Dream Life

So my friend and I have always talked about taking a sabbatical from the rotten pits of the daily corporate life. Well, not exactly – we do enjoy our corporate careers in a way. After all, it pays our bills. But the fact that there are complete fallacies in this incomplete career world, constantly make us sing the song of severance.

“What do you want to do?” I was as objective as could be.

“I think I just want to travel to Tierra Del Fuego and spend a few months there”, he said unassumingly.

Now that was an option I never considered even in my wildest “Verne”-ian dreams.

“Well..may be I will start my one year world tour with a two week trip to Japan to absorb some of its ‘shijou’…and then move on to South Asia…you know..it will be kinda neat to be traveling with no plans. I do however want to end up in Tierra Del Fuego”, he continued as enthusiastic as an Apple fan who just got the first iPhone.

“Hmmm..yeah..that will be kinda neat..”, I muttered the best response I could gather in 2 seconds.

“Great”..

An unplanned silence filled the room which otherwise was reverberating with world travel jives.

“What about your sustenance?” I threw the question out there.

“I have saved for this trip for years…I knew what I would be getting into”, he said quietly.

I could see his eyes rolling over his bank balance in a sort of an imaginary way. He seemed satisfied…or may be his eyes swirled a bit to ensure that the numbers were still ok with the inflation.

In my mind, there were gazillion little thoughts that fluttered through. If I can be slapdash here and just type them as incoherently as my mind processed it…

“Wish I can do it”

“Oh..yeah”

“That’s what I want to do”

“Hmm..lucky guy”

“I am jealous”

“Tierra Del Fuego – Is it in Argentina or Chile..? Actually both”

“Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku and ????”

“How many direct flights are there from Detroit to Tokyo?”

“It is impossible for me to do it – Because If I have to do this, I have to do it with my wife and son”

“Mmmm..Wasabi”

“I wish I had learnt Spanish”

“Global warming – sucks – damn republicans!”

“Are you alright”? my friend interrupted my chain of thoughts.

“Absolutely, I was just going through the list of places I would like to visit.”

“Really, Can you share that with me?”

“Yeah..yeah..sure..sure..”, I was taking some time to collect my thoughts again knowing very well, the list is there but is not filled.

“Let’s see – Egypt, Greece, Spain, Eastern Europe, SE Asia, China, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Morocco, Congo, S Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and the whole Amazon belt..and may be central America – and…of course, Australia and New Zealand”, I paused.

“Wow..you know I have been to almost half of these places in your list”, he was clearly being boorish.

“Really”, once again..the best response I could gather in 2 seconds.

“That’s impressive”, I continued giving him the space to glow in pride and giving me the space to hide my disappointment.

“So when do you think you can take the sabbatical? Have you talked to your boss?” – at this point, I was hoping to get out of the conversation because I felt so low and so down.

“I am hoping I can take my flight to Tokyo next month”, he was confident.

“Great!”

“So what about you? You have always wanted to take a sabbatical too. What would you do?

“Hmm..you know I would have liked to do some travel like you..but now that I am thinking about it, with all the stuff I am in the middle of, I don’t think I can do it”

“What?” he was puzzled.

“I like the idea you see..I would love to have the freedom and not worry about my job everyday”, I confessed ..”but don’t think I will ever be able to do this at this point of my career”

“Hmmm”

There ended that conversation by the coffee kabana that day. The thought continues to linger.

“Trrring…Trring…” – the alarm goes off and I hit the snooze.

It was a frightening dream in some ways. A dream, that stretched my subconscious thoughts. But the friend in my dream is not fictional. Well, he may not exactly go to Antarctica but is definitely on his way out to live his dream life. And no, I am not jealous.

Filler nibblets

• Watched “The Order of the Phoenix” recently – a very good movie if you follow the story and know the context. Not so, if this is your first Harry Potter movie..Thought the emotional bridge between some key characters were missing – but again, if you know the story, then it becomes implicit. I agree it is a challenge. But I personally would have preferred a 3 hour movie (instead of 2:18) giving more reels for the director to nibble with…
• I don’t know why I am writing about Gordon Brown – but it turns out that he is playing it safe for now, when it comes to maintaining the “sucking up to the US” policy. Shamefully unglamorous and quite stooping…
• Bridges of the Country – It was last Wednesday and I heard the news on CNN – shock, lumps of sorrow and plain sympathy – those were all my emotions. I saw the two adopted Colombian daughters of the 60 year old mom, who was driving home early from work to help the daughters with the graduation party preparations, the evening before they confirmed her death. Hope in Despair – Alas!
• Test cricket – Didn’t quite follow the jelly bean incident till after the test match was over. I am glad the Indian boys are not taking such profane handling by white cricketers with their faces down – in fact, they are trying to give back in some sorts…
• Summer – It is August already and this only means, in the polar regions of Michigan, we have got about one more month of good summer weather…Hmm..What is plan B?

Late Blossom

For once, I may have been OK with a mad leftist shedding a load of bullets or at least one, on John McCain — NOT for his total lack of any kind of showmanship, BUT for being a hard-ass Republican who stuck to his old school beliefs even in front of an audience who was clearly not on his side last night when he appeared on ‘The Daily Show’.
I enjoy watching Jon Stewart but last night changed it all. I actually respect him now as a talk show host — If I thought Dave Letterman was the king of popular late night talk shows, then Jon proved he clearly belongs to a newer generation, thereby proving he is a king in his own right.

Guess, I have blossomed late when it comes to late night talk shows!

Sneaking in

Cricket -

It ‘felt’ like the boyz in blue would actually be able to turn the tables and bring home some pride. ..Just ‘felt’ but never happened. I can be an arm-chair pundit and point fingers at Sehwag, Tendulkar and a few others for the misery etched but where is the solution? Ganguly slapped a big slab of ‘shame on you!’ on the selectors’ shameless faces while Kumble proved yet again why he doesn’t need front page articles and multi crore endorsement deals to prove he is the only consistent match winner we have got in the team.

Humor -

Accidentally bumped into this blog – Have to say that it is the most indigenous satire that has come out of the blog world (that I have read)! Very much like the humor that I enjoyed reading during my college days – the kind of mundane satire that came out of our English press.

Books -

The Mephisto club & False Impression. Two very different stories told by two very different authors – one an esoteric murder chase with a cabalistic twist and another a simple adventurous international murder mystery set in a Van Gogh background. Both acted as my aeroplane & bedside reads..I can’t really pick one over the other even though Jeffrey Archer was more successful in keeping my focus on.

Gadgets -

I just placed an order for an 80-GB ipod and 2 days later Jobs releases an “iphone”. I am still not sure about smartphones as I find them inconvenient. The pictures of the new iphone look promising but have to wait till June to hear it buzz..

Just look at the picture – This is what creative product design is all about. Steve Jobs cannot stop surprising us.

2007 -

Yeah..it is already here. Kinda sneaked in when I was asleep But it is here to stay for another year – but ’06 sneaking out?? Hmmm..not sure how much I am upset specially after reading that hilarious blog (link above)

Flip the calendar

The English go Aussie picking and end up getting picked, rent & ruptured, while the Indians are trying to do something similar in South Africa. Saddam Hussein is ready to be executed and gets on a peace proclaiming platform hours before he is going to be dead. John Edwards looks for a ‘black’ backdrop (to announce his Presedential bid) to rule the middle class America, that he so claims he is from & wants to serve. Somalians and Ehtiopians have just found yet another cause to kill themselves, to plunge their cursed continent further down the abyss of misery. Britney Spears continues to hog ‘People’ magazine headlines with her titillating & crass partying photos. Detroit thaws in Fifty degree weather on Christmas day while Denver gets ready for another ‘two footer’. Nokia throws a five-city new year’s party (http://www.nokianewyearseve.com) with AR Rahman and Nelly Furtado in Mumbai….And….

I get stuck in Western Pennsylvania, away from family and friends, as yet another year comes to an end making way for the dawn of a new year with hopes.
Why wait? Just flip the calendar – It is going to be another day just like today.

Happy New Year!

Short year

65 degrees on a November afternoon? Yeah..I can take it baby! But that’s not all to the day. Half-shut eyes, which even after a heavy dose of caffeine refused to give up the blur — that’s pretty much how the day started.
I blame Yuengling Black & Tan and some energetic senile banjo players for that.

Can’t believe a month long silence in the blog world could end up with me wondering what to write about as there is so much I want to write about.

Followed the elections? Both the local bodies election in Tamil Nadu as well as the senate/congress elections in the USA…I meant.

As always, the governing party pulled all its muscle & money power together for a clean sweep in Tamil Nadu. So much so that it looks like a joke. Well, I know the free TV thingy is a great political slap – but is it this great?

51-49 that’s going to be the balance of power in the US house – It looks like Rumsfeld was made the scapegoat and was made to pay the price for the Republical party’s bad show. But let’s be realistic. This may have been Karl Rove’s “Chanakya” like wisdom coming into the fore again. This probably was the best time for Bush to show the door to Rummy and pick a man of his choice without anyone complaining. And he did that pretty swiftly.

I watched “The Departed” a couple of weeks back with some Artichoke pesto pizza on my lap & Beck’s on the side (VIP seating at the Waterfront theatres in Pittsburgh). All that was not enough to make me term the movie a classic.
The hype and its worth..? Hmmm.. Still thinking.

It is another long day in Monroeville — and the seasons are changing.
Really..it is another short year and we are almost down to the last 50 days.

Timeless

A week for “pedophiles and pedoscorns” in the USA! Of course, if you are from anywhere else around the globe, it could have been different.

But to me, just the thought that you could live in a remote Amish county in Pennsylvania, send your daughter to a modest one room school and still cannot guarantee if she would return home walking those 2 blocks, where buggys move at 10 miles/hour is obnoxious and fearful.

—–

What is the common trait that every politician around the globe exhibits?
Answer: When you are in the middle of a scandal, fake an ailment and seek treatment at some secluded hospital from where only the politician’s attorney could talk.

—–

There has got to be some relationship between my current routine and my creative output. Still trying to figure out. Wish I had the time…May be that’s it. I keep thinking I don’t have the time.

—–

Passively observing

21 years and still going!

That’s Agassi at the U.S Open. If match records could speak for a tennis player’s legacy and not just the number of grand slams won, then Agassi is probably up there ranked along with the other greats of the game. Sampras says that it is Agassi’s relationship with Graf that helped him mature as a player and he owes his own (Sampras’s ) legacy in part to their rivalry. 21 years ago, when I was still in my middle school, the denim shorts, the crazy disco hair style, pink shirts and shoes along with hair bands sure made him look like a rebel and that’s why the media loved to hate him. But two tennis generations and twenty one years later, the same media loves to show its respect and shower him with praises & tributes. Times do change. And the fact that he made it to the final in 2005 has got to say something about this man’s tenacity.

We have two more weeks of pure hard court tennis fun which may culminate with another Federer-Nadal final.

“Snakes on the Planes” is a creepy movie alright but I still don’t get all the hype it created among the online community. The movie had a few moments of unadulterated reptile fear but overall, I think it was a simple case of a “B” grade movie that got bumped up. Samuel Jackson has done better roles but he is not alone in carrying the burden of maintaining the tempo throughout the movie. You can watch it on DVD.

We had a little bit of neighborhood networking last week. Sure, we were the only “non-caucasian” couple in the crowd and most of them were double my age. Neither of which prevented us from mingling. It was funny watching a relatively “liberal” gentleman throwing baits at a rather publicly declared Republican, waiting for him to explode and blame the other one & democrats for everything the country has lost. Sure, he got a kick out of it.

Needless to say, I was just a passive observer.

Broken Partnership

When the weeds grow wild and the berries are too ripe, when the grass is too dry and the deck is unstained, when the golf clubs get rusty and the cricketing boots go missing, when it is the last week in July and there is no vacation left, you know — rather I know that I have wasted (or almost) a perfectly hot and sweltering Michigan summer.

For one, I haven’t had time to put on my blogger hat. And the new iMac G5 is still waiting to be embraced – forget about all MBox -2 and the rest of the gear that are dependent on the embrace.
So I wonder as I sit on my couch withering away my last few hours left of my weekend before a grinding week starts again, what on earth has made me lose focus?

As I refresh my memory for all the fun stuff I did and didn’t write about — it includes reading a couple of books. “Holy Cow” by Sarah Macdonald was a fun trip through the spiritual geography of India from a westerner’s eyes…and it stands out. I had hopes on Upamanyu Chatterjee’s “The mammaries of the welfare state”, specially as it was touted to be a sequel to one of my college favourite reads – “English August”. Don’t think it was quite up there. Upamanyu spent way too much time trying to explain why he named the book as he did although there is no denying the satire he came up with on Indian bureaucracy. All in all, the book was a drag.

The 624 run partnership that Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara put together just beats my imagination and I still am amazed by their patience to just stay there in the crease amidst the heat, to pile up these runs.

I heard that the partnership was finally broken!!

Is there a way out?

Human lives don’t mean much to these fanatics. But to me….I can’t bear to even read about someone losing someone’s loved one. 6:30 PM – right in the middle of a monsoon season, when the linear Mumbai Western line was abuzz with the regular commuters getting back from work eagerly looking forward to taking their evening sip of ‘chai’ leaning on their familiar walls or verandahs once they got home, as the wet fields that went past their window sights and as the grim reminders of the July floods from the previous year flashed across their eyes & minds, just imagine, that some of those innocent souls who had no thoughts of terrorism or death in their minds at that moment, just died the next moment. They burst into flames or their flesh was tattered in that devastating moment making their lives mean nothing, their dreams floored, the very meaning of their existence worthless and lividly making their loved ones’ lives miserable as long as they live.

Why? Above the hoods of Radical Islam, Fanaticism, Kashmiri militancy, Pakistani separitism and anything else, Can you, me and “them” just think humanely..for we are humans?

Is there a way out of this? Throw all the blame you can at governments, militants, terrorists and religious leaders. But can anyone do anything?