Thought for the day..

Thinking about patriotism today. Some will say its is an overrated thing and too much said about it already. I think somewhere the thought stemmed from listening to songs from 'Swades'.

I am not given to the patriotic debate about what should be and what shouldn't be. It is a very personal thing as far as I am concerned. No one but no one has the right to comment about your personal preference or choice to stay within or outside your country. Our lives take us places we probably don't even want to go and sometimes just sometimes, to places we want to. But thats a different matter altogether.

Everybody talks about how the country needs you and I sit and wonder how ? How really does the country need me? Does it really matter if one person out of x billion chooses to live outside of his/her country ? I guess not.!
I mean, with so many people, what percentage do you really contribute to? Do you personally make a difference to any socio-economic strata/factor of your country?
Nopes, I am still coming up with all negatives here.

There are also debates about working for MNC's. There are people within the country who choose to work for MNC's. In a way it works for the economy but really is that the only reason? Reasons range from better salaries, better lifestyle even better work culture. And all of that is true and you can't get away from it. When you have people making such choices within the country, can you even start about people who chose to live outside the country ?

There are people who went out for various reasons ranging from education, employment and what not. Chose to settle down there for various reasons again. Can you really question any of the those personal choices ? Read a few blogs about how much they miss their own country (when there are cricket matches and festivals going around..) and questioning themselves about whether they did a right thing.

Makes me wonder. Way back, I had made up my mind that there is no place like home. I am a very strongly rooted person and very close to my family. It is difficult for me to even imagine living in a diff city from family, forget country! Thankfully my husband shares my choice. After living in the states for 4 years, he had the option open of course, but like me he believes that home is where family is, where friends are, where people speak the same language as you, where people crowd outside even a small TV repair shop to watch a cricket match, where shopping still means going to this overcrowded and narrow street somewhere in the city, where familiarity means even your local store waala remembering that its time for your next 5 kg bag of rice, where chaos means in peak traffic your vehicle not moving an inch but that doesnt stop you from honking away to glory coz somewhere it gives u an innane sense of satisfaction, where festivals mean the whole street buzzing with activity and you don't need to got to any other place to feel the pulse-you just need to step out of your house...

I could go on and on.. maybe this is patriotism, maybe i am patriotic deep down. And its mostly because of a sense of belonging rather than all the high talk about contributing to the society.

Also having said that i revisit my earlier statement about my contribution to the socio-economic spehere. When i dig deep down, i realize that in some roundabout way I provide a portion of income to various people by just being there! You may wonder who.. well the doodh waala, paper waala, cable waala, departmental store waala, kaam waali bai, beauty parlor, tailor, auto waala and so on.... actually its a huge list and i have not even covered 1/3rd of it.
I think thats sufficient contribution to enough households.. :-)

So, am i justifying the cause? What cause? I don't think cause is what really counts here. I just chose to live where i do because plain and simple I Love it!!

ps: I understand that it is quite a sensitive topic and swear to god, not intended to spark any controversies or debate. Just some musing and of course very personal.. IMHO types :-)

Stupid or magnanimous

Hmmmppphh ! Weird comparison I know..
But right now it could be either of them...

I could really be stupid. (high probability my friend :p)
Or maybe I am just being the bigger person here and trying to have a decent conversation.

Wonder which..

Thats the whole catch 22 situation. You will never really find out till...hmm ok i am losing it.!

Not even worth writing about.. But then again why am i doing this ??

*scratch my head, ponder ponder

Yippee doo

A perfect weekend ! I mean really perfect.. Everything was just right from the begining to the end. :-)
For all those panic attacks I was having and all that bad time over wednesday and so on, everything just blew away on friday and the skies cleared up for the most perfect weekend :-))
Ok Ok, stop gushing Rads !
But seriously I can't ...I can't even remember the last gooood weekend I had. I mean when you do everything you really wanted to do and things go exactly as planned..

hmmm. Maybe last year sometime was the last time I had a weekend like that. Can you imagine what a state my life should be in if the last perfect weekend or even an above average weekend was sometime last year ! Boy o boy !
Phew.. Anyways, I am glad I had such a good time. Hubby was down for a few days and since i was bloody buried in work, the weekend was all we had to see new places, spent some quality time and let me just say we did all that and more :-) (shushh u naughty people, thats not what i mean :p)

Started with sunny blue skies which I personally hadn't seen since the time I landed here ;-)
Improved with my resolution to not even switch on my laptop and making it amply clear to my team that I am not even going to check mails from Friday to Sunday.
Believe me it does you so much good to just do that :-)
Visited the pier which was just so glorious and sunny. A few places downtown and of course the famous Devon ave :-)
Had a great time..

Wonder why its become so difficult off late to take time off and just enjoy ...

Not liking the day

I am supposed to like today. Hubby visiting and all that excitement but somehow it hasnt been a good day. Work wise and otherwise.
There is just too much work. My lead asking me to push it for this week but I can't bring myself to tell him I can't coz hubby's just here for 3 days and I am not even sure when I am gonna see him next :-((
Plus lot of background thought process happening in my head which i don't like. Well, I guess i like it when its something nice but today its just nasty.
Given an option between Forgive and Forget or Let them go to hell, what do you really choose ? hmmmm...
It is a tricky choice i mean !
I could be a nice person and be civil. But is that required ? Should I be the bigger person I always think I should be and just move on?
Do i really care ? Does it matter ?

It like this eternal tug between what really matters and what you would like to be.

I am not liking the tone of this particular convo I am having. Its a weird state between ol times an I am in a different place now time.
Ok, now i am not even making sense anymore !! Good god. Whats happening to me??!!

Aaaargggghhhh. And you know whats infuriating? There is nobody to talk to. As in there are lots of people I could talk to but not one, get this, not One, i would like to talk to about this.

Am I weird or what!?

How do you really transgress from sweet understanding girl to the cold calculative b-i-t-c-h. And believe me, a part of me actually wants to be one..

I dont want to be sweet! I dont want to be understanding! I just want to rip somebody apart and not stop for a second to think where the person might be coming from.

Really, whats the whole hype about 'understanding where the person is coming from, step into someone else's shoes' blah blah blah !! Really do you want to do that all the times?

Aren't there just times when you choose not to do that and just wish somebody would just take a flying leap.

I am supposed to grow up an be wiser with age. How? How?

Over and out

Freakishly cold an feeling lazy in this city of Schaumburg, slightly outside Chicago..
Its more lethargy than anything else that has resulted in this disappearance from my own blogsite, forget even visiting other people's!
Come on Rads, wake up !!
brrrrrrrrrrrr.. no thank you :p !

ps: Has anybody given much thought to this music director called Sandesh Shandilya. I for one hadn't but after listening to a few of his number, I have to admit this gentleman is extremely talented! He has given some simply amazing numbers for Socha na tha (this new obscure movie but actually quite a pleasant surprise package as it was nice), Rules- pyaar ka superhit formula, Road and not to mention a few songs from K3G !!

Thats an impressive score for a short record of 5 movies or so..Do listen to songs from Socha na tha if you guys can esp.
Abhi abhi mere dil mein: This is such a cute an peppy song.. Really makes u call up ol frnds an making plans to hang out :-)
Main seedhe saadhe - This is one of those really rare musical kinda numbers where the guy is proposing to the girl in a song and the lyrics are endearingly sweet.

Ok, that was a looooong ps :-) Anyways before I sign off by saying toodle doo, just a note to say that am currently addicted to this song called Tauba Tauba from 'Kaal' and it ROCKS !

Highly recommended

Don't say this as often as I should but people, Blogging is the way to go!!

5 top reasons why you should (according to me) :

1. It keeps you sane during all crazy times- It helped me personally to wade thru my crisis days!
2. It brings you new people in your life- When you desperately wanna get away from the same old people and routine, this is the best place to be where you can glimpse at other people's lives thru their words.
3. You can meet a whole lot of people- Some of the sweetest people I have come across are my online/sulekha/blog buddies.
4. Brings you solace and comfort in the weirdest ways- Kept me from being all homesick and lonely during the time I was living all alone in US. Believe me, being single and staying alone in the states can cause a lot of panic attacks!
5. Creates a whole new world for you- My online world is a very very special space for me. I can get away from cranky husband, irate manager and whacko friends and just be at peace when I am blogging or reading other blogs.

ok, and a 6th one which is interlinked with all else is the sheer pleasure you undergo when one of your blog buddy is happy and at a nice place in her/his life :-))))

I am feeling like that right now!

Cheating

Its such a dirty word in every which way, isn't it? Or is it?

There are many an implication of it and of course everybody's definition is different. Some believe in what is convenient and some in what is 'suitable'.
What do I believe in? People who know me might even wonder why I am writing about something like this..I was talking to this friend of mine till wee hours of morning the other day and it was yet another instance of self realization for me. (Yeah, i have these things every now and then :p)
I realized that I take a strong stance in many a things in life. Suffice to say that I draw this black line (in bold) when in comes to certain things in life. Cheating or infidelity is one of those things I strictly draw a line against. Its something that in bold letters is etched in my head as 'Unacceptable'!

Chewing upon that much after, I also realized that even the action as such is defined differently by different people. A lot is implicit and clearly defined in a social paradigm where we have lines we have always learnt to draw. But what really made me wonder was the fact that in today's age of internet and non-co-dependent (patent pending on that word :p) lives that we lead, are the lines clearly defined?

Do we Really know where to draw a line when it comes to non-physical relationships with people? I guess the non conformance of such a thing could be called 'emotional cheating' ..

There are so many manifestation of these we see everyday around us but do we really pause for a moment to analyse it? I think its more common in people/couples who lead very independent lives or stay apart for long duration of times. (Ok, before anybody does a jumpdrive to innane conclusions, this is not a page from my life, its only what i see around me :-) )
There are couples I know, who are so involved in just each other that the world around is mostly a blur to them. And I am definitely not talking about such couples.

I am talking of working couples who have a very healthy social life and who have come to realize that too much of co-dependence is a tad bit overbearing. Also having said that, I am not talking about couples going out with other friends and not with their spouses. Whether its for a cup of coffee or a movie, I do believe if you are in a healthy marriage, its perfectly permissible to chose to go out once in a while with friends. (Please note I do mention 'once in a while' :-) Too much of that is also trouble)

So, where was i ? I was trying to figure

If you talk to a friend about some pressing problem and not to your spouse, is that cheating?
If you harmelessly flirt with somebody from the opp sex over a mail or chat (what you consider harmless of course), is that cheating?
Is it ok to talk to someone from the opp sex till wee hours of night even though you are committed?
and so on inlcuding probably the most important or all,
Is it ok if you are actually enjoying yourself without your spouse?

Are we really cheating on our better halves by indulging in one or all of the above?

I guess any one of these are not really as far fetched as we think. We can actually see these things all around us, especially when gender barriers are becoming obsolete and with weekend couples on rise.(Essentially the working ones who manage to catch up just on the weekends).

I think its easy to take a stance on a lot of such issues really because we feel certain things are 'ok' to do. I personally do not see anything wrong with going out for coffee or even dinner with a male friend even if you am committed/married, corresponding with your close male friends over chat and even using some terms of endearment. Maybe even done it.
But if the roles were reversed, would I really feel the same seeing my spouse indulge in it ? Maybe, maybe not. Guess a lot would depend on that 'faith' factor and of course the company also.
I don't think men are any different when it comes to such things. We always feel that women are the more green eyed of the two but believe me thats so not true.

Anyways, I digress. Ok, my 2 cents worth - I think any relationship should have rights and wrongs clearly established way ahead,so that each person understands the reality and repurcussions of crossing that line when faced with that choice. At the end of the day, its a question of personal choice between 2 individuals and no one outside the sphere of the relationship can ever judge or comment.

But, does that stop me from doing so ? naah :p

stuck!

I am so stuck in a rut!

Its like life for all practical purposes has gone on a slow motion overdrive.
Nothing I do or don't do makes it move any faster !
And of course clubbed with the fact that I have been so tongue tied or rather pen-tied in this case :p, I haven't blogged anything either..

aaarrrggghhh !