The Glass is Half Full

Unless you live under a rock or in Zimbabwe or something, you would have probably heard the biggest headline article this week concerning the Indian Elections. It was a pretty big occasion and was fittingly hyped to that level. But that was before the counting process and after the voting booth selfies. Then the results came in and the hype broke all barriers. It was like Slumdog Millionaire all over again but of course with some fundamental differences. One can be characterized as a controversial and shockingly realistic story of success and the other one was Slumdog Millionaire. The election fiasco probably got a lot more popularity mainly because there was no Frieda Pinto type of character in that story.( If you’re thinking Mayawati, then you need serious therapy )

India has always had this reputation of pulling a rabbit out of the hat. They run their own political thriller drama and call it Politics. We have the imported lead characters from Italy. We have the underdog who cannot get a US visa, maybe because he pronounces it ‘Bheesa’. We have comic relief from both highly educated people like Arvind Kejriwal and also from those who use a calculator to count their fingers, like Rahul Gandhi. Adding all these elements up, you would have no doubt that the underdog would have emerged victorious in the Lok Sabha Elections this year. You may know that every character in a story has a number of haters and a number of followers. The love-hate arguments they have eventually lead to the popularization of that character. I am not the biggest fan of Narendra Modi but since the milk is already spilt, I’m going to try and take out some positives from this situation for those who are like me.

I wasn’t familiar with that many people who were aware of the happenings of Indian politics before our trusty tea vendor came into the picture. I didn’t pay attention to politics either and honestly, was quite ignorant of it. I don’t know if college kicked in or mob mentality did but, I started watching political debates and reading articles in the paper. Such may be the case of a large population of the Indian mid 20s crowd. This is a major advancement in terms of overall awareness considering that most people didn’t give two shits about Pranab Mukherjee or Prathiba Patil being president. To be honest, I’m pretty sure their own families didn’t take out more than 10 minutes to congratulate them either. Abhijeet Mukherjee looks like he still doesn’t know what a president is and the location of Pratibha Patil is almost unknown now. Well, at least she isn’t using tax payer’s money to abscond to an exotic location anymore. Getting back to the point, I’m happy that Agent Dandiya helped a larger population be aware on the political drama. It is pretty hard to get 20 year olds in college to agree or follow someone who orchestrated mass riots and indirectly killed thousands believes in this dry state concept. Ridiculous

I would not want to go into awful stereotypes of how muslim extremists are the sole cause of terrorism related activities but then again, they are stereotypes for a reason. At the very least, one may be able to find a tiny positive out of the 2002 communal riots. Let’s say you are a member of the Lashkar E Taliba and you want to carry out your quota of regular bloodshed. You proceed to go look for a nice beautiful and populated place you can annihilate happily. Excluding regular distractions from weird shit like goats or whatever they do for fun in the Middle East, how would a terrorist go about figuring out his Modus Operandi? He would first eliminate all the places which he cannot bomb and hopefully, with a Hindu extremist leader in control of the country, India will find its way onto that list. Who in their right minds would want to screw with a Hindu extremist with a colorful history of indirectly killing Muslims? Exactly.

Following politics isn’t something which widely resonant in the country, but political jibing and complaining is more common than the number of engineering students here, which is saying a lot. When India’s arguably best economist was handed the position of Prime Minister and the rupee still sank to new lows, you might find yourself at a loss of words. Expectations soar higher with every new line in your CV. Narendra Modi is what someone may call, street smart. He will find his way around things through any means possible and not give a damn about the path he takes, but that seems like a glamorous portfolio only until you are thrown under the bus by the government.  Concentrating on the brighter note, with the massive margin he won in the Elections, it would be safe to assume that he has the joint approval of a vast majority in India.  This would imply that, most of the voters would be in whole hearted support of his future decisions, even if it is borderline hypocrisy at some point of time. Then again, hypocrisy is seen as a lesser crime than freedom of opinion so we’re in the green here. India will continue giving their support for the new prime minister and as citizenry of democracy, that counts for a lot.

The biggest boon this election campaign brought us was the disintegration of the Congress party. It’s funny how it took this long though. There will be no more of Kapil Sibal and his eyebrows babbling nonsense on live television. There will be no more of Dr. Subramanian Swamy acting like a stuck up 15 year old Hindutva supporter. Although I feel bad for Manmohan Singh, I’m happy he’s ridden of his duties to the Italian estrogen bomb called Rahul Gandhi. Our daily quota of slapstick entertainment will come to a standstill without Rahul Gandhi doing monkey antics on live television. Sanjay Jha will fill in for Rahul Gandhi in this, mainly because his bills are paid by stupid statements and Arnab Goswami’s anger. We have escaped diving deeper into a forest fire but we haven’t extinguished the flames completely. With the rupee gaining a tiny amount of credibility over the days, the overall situation has begun to show some hope. So here’s to moving one step forward and not having to fall another 2 steps back.

*DIng dong ding* Your kind attention please

As a student who does college away from home, I’m pretty used to the frequent train and bus journeys. Almost every 2 weeks, I am commuting to some weird place in an overnight bus or a train. Some journeys are horrible and some are memorable. They are memorable because they make you want to kill a litter of puppies with fire and that is not a feeling you usually get. Most of you might immediately jump to the defense of the Indian railways system and tell me how advanced and sophisticated the entire system is. But then again, no you won’t. Don’t get me wrong. I love how comfy the seats are in the sleeper class and how hospitable those bedbugs are. For them to be screwing with the happiness of every single passenger day in day out and maintaining the uniform torture is something admirable.

I am writing this post from a train right now while I am surrounded by an entire bank of blog content. Let us make this description a little more sophisticated and separate these annoying bags of blood and tissue into three categories depending upon their age.  The mentioned incidents have occurred over the space of my 3 years of both train and bus commute to/from Thanjavur or Trichy. Let’s check out category 1 which involves the lowest form of life.

No, it’s not Subramanian Swamy, It’s babies.

Okay it’s a little like Subramanian Swamy, I’ll give you that.

BABIES :

Babies are the evolved versions of the bedbugs. They possess this magical ability to piss everyone off and to shit their pants at will. I wouldn’t say crying at will was very magical as most people I know now can pull that off better than these maggots. You know how hard it is to walk in a straight line in a fast moving vehicle? Imagine these little excreta banks doing this when they can’t walk a straight line on a normal basis. The parents, obviously fed up of listening to baby gibberish and staring at human waste for 80% of their average day, would decide to leave their kids to roam around a fast moving train to get some alone time and calm themselves. This tactic is so stupid and still so abundantly used that I’m tempted to make a religion out of it. I’m pretty sure even a mass murderer would be held in higher regard than someone who doesn’t help a kid up after it trips and falls over flat ground. Then again, mass murderers and terrorists are held in pretty high regard in this country. On a completely random note though, this Narendra Modi is one fine fellow no?

One time it so happened that I was to share a 2 tier 2^nd A/C compartment with a couple and a kid roughly 5-6 years old. I usually engross myself into a movie or something else on my laptop until I eventually feel sleepy and then pack up. This was one of those nights where Satan wanted to stretch his arms and do some genuine evil. Like all normal people, I push my footwear under the seat below and go to my upper berth where I set up my laptop and hang up my figurative middle finger to the world. Kids usually have this tendency to screw people’s lives up without actively realizing it, much like that one political party in India. (Or all the political parties in India)

So this particular hyperactive bundle of joy was clearly a football enthusiast, complete with a t-shirt that said- Football. Owing to his apparent love for the game, he was kicking things around. The father managed to settle the little dude down but he wouldn’t listen. So like any Indian would, he just gave up.  The result? My flip flops found themselves all the way to that metal link between two compartments, a discovery I made when I took the decision in the morning to just leave the slippers behind and accept defeat. Not the biggest story of tragedy but annoying enough to hate the kin. Now let’s move on to the next type of irksome company you rendezvous with in your travel.

OVER ENTHUSIASTIC TEENAGERS :

Every once in a while you come across that one group of teenagers or college students who act like teenagers, who think they are Jim Carrey and prefer to shout out all their jokes. Only problem is, they aren’t Jim Carrey and their jokes would make Navjot Singh Siddhu contemplate suicide (Since murder isn’t quite a new thing for him). They most probably are either just teens traveling for the first time together or mentally retarded. Even in this, the category falls broadly into two main types. Type 1 involves those who are so adherent to their stereotypes that it’s not even funny and type 2 consists of those who actively make an effort to not to showcase their stereotype. The LCM for them both is their extravagant sense of negative humor and positive reinforcement of irritation.

A train journey with them is a different experience altogether and I don’t mean for this to be in a “coming of age” type way. It is this cocktail of bad jokes in Tamil mixed with testosterone and overconfidence. As a proud practitioner and admirer of shit jokes and bad humor, when a particular joke is deemed as bad by me, it really speaks volumes about it.

Type 2 are generally the Bros from the Bro college of Brongineering in Dudepur. Most Bro conversations cannot happen without a reference to Tam Kroos or Cristyano Donaldo of Reel Madrid in Spen. They often also include exclamatory remarks about goals from the 19^th century like :

BRO 1: Bro andha goal by Zlatan Ibajbfaivbkarginic for PSG was ulti theri bro like wow.

BRO 2: ZOMGLOLZ. who is this zladan and why has he joined psg? Sastra has better placements bro.

<Seemingly infinite cackling from both the bros>

Life had never seemed less unworthy to continue. But we need to move on as I stare at my word count reaching new levels of LOL. I wrap up quickly with my last category of Travel Animosities- The dreaded Uncles.

THE ADVICING UNCLES:

The last thing on a students’ mind while traveling back home, is their future. Unless of course the future in question corresponds to the F, 20 in seat number 30 which we already religiously checked before boarding the train.

*Muffled cries of engineers asking me not to reveal trade secrets*

The only thing scarier than the train derailing and crashing into a pile of flaming cacti is, a middle aged gentleman waltzing into your compartment and settling there with his trusty box of curd rice and futile advice. If you closely pay attention to these few moments, you can actually experience how 9/11 must have felt for the people inside the WTC.

So as this gentleman slowly flies this plane into your entire mood, you realize that life is cruel. He proceeds to question every aspect of your seemingly pointless life and judges you irrespective of what you say. The reason why they are an unpleasant company during travel is, because they will try to make you engage in conversation even if you shoot down all their attempts of it. Once I was on my way from Thanjavur to Chennai in the afternoon train and I wasn’t sleepy. So naturally I pulled out my laptop and started watching a movie (Which, by now you must have realized is, the engineers solution to everything). It was the first Thor movie and I was quietly stationed in my berth with headphones and all. This elderly uncle comes to charge his cell phone at the point and notices me watching this movie. Well aware that I am wearing headphones, he rambles loudly and out of courtesy, I remove my headphones and ask him the dreaded question- What?

“Why pa you are watching movie. It is 1.30pm in afternoon. According to <insert random god name> and <insert random Sanskrit word> it is the best time to study”

Thanks to the 90184571039857 gods and 1047591837 religions, it is hard to find a time which is not ideal for studying. However, trying to avoid further conversation, he laughs. I laugh. He laughs more. I slowly put my headphones back on and turn away, questioning why bad things must happen to good people.

But anyways, like any wise man would tell you- These small experiences play a huge part in shaping who you are in the future. So in the future, if you find me convicted of manslaughter or something, blame that wise old crack for predicting this and arrest him instead. But for now, I’ll be content with you just liking this blog post and coming back regularly for more.