Intermittent Self Realizations @ onsite

Today when almost a year has passed by and the initial euphoria of starting a blog has died out as I visit my blogpost again out of sheer boredom the first thought which comes to my mind is a proverb in our national language hindi “Latho ke bhoot baato se nahi maante” translated to our second soon to be national language English “Ghosts of kicks ….Don’t understand talks” (Don’t mind it!!! dat’s the newly coming to US effect of translating everything to English :) )

The reason of this proverb striking me out of the blue is the sudden enlightening realization that people like me rather many of us become so comfortable in our predictable, cozy & taken for granted life that we sometimes need a kick in the ass (not to be taken or imagined in literal sense) or in subtle words a strong rattling of our senses to awaken us & make us look outside our warm cocoon. In my case this much needed kick was my first onsite assignment outside India i.e. to US.

Having born and brought up in a place like India over your entire life span where you tend to know everything about everything and everyone, feeling self reliant, warm and secure comes very easily to you like breathing.
And for someone who has lived in the most happening place of India – Mumbai where even at 2 am in the night life is very much alive, where you can survive even at a motley 5 rs vadapav entire day and still feel sumptuous where your legs and the Mumbai lifeline trains are the most reliable things that can get you anywhere and everywhere visit to US is surely an eye opener to many unknown or known yet not told facts.

So now when the greatest dream of millions of people has come true for me at last the few experiences or rather learning’s of my initial period which would always stay with me are :

1) ‘Things Are Never How They Seem To Be And that goes for people too’ :

. Wow, Great, aaahh, yippie and what not can you hear when someone says they are going out of India & esp. if it’s US. People have this feeling of going to the land of riches where beggars too are well dressed, where every place is beautiful, where people are all good looking and fair where everything is simply perfect, but then it’s like the mirage you see in desert only to reach it and realize it’s just sand .
Really it’s NOT WORTH all the hoopla or people’s only ambition in life blah blah associated to it.

a)People here have all the niceties in place with thanks and sorry’s and being
smiley but then they lack the warmth of saying what you want the way you want
even if it seems absurd.

b)Places here are heavenly, well structured and picture perfect that in some time you
lose the ability to be awed by anything different, the excitement of finding
something best among the good.

c)Here you have all the amenities & infrastructure like well manicured lawns for
your look alike apartments, big cars to zoom through , diet specific ,weight
specific and tailored just for you food .But then U miss the small but necessary
pleasures which makes life actually worth living like discovering a rooky lane
and then getting lost with your best buddy on your way home or the chaos which is
there in every Indian home every morning which actually wakes you up or the utmost
joy of eating the larger than your mouth, roadside ,spicy paanipuri which in no
way can ever be found in the foot long ‘chicken teriyaki’ of subway.

d)Here you have the so called illusion independence you so die for but then no one to
enjoy that with

2) It’s surely the people in your life who make all the difference & the
reason for U to live, without them you just survive. So value them.
We know this fact but then many a times we become so complacent or so wishfully lazy that we take our loved ones for granted .Living on your own reinforces and rightfully reminds you this.
There have been so many times when I have wished that my mom stopped nagging me for eating breakfast cooked by her in the morning and I so non chalantly skipped it saying “time nahi hai office ko late ho raha hai “ and she used to say “ Jab khud se bana na padega na tab samjhega” . Yes mom I have learnt my lesson now when I have to do with kellogs J. I will eat the breakfast for sure when I come back to India now how much ever late I be for office.
I miss my dad cutting and giving us fruits every night and we saying “ye kya fruits khaane ka roz roz” but then that was irking some time back.
The over friendly neighbors were a botheration then but now you wish some one would ask “Kaise chal raha hai kaam sab??” “Have you not become thin than earlier?”

I always knew I would miss them all but now I value them more for being their in my life


3) Everyone for once should stay alone for some time.

I know after having read all of the above you would be surprised at this learning of mine. I would hate to stay alone anytime in my life henceforth but then I guess what made me come to this conclusion is staying alone in the first place .And also
Sometimes you need such jostling to make you strong, to know yourself and sometimes to rediscover yourself. Since like I already said in the beginning words are not enough to teach us things we need the right kick too many a times but kick in the right direction is what is imp (I guess the recently gone Soccer world cup is the inspiration for kick being my recent most used word) :)

Ok dat’s enough learning’s for my 2 month US stay till now and hope this blog compensates in some way to my 1 year of absolute lethargy in blogging. See some discovery I made in 2 months that I had become plain old lazy :O