The One with The Sunscreen

Just an arbit post about this song that I really like-- Baz Luhrmann's Everybody's free to wear sunscreen. The song is like one of those mails that we used to forward to each other back in school and sounds like it should be on a Hallmark or an Archie's poster.. But it's a lot of fun to listen to when all you want is some different music and also when you want some advice and don't find anyone around..
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Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists
whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…
I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and
recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before
you and how fabulous you really looked….
You’re not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind;
the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you
Sing
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss
Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t,
maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people
think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own..
Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard;
live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen…

The One with Childhood Memories

This one has almost been a nagging thought asking to be put into words. Just to write down the flashes of memories those keep coming to me every now and then.

When we were younger, my brother and I, every summer for vacations we used to go to Chennai. At that time Chennai was a place of escape for me. When I was a kid I used to hate staying in Delhi, as we did not have any relatives there. I had no cousins in the city. I did not have a big joint family around me like my friends. It used to be only the four of us and at that age, I used to long for a joint family with uncles, aunts and cousins.

So going to Chennai for summer vacations was something I looked forward to the whole year.

In Chennai also, I used to like being at my cousin’s place more than my nana-nani’s. Everything about the time I have spent there is etched on mind as clearly as if it were yesterday. Right from the house that they lived in. It wasn’t even their own, but I used to love that house as if it were my own. They’re not there anymore, obviously. They’re not even in the country anymore. I have a small family. At that time I had only two cousins. With my brother and me, that made only four of us. We were a very close knit group. Even our age differences were evenly spaced out. Obviously I was closer to my cousin sis Anu than to her brother, Arun. They used to have school when we had vacations. So in the mornings, while they went to school, I would just hang around the house trailing behind my daadi. I remember there was a phase when I used to listen to the soundtrack of Anjali every day, day in day out. I used to wait for them to come back from school to have lunch with them. It used to be such a fun affair having lunch and dinner with them.

Then in the evening, in the huge hall that the house had, my grandmother would plait my sister’s hair first and then mine. Late afternoon sunlight would be streaming in slits from the balcony. The clock would be about to strike 4:30. And all this preparation was done so that we could go to the terrace to play. We used to play stapu. I don’t know if anyone still plays that game. It’s the one in which you draw seven blocks and throw a stone and hop to pick it up. The terrace was huge and there always used to be a beautiful breeze in the evening. My grandmother and my mom would sit on the side and chat away while watching us. As it became darker to play, we would just sit around and chat.

At night, we used to play all kinds of indoor games like hide and seek and catch.

As the years went by and we grew older, Anu and I would go shopping together, do the occasional cooking, talk about life and the guys in our livesJ.

I remember I was extremely upset when they moved from that house. For me that house symbolized our childhood, all our activities and memories were captured in that house and I could not for the life of me understand, why they would want to leave it.

I was right. After the move, things have never been the same. Of course, it really wasn’t because they moved from there. It was because we all have grown up. We don’t have summer vacations anymore. We are all not even in the same country anymore. This November, Anu is getting married. We’re that grown up.

The memory of that time, in that house, is like a safe place for me. A safe place is a concept used in regression hypnosis, where the patient is asked to return to when the session gets too difficult to handle. Sometimes while going about routine work, I just stop and wonder why I am doing what I am doing, and wonder where the good old days have gone. I guess for me whenever I yearn for the good ol’ days, I just think about that time and that place, which is frozen in space.

And I still ask my grandma sometimes to plait my hair. Not because I need it anymore, but because it symbolizes a constant in this blindly fast-paced routine.

It's really ironic to think that in our hurry to grow up and see the world, we have left the best part of our lives behind, never to go back.

This empty kitchen's where
I'd while away the hours
Just next to my old chair
You'd usually have some flowers
The shelves of books
Even the picture hooks
Everything is gone
But my heart is hanging on

If this old neighbourhood
Survived us both alright
Don't know that it withstood
All the things that took our light
You on the stair
I can see you there
Everything is gone
But my heart is hanging on

Once there was a little girl
Used to wonder what she would be
Went out into the big wide world
Now she's just a memory
There used to be a little school here
Where I learned to write my name
But time has been a little cruel here
Time has no shame

It's just a place where
We used to live
It's just a place where
We used to live

Now in another town
You lead another life
And now upstairs and down
You're someone else's wife
Here in the dust
There's not a trace of us
Everything is gone
But my heart is hanging on

It's just a place where
We used to live
It's just a place where
We used to live

- A Place Where we used to Live
Mark Knopfler

The One with Bombay Musings

With great thought and will, I have overcome the overbearing shackles of laziness to finally come back to the blog to update after five months..well, four and a half to be more precise.
And, what has brought this sudden turnaround you ask? The one reason that makes all bloggers a little bit more active- a summer internship with not much work to do.
Over the last 3-4 weeks, since I have landed in Mumbai, many a times I have felt the urge to write. Many a times, I have wanted to discuss on the blog things running through my mind. But then, the moments passed and laziness conquered.
Let's start with the way I feel about Mumbai.
The city is very different from Delhi. Just to make myself clear- I will not be making any judgements in this post.
Bombay is functionally much more efficient than Delhi. When I say functionally efficient I mean things like being able to find transport at any point of the day or night. The way the people in this city do everything in an orderly way. To echo a friend's thoughts- in a city so large and with so many people, if they did not do it in an orderly way, there would be utter chaos. The ability to stay out at late at night knowing that it is safe.
These are some things that make it definitely better than Delhi.
Ever since I've come here, every conversation with every other person ends up with the other person passing a judgement that says -"That's it. I've said it. Bombay is better than Delhi and I obviously know what I'm talking about."
I am going to reserve my judgement on this matter.
For a person who has lived all her life in Delhi, Bombay is a very different city. The very feel, the essence of the city is starkly different from Delhi. As it should be. In Bombay, I see lots of people and then some more, lots of small small flats, major rush in the public trains, traffic jams... essentially space constraint. It is a city accomodating more and more people looking as if it will burst at the seams. It is divided into a city and then lots of suburbs, where people live. People travel to the city for work, entertainment, schools, colleges etc., but catch a train and go back to live in the suburbs.
Delhi does not have any suburbs... I wouldnt call Noida and Gurgaon suburbs. As a completely opposite view, Delhi has space. It always gives one the feeling of having a lot of space around. There are no traffic jams, the population is distributed amongst the various regions and nobody travels to one part of the city for work, education and lives in another. It also has its share of the posh and the not-so-posh areas. It's regions are also structurally very different from each other, but there is always space. That I think, is the essential difference.
It is true that people in Delhi hardly ever wait in queues to get to anywhere.
By contrast, in Bombay, there is a queue for everything, a queue which people respect. Last week, I was at a friend's brother's marriage and there was a queue to greet the couple at the reception dias. I can honestly say I've never seen that before.
As different as cities maybe, I believe that all types of people reside in any given city. To harshly stereotype a city's residents as one thing or the other is not really fair. Sure, the surroundings have an effect on people, and people in different cities are different, but once again, every city has all types of people living in it. Some good and helpful and some not.
This is stemming from something a batchmate of mine said last week - "People in Delhi are such hypocrites. They are absolutely intolerable." Much as I would have liked to retort to that, I generally don't rise to such baits. Well, my friend obviously did not realise that she was speaking to a true blue Delhiite. I have lived all my life in Delhi and I have come across different people. Much as I know, that if I were to live the rest of my life in Bombay, I will still come across different people.
I guess the post has become quite long and as usual, I am not sure whether I have articulated my thoughts on this matter in the correct fashion or not.
I'll end this post with a little question for which I do not have an answer- does a city make it's people or do people make a city?