Ex-Thoughts

For reasons unknown to me, I have been very late in realizing most of the things around me. By “things” I mean the general way of life & also the normal way of thinking of people. This has been happening from a long time, and when I have finally realized the actuality of it all, it has always been an “..aha!!!” moment & will continue to be so.

I will start from as far as I can remember. When I was 11 or 12, a haircut meant, well a cutting-of-hair or maybe even cutting-of-all-hair, not as in bald, but cutting it with scissors as much as the barber’s skill allowed. I would always be surprised when the barber used to ask what kind of haircut I wanted. Slowly of course, by looking here & there, and also after breaking my (then-small) head as to why I used to be called porcupine by many people, I realized that haircut shouldn’t be taken literally. Aha !! From then onwards, till now, I have never returned from the barber’s shop with the kind of haircut as I would have planned before entering the shop.

For some strange reason, till I was 18 or so, I used to associate casteism with my language. I used to think that only kannadigas were Brahmins, & also I had no idea of the names of any other caste. Trust me, I had no clue that “caste” is actually associated with which family you are born in and that language had nothing to do with it. Aha !! I couldn’t imagine that a person was accorded a so and so caste just because he was born to so and so. But what was even more shocking was the most-casual acceptance of this fact by everyone around. It wasn’t that I had an ideological difference with people around me; in fact I didn’t even know their ideology. Anyway, I don’t want to start preaching here, so it would be enough if I said, casteism is absolute BS. Though I must add that, since Brahmanas wrote the Vedas, Upanishads & all other holy scriptures of Hindu’s, we have (in UNIX terms) administrative rights. We have the right to edit, modify & bend the rules as we may wish and as I am a Brahmin in all its pure sense, I am going to do so.

My life was very straight forward and my thinking was very simple till I entered engineering. It was on these lines---- 'People who do engineering are the crème-de-elite & along with this people who do Medical also exist'. I had absolutely no clue as to the variety of courses available in various other streams. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they were good, I just didn’t know that these courses were present because of the most basic fact that everyone has got different interests & that you should do something you should be interested in. Aha !! I simply wasn’t exposed to all this choose-a-career-in-accordance-with-your-aptitude stuff. Maybe it is because of the plethora of opportunities available to the educated Indian today, or maybe it was the hostel atmosphere during engineering which opened my eyes to the fact that “do anything you want but do it good & you can be whoever you want to be, because it doesn’t matter what you do, all that matters is how you do it”.

I won’t lie here by saying that I didn’t know that the concept of arranged marriage existed in our society. I was aware, but surely I wasn’t aware of the actual process. My views on marriage, long before I lost my innocence, were that I would be obviously going to have a love-marriage (then it seemed the most natural thing that could happen with me) and that I would just have to get a job after engineering. So after job, marry. That’s it. Simple, wasn’t it?? Well the problem came in the shape of pre-decided rules of marriage. Guy has gotta be >> 28,well settled & girl has gotta be <<24-25> Aha !! Even after realizing these things, I thought that these would be restricted to the uneducated lot, who don’t realize that marriage is not some convenient relationship you form, in order to lead a comfy life, but a bond of two souls, of two minds, of two hearts, of two human-bodies. But that is not at all the case; in fact it is the highly educated lot who are very much continuing the “traditions”. This has actually reached such a stage that all the education & worldly knowledge is not going to make any difference to the way people think & approach this subject of marriage. I thought that, the current generation of girls might feel that they are being asked to compromise their lives, since they are usually married off to someone by the time they reach their mid-20’s, but that isn’t the case. I think that, the acceptance of this kind of situation by the girls has been at a subconscious level. Of course, this doesn’t apply to each & everyone, but it does to most (currently) & the only thing to be glad about this is that the system is working.

As I have mentioned, my exposure to the “world” was very limited. I used to think that my views were futuristic, till I realized that they were not. My only futuristic view was to become rich. I had no notion of this clichéd term in engineering circles called ‘higher-studies’. By this I mean that, I actually didn’t know that you could actually study more after engineering.Aha !! The true meaning of terms like graduate, post-graduate, bachelor’s, master’s had never entered my mind. Stupid, wasn’t I ?? Once again, the shocking part being, everyone is doing it & those who are not at least know about it. GOD, where was I sleeping?? (Vatsa, you were always sleeping in the classroom)

When I was very very young, in other words, when I was cute & chubby I didn’t even know that a term called “Weekend” existed. Saturday was half day of school & lot of games in the afternoon & evening. Sunday was about Mowgli & chandrakanta in the morning, sleeping in the noon & again games in the evening. This pretty much continued till I finished high school. (high schoolallu Mowgli nodthaidyaa ?? kid only). Then PU was about studies, studies & (no prizes for guessing) studies. Since I was in a totally-focused-on-one-goal phase then, Sat & Sun meant a complete revision of that week’s tuition material. Then in engineering, Sunday ..Saturday .. Monday didn’t make a difference. It really didn’t. Maybe the night meal of bisibelebath on Sat nights made us realize that it was Sat & time to do “something”, but there was no special feeling of arrival of weekend. It was only after a whole week's of proper work after joining my job, that Saturday Night Fever struck me. Aha !! The point I am trying to bring out is that it took me 22 years of my life to realize what a “weekend” truly means, thanks to my boring frustrating but high paying job and also to my bunch of friends.

So now, when I am very very wise (not old), in other words, when I am tall & handsome I have realized many thingz that I should have realized before only.