Gods had decided to reserve the best for the last. After incessant snowfall yesterday, as I trudged through the shin high snow, something made me look up. And suddenly I realized why they say that snow can make you feel closer to God. As the snowflakes drifted down from the white sky, I realized how it made everything feel like when you watch it in slow motion. And I closed my eyes, and experienced the amazing silence that snow brings with it. I am sure it can be explained scientifically, because snow absorbs sound or something, but it’s a silence that can make you feel more at peace. More conscious of yourself, and of the beauty around you.

Everyone around me, friends in Sweden and India were curious to know my reaction when I landed here. Would I be disappointed? Sad? Homesick? After all it had been a very long trip to India. So long that when my client (during a client visit to India) asked me where I lived in Stockholm I went "I live in... errr... ummm... damnit, I have forgotten where I live...!!!" No kidding, I couldnt recall the street I live in, it took me a full 2 to 3 minutes to get the name. Yes I was THAT disconnected. So everyone was curious.. what is going to be my reaction. It was tough to explain what I felt. It was like being transported into a completely different realm. And its not just about the weather. It’s the colors, the noise, the smells, the feel, the people, the language, the accents, the complete experience. Somehow, for some reason it is not comparable. I cannot and will not compare my life in India to my life in Sweden. I cannot say this is better and this is worse. I can only say its different, very different. And I can enjoy the bits that I like about both places. And about where I shall finally decide to settle down, we shalt see.

The days are becoming longer. The light is not that bad as it used to be in November. My European friends are awesome as usual, so are my NRI ones. Life in Sweden, from afar, was somehow more scary than it seems once I am here. I shall live. No, I will not have a zillion friends I have to meet, nor a million relatives who will invite me home for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I will not have the chats, the bhel puri and the Indian ameriacan choupsey. I will not have the luxury of getting into the car in shorts and a t-shirt and grabbing some dosa when I get hungry at 10 pm. I shall not have the Ayurvedic massages. But I shall have the beauty of the snow, the peaceful noise-free life of Stockholm and European football at O’Learys.

Do not be disappointed. It always begins on a philosophical note. And then it flows into the more mundane. I shall not fetter you with more of this abstract nonsense, but sometimes, just sometimes, it should be allowed. A lot has changed. That too in a very short while. And I wonder...

But as I said, all in good time...

Back...

Sunset at the Kerela beach 30 kms from Mangalore

Yes I know. I haven’t written like for ages. No, I didn’t forget all about blogging. There was too much happening in life. Both professional and personal. And blogging sometimes takes a back seat. Even temptations of undergoing blog therapy didn’t motivate me to come back to the blog. But the important thing is, that I am back. It doesn’t matter now why I went missing, right? A crab is allowed to crawl back into his shell once in a while, allow me the liberty.
Now for the updates. I am in India. After nearly 10 months, which is a long long time. On a “pure” vacation (hopefully) for the first time in the year. The last few times it was more of a partial vacation. The past 2 weeks have been a crazy rush.. almost like a mad chase, I don’t even know what it was all for. I’ll cut to the essentials, because it has also been interesting :). Heres what has been happening for the past 2 weeks.

• Hectic week before travelling to India... as if millions of things were chasing me.. almost as if my manager didn’t want me to travel back..
• Customer escalation.. the worst ever. Last day of work at Sweden.. My nastiest meeting ever.. senior clients screaming.. multiple projects escalated.. enough to worry both internal and client execs..
• An eventless flight to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Bangalore.. the latter filled with Indians settled in Canada. Good to know there are people other than me trying to escape from minus fifteen degrees!
• Royal treatment on reaching Bangalore... a new apartment, me likes. An Ayurvedic Rejuvenation massage leaves me rejuvenated :).
• One last week of work from Bangalore.. much more hectic than the one in Sweden. Killing traffic takes most of the time.
• No time to breathe, but a lunch at IndiJoes and a beer at TGIF thanks to some friends. And comfort, peace of mind and good food at home, thanks to MBF :).
• Journey to TAPMI Manipal for MBA Workshop, I lose my travel bag on the way to the station (with my MP3 player, camera, and T-shirts I got from Paris, Amsterdam and Rome :( sniff sniff ). I manage to retain my Man Utd jersey coz I am wearing it :phew:
• For my senior exec and me, we have one ticket on RAC and one wait listed. We also have confirmed Volvo AC sleeper tickets, but we decide to risk the train.
• The ticket checker allows us to board the train, we do not have a seat, it’s a 12 hour journey. After 3 hours the ticket checker gives us one berth for 2 of us. No bribe asked for! I am shocked. India IS changing!! Or is it just South India?
• Very little sleep on train (2 people on one berth.. we manage).
• Royal reception at Mangalore. One small glitch, the banner says “TAPMI welcomes Merlin and team”. My senior exec is 10 years senior to me, and 4 band levels above me, he is anything but “my team”. But he has a good sense of humor, just winks at me. When will students realize corporate protocols :sigh:
• Vada sambhar breakfast at Mangalore. I realize I am in a football jersey and jeans, and have no luggage on me except a laptop and a laptop bag. No deo, no toothbrush, no formal clothes. I need to go shopping.
• In Manipal the Alumni committee generously gives me a pulsar and directions to a shop I can buy a shirt.
• Its been 10 years since my senior exec sat on a bike, I am tempted to show him some bike stunts, but I suppress my wicked urges and drive carefully.
• A discovery that Manipal, the hep the yo and the happening student town does not have one decent shop where I can buy one Allen Solly shirt
• Forced to buy an unbranded black (the other colors were HORRIBLE) shirt from Riverdale, which is a shop which is planning to close down and has NO options
• Awesome workshop. I think we managed to keep 98% of the students awake for 2 hours (bless the girl who blissfully slept through it all on the last bench), which at a 2pm lecture is the greatest feat for any speaker.
• Lot of attention from students post the workshop, am successful in diverting all the attention towards my senior exec saying (he is the guy who will make hiring decisions if any, I am a small fry)
• Hire an Apache bike for 24 hours for 1500 bucks and a 5000 bucks deposit. Yes you are right - I have been fleeced. Its all right, I am a NRI in India, and this is the only way I can get a bike in good ol’ Manipal
• Thanks to my “juniors” I have an awesome dinner and “bakar” session till midnight. I cant believe TAPMI has a in time of 12 am for girls AND guys! I miss my late night bike rides!
• A most enchanting dawn!! Up at 6 am.. don’t remember the last time I got up at 6am without having a meeting.
• Joined by MBF and family.. A bike ride to Karkala and other nearby places. Finally give up bike and shift to a diesel Ford Fiesta. An awesome car.. but I prefer driving petrol cars on highways.
• Lunch at LX in Udupi.. refreshing old memories… awesome buffet topped with caramel and bread-butter pudding desert.. Drive down to Mangalore, movie “Rocket Singh” at AdLabs.
• Some rest and then draught beer and a Chinese dinner at “Froth on the Top” at Mangalore. I can vouch that it’s the best draught beer in Mangalore!
• After being deprived of sleep for 2 days, I finally sleep like a baby.
• More draught beer at 10 am, its not good staying a 100 metres from “Froth on the Top”. The earliest I have had beer ever!
• A drive down to one of the Kerela beaches in the Ford Fiesta. I was driving but I was well below the minimum driving alcohol level ;)
• Awesome trip to one of the temples and the beach. A romantic sunset.. with some romantic company :).
• Drive back to Mangalore.. more of Froth on the Top and American Choupsey for dinner :). An affirmation that I love “Indian Chinese” more than authentic Chinese :).
• Morning and a beautiful train journey from Mangalore to Bangalore on Konkan Railways. The train trip is certainly recommended if you want to see the Western Ghats... absolutely breathtaking
• Feels so good to be back to a culture where everybody on the train talk to each other.. the children are playing with each other even before we have put the luggage in. The adults start talking about the trivialities of life.. family, politics, rising prices and education. Soon even some common family ties are found.
• Everyone shares their lunch, either bought on the train or from their “tiffin boxes”. They also share snacks, marriage related opinions and a lot of advice for one kid who is ill.
• Incidentally the lunch on the train (vegetarian biriyani with raita) costs Rs 20, for the benefit of my European friends that is approximately 3 SEK or 0.3 EUR!! And I have a feeling it’s more expensive on the air conditioned coaches, I don’t know if it cost lesser in the non AC coaches.
• And now.. back to the Bangalore grind :sigh: When the time comes to retire, Manipal will certainly be one of the options as a place to retire in :). By the way, the second option is Paris, the third is Rome !!
  

Fall....

Fall is here. The temperatures are dipping. The sun seems to be getting shy and peeps out only once in a while. Very soon it will be honoring us with daylight only for 3 to 4 hours in a day. The temperature today is 6 degrees, and it has been progressively dipping to the dreaded zero and sub zero temperatures. The general climate is becoming dull, drab and morose. People are quieter, are more serious and have shifted back to wearing their grays and blacks. MBF with her pink gloves and scarf is the only refreshing change I find in this dull and drab European winter fashion trend.... she brings the only whiff of color in my life :). I wish the other Swedish girls would also follow the trend. People are becoming more focused on their jobs and work, and this will continue till late December till people start shifting to the Christmas mood. There are lesser and lesser things to do in town. The Desis have their own Durga Puja, Kali Puja and Diwali celebrations... but I am feeling more and more restless and impatient. I have loved Sweden and everything it has offered to me.. but I am getting kinda bugged of this whole weather thing. I have lived in cities with extreme weather conditions, Nagpur, Delhi and Kolkata... some of the hottest and most humid cities in India. But this is much worse than all of those. It is not just about the weather here, but it is also the overall mood which dips and becomes morose along with the weather, I dont know how to explain this.

Maybe the time has finally come to make a move. I have cribbed about being a vagabond and craving for a stable settled life in my post before, but a settled stable life still eludes me. Maybe its just me, my restlessness and my refusal to accept something as a permanent life and settle down with it contentedly. A close well wisher told me "You have the greatest job, awesome money, amazing brand name and an exotic foreign posting, dont be a fool and think of ever throwing it away". I agree to all that, but in the end its my happiness that matters. If the great job role, money, foreign posting and brand name has stopped giving me the thrill and excitement it used to give me, it is time to move on. I am not sad, not upset... not even bored... but I realized a few days back that I am missing the zing in my life. And its a familiar feeling. Like the feeling I had when I was in my first job, when I quit to go to business school. Or like when I was in engineering college, and decided to leave civil engineering after a year to join electronics engineering. Alas, it is time for a change again. I dread change, I detest and abhor it, and yet I cannot live without it. Such is life.

For those of you who asked me how the singing went, well, it was awesome :). The photos will appear on FB soon, for those of you who are on my FB. I was dressed in a traditional embroidered Kurta... and jeans (I know I am such a loser to be wearing jeans but I didnt have much of an option so dont groan). The crowd actually went "Once more, once more" and we were all completely taken aback.. we didnt know a crowd was allowed to say that kind of thing in a religious setting. LOL.

I am heading back to India for a month in December. And I am absolutely thrilled about it and am eagerly looking forward to it. Some very important decisions will be made while in India... I guess we need to make such decisions every once in a while :). My friends in India are fed up of me because I keep trying to make plans about where we will go and what we will do when I land there in December. As one guy said "Dude.. this is India... you plan what you want to the next day just one day before... we do not have the European way of planning a year in advance.. come over and we will have a blast.. without planning anything". SIGH! I guess he is right. But can I still just keep myself happy by thinking about some awesome late night bike rides and some early morning long drives into the highway? Some midnight pav bhaji after a late night movie and a trek to the nearest waterfall? And wearing a light jacket and zooming away on a bike in the middle of December! :)

I need to make up for my last nasty post :P. So here is something to make you feel better. A video that always cheers me up and makes me smile. And not just because Salman Khan is so cute, but because I find it extremely amusing to watch the blondes doing all the Indian dance steps so perfectly. I wonder what my European friends would have to say about it :)

Blogging Woes

I am in a bad mood. I really feel like lashing out. So please do not feel obligated to read on unless it amuses you to read the thoughts of a guy in a really bad mood.

If you are thinking I will now write down the reason of my bad mood, I am sorry to disappoint you. I do not know the reason. I have absolutely no clue. And before you label me as insane, I would say in my defense that there has been too much piling up and I guess it has all reached a point where its just brimming over.

I am kind of disillusioned with blogging. I know, I know, you all told me so. But it was fun till it lasted. And I know most of my close friends have already gone through this phase (yes Iya, SG et al).. the phase of finding the joys of blogging, reaching peaks, having blog fans and then finding that the blog is not able to justify the freedom of expression. That there is too much pressure to write something or not to write something. Or that the comfort level with known people reading the blog is not good. So I have reached the last phase. I can either shut down the blog, or make it limited to people who are really close and who live in the real world. People who accept me for what I am. People who dont have weird expectations from me. I am sorry but I cannot blog about Obama winning the Noble Peace prize because I have some more real life concerns to take care of. No.. this is not meant as an insult to all the people writing about serious world issues. I write about generic stuff too... but not when my own life is kinda all tangled up and needs straightening up. Sigh! I told you.. this will be more of a venting post.

So there are a lot of other things about blogging that has been bothering me. Maybe this is the most unpopular thing anyone ever said on any blog post ever... but the motive behind me blogging wasnt exactly popularity so I shall say it anyway. I do not believe in Blog Awards. I respect all those who do, but I dont. To the extent that when someone gives me an award, I do not post it on my blog. And this has resulted in lost blog friends and lost blog followers. I do not mean to provocate you into a pointless debate, but my point of view is that my blog is for me to express my views irrespective of who likes it and who doesn't. I appreciate appreciation, however self created or passed on jpeg images titled with some fancy names to be put up on my blog template as awards is going a bit too far. I am not against fancy things or aesthetics, and would put them up for the heck of it, but my objection is on the principle that when you give an award to someone and refrain from giving it to someone else, in effect you are saying that one blog is better than the other. It is crazy. How can you compare blogs? It is like comparing apples with pears. So here was one blogger who was a regular reader of my blog. He/She gave me a very generous award.. I was honored, however did not think that I could put it up and declare my blog to be better than others and hence I went and thanked him/her on the comments section and then did not put up the award on any of my posts. The person in question stopped following my blog henceforth. I also heard of bloggers not getting awards and getting disappointed and not talking to the person giving the award. Also heard of bloggers changing their writing style/template/content to be more popular. Well.. this whole concept beats me. Seems to do more damage than good, and seems to serve no purpose. We are all mature people in blogosphere, so if I really appreciate someones blog, why cant I just go and comment on his/her post and let him/her know how much I liked the post or the blog? Why do I need to compare someones blog with someone elses and give an award to one person and not give it to someone else? Who am I to decide what is good and what is not? If a blog has received tonnes of awards does it really mean that it is better than others.... or even that it is really good? If not then what is the point in the awards at all? If it is just a meaningless fun thing then why do I see it causing more harm than good to all my fellow bloggers? I honestly do not think that my writing is worthy of any awards, and I do not think I am great enough to decide if someone else should get an award. Hence, ladies and gentlemen, I shalt take a polite bow and back out of the awards section. And if by doing this I offend someone, then my sincere and humble apologies to the person. For all those who do believe in awards, I respect your belief and do not intend to offend you. This is just my stated opinion, so kindly keep me out of the award circle :).

I have a feeling this post is going to make me very unpopular. And maybe I will not have to shut down my blog... I will be labeled as a crazy person and left alone with zero readership :). I love my blog followers from the bottom of my heart, but when they expect pressurize me to behave and write in a certain way, I feel that the whole purpose of blogging is being lost.

Bear with me. I have been down with flu and working on the escalation with high fever. And have had friends ignoring me... And the work escalation just seems never ending. It seems so impossible when the client and my own company super senior execs are on call and debating on a topic which is simply not relevant to the escalation. Now I know, there IS something called being TOO high up on the corporate ladder. SIGH!

Hopefully will write a more calm and "happy" post soon. Till then let me go spoil some friendships and get back at all the people who have been ignoring me! :). I am in a wicked mood.

Durga Puja @ Stockholm

Thats a pic taken yesterday at the Stockholm Durga Puja mandap. I would have found it tough to believe the presence of the Goddess in all her splendour in the middle of the Nordics. But such is life.

I will be singing today, right in front of Goddess Durga. I have never been overly religious. But I believe in the almighty. If you would have had the kind of crazy life I have had, you would believe in the almighty as well. Because there is no other way how I can explain the innumerable strange things that have happened in my life. Except that there is someone somewhere who is guiding me, in what so far has been the right direction. And I hope and wish, that the guidance shall always be there, and I shall be on the right path... and it doesnt matter where that path leads me, as long as I do not deter, wander and get lost.

It is so ironic, that after losing touch with Durga Puja for so long, since I moved out of Jamshedpur, I should rediscover it once again in Sweden, of all places. And have "bhog"... and fold my hands, bow my head and "give" pushpanjali... and watch all the women dressed in the brightest colored Sarees and Lehengas, the men trying to appear comfortable in Kurtas... watch kids sing old Bengali songs, and perform Bharatnatyam dance... and then me.. practicing to sing in front of the Goddess, in a language I am so scared of forgetting. All in Sweden. Reconnecting with the 50% of the bong me. Life is strange, and I think I should come to terms that at every step it will have new surprises for me.

I came to Sweden, craving to go back to a country I called my own. And discovered that in some ways, I could discover a part of my patriotism, my culture, my love for my homeland here more than I could discover it when living in my motherland. Would I be singing a bengali song in front of Durga ma, dressed in an embroidered bengali kurta after having an excess of delicious bhog if I was in Bangalore... or Delhi... or Nagpur... or Manipal? I doubt it. So once again. Life is strange :).

A comment from Shimp...

My blog does not entertain guest posts. Ususally. So this is the first one, and probably the last one. But I was so touched by a story Shimp put up as a comment to one of my posts, that I just had to put it up. Thank you Shimp for a touching story. Sometimes when I feel that my troubles have become so bad that I cannot take it anymore, I read such stories of struggles much greater than mine, and get inspired to achieve greater things in life. Because my troubles are miniscule compared to what other have had to go through, and I feel lucky and appreciative of all the good things that I have.

Here is Shimps comment:
"The nomadic life has its charms. "I'm not tied down. I never have to turn down an opportunity because my roots have grown too deep." Like you, every wanderer I've encountered comes to a point where they crave roots. I think, in part, because all of the places that they end up going, they are surrounded by, essentially, a root structure.

Just like when you were in India, and craved going elsewhere, eventually the difference of being settled is the difference that is craved. Being settled starts to become the "different" structure that appeals.

I'm sure there are particular concerns when living outside of your culture, and that informs your choices also.

We did know a man a little bit like you in terms of wandering, nothing more. He was Indian by way of Australia, then Canada, then four different places in the U.S. before he landed in the same company with my husband. He had a family, and when his kids got to be school age, he sent them to boarding school within India. He and his wife eventually made the decision to return to India to be closer to their children.

There were a lot of farewell parties for him, he was a very well liked man, but it did turn out he had a secret. As a young child he had strep, and it went untreated for a bit too long, not through neglect it was just one of those things that happened.

Twenty years later he found out that his heart and kidneys had been irreversibly weakened. Eventually there came a point where he knew his heart was failing. He didn't tell anyone that was part of the reason for going home, but he did die within a year of returning to India.

His wife still had affairs to settle here, and we saw her several times. She eventually told us that was the reason he had returned to India,

He was a lovely man, and much missed by all who knew him. I did find it fascinating and heart rending at the same time. He left India as a teenager but there was no question in his mind that he would return home.

There's no real point to my telling this story, nothing profoundly revealing or anything of that nature. I've known a fair number of people from different countries, and a fair number of people from India. The Indians I have known have, for the most part, tried to convey that there is a complexity to being from India that you don't necessarily find in people from other countries.

A sort of love, plus distance, and fond irritation. I'm absolutely terrified of misspelling this man's name, because it's been several years and I really only ever heard his name, vs. read it. Anyway, the reason I'm bringing it up, is that a huge part of Vinkata's (please forgive me if I'm butchering the heck out of that) decision to return home?

He wanted his son to be able to make an informed choice. He assumed his son would basically repeat the pattern.

I can't define this well, but that pinpointed the complex relationship to home better than anything anyone has tried to explain to me. Being there wasn't the goal, as much as having the love engendered, so it could be taken with his son (and he also had a daughter) wherever the journey ended up leading. "