Paris Taught Me:

Mr. Reader! Guess who is returning home to India after hold-your-breath: 15 long months in Paris? So apart from cooking pasta boxes and saying bonjour, merci , au revior and gasping at the Eiffel what else has Paris taught me?:

*I always knew who I am and what I want to be, what I like and what I don’t like; Paris taught me - who I really am, what I really want to be, what I really like and what I really don’t like

*I can wear skirts and sense freedom; only to be trapped in an inescapable cycle of make-up, manicure et al.

*I can live independently and away from everyone I had ever known; only if I learn to forge new friendships again

*The gravity of international issues such as immigration and languages; the immense unappreciated security of always being able to return to India

*The richer your surroundings the more courteous people act with you although the path to wealth is fraught with deceit and unkindness

* Music, chocolates and books are the best pain killers

* Love is powerful; so is materialism

*Differences arising out of gender, religion, nationality and education are illusionary; people are people

*I can survive no matter what; an inner spark can quell away any amount of darkness in life    

                   

Umm should better be going now; you know literally!

PS: Love you Paris!!! à bientôt! India, home here I come! I am starved enough to eat a cow (oopss)!

Rebel. Without A Cause.

Humans are a strange society. We have confounding social laws and strange collective beliefs. How do we as a society grapple with things like love, sex or death? My grandmother passed away two days back. And I had thought missing home on Diwali was the low point. I have to admit, I am struggling a lot. I feel miserable, homesick, lonely, sad, the list can go on. I feel angry even hateful. This life is making no sense. Coming to Paris was a mistake. Not learning French was a serious error of judgment on my part. Believing in the myth of a Prince Charming, possibly even worse.

Is all lost? Have I learnt anything at all? Why should I care about pleasing you, Mr. Reader? I have my problems, I am human, I have emotions. I am not asking you to solve them. I am not asking for sympathy, I am not even asking you to read this post. Why doesn’t the world commit collective suicide for failing me anyway?  

Do I have a story to tell? Not sure, I have some time now nonetheless. Keep reading if you are not bored. I had a protected, successful, conservative, reasonably luxurious childhood. Then I went to IIT. I don’t think I reflected much there, I had a boyfriend and pretty much never cared outside: what surprise gift could I have for our “first dance anniversary”. Yes, I was a sissy. But, I have borne my penance for being a sissy. Then one day, he hit me. Repeatedly. Should you blame him? NO. If you were my partner, you would have done the same. I was a smart girl, fully capable of taking care of myself, why was I demanding so much attention from him anyway? Because I thought I loved him.

That break up spiraled into a feminist awakening and I landed up in HEC. How did I fare in HEC? Not sure. All good schools have their own dark side. The rat race is everywhere. Even if you switch continents. What is so glamorous about migration anyway? People are people. This is not a racist rant. No. Let me also tell you this- I am not particularly emotional about India either. I think Indians are big time racists anyway. We have our own problems with inter-state migrations. In fact Mr. Reader I don’t vouch for anyone at all. No person, no religion, no language, no country. I like a few people; they have been good to me. I have learnt a thing or two from some others. I care about religion more in the sense of a search for the bigger truth. I prefer English because I have already mastered using it as a medium to convey my thoughts. I think language serves just that purpose. My two year old nephew learns language- I don’t.  I care about India a little, ok a lot. Because, well I have lived 21 years of my life there. I also like Paris, more like I would love a boyfriend. I love to hate it and hate to love it. This is a stupid city which is extracting more of my attention than I had planned to give it. I need a break up very soon.

What will I do? Trade. It is a simple, one word answer. I don’t have to think about it. Financial markets are beautiful. They are just as strange as the world around me, but atleast they take the shape of numbers and that feels more sexy.  I need to move to London. Why? Because I don’t care about the city, ok? Any city at all. For they are all rather superficial. I want a Paris with English, more crowd and more vegetarian options. That means London. I am going to start my own trading firm. Of course I will be the only trader there and I will start with my dad’s money. Is that childish- go fuck yourself if you feel that. Do I need a baby sitter? Am I falling in a self destructive trajectory? Who knows- let me find out. If I fail I will write one more blog appealing the world for collective suicide. What scares you about this post anyway? The raw truth?- suck it up Mr. Reader. The world has a lot of flaws, just as I do. I will learn. Yes, I will. I refuse to let you break my spirit. I refuse to feel guilty for being selfish. I think this is the kind of a dream great world leaders strived for. Here I am- a woman, an Indian, good schooled, financially stable. If there is one thing I need to do then it is to embark on a path of self emancipation. For if all my duty was to get other less fortunate people to this stage then it will be some sort of a circular path, not upward sloping. It would be like the scientific purpose of life- live and survive to create progeny who just have to further live and further survive and further create progeny. How pointless! However, I am thankful for a lot of good hearted people and leaders who are social activists and lessen the burden on selfish pigs like me. I am not asking you to help me, if I do certain things right may I be rewarded. If I don’t I am ready to bear the brunt.

Rebel. Without a cause.

   

Satan's Delight

Don’t let it break you, girl

The forlorn world

Stabbing its venomous fangs

Like daggers down your throat

You must trade

Your careless laughter

For the stranger’s pleasure

Every night-

A Satan’s delight

Can you sell your skin?

Can you fake some more?

You ain’t the prettiest, you know!

They say, that woman next door
Makes a better whore

Don’t let it break you, girl

This forlorn world

Beneath your tainted bosom

Beats your heart of gold

Au Revoir HEC

I wonder how best I could phrase signing off yet another school year, yet another school, oh wait all my student life for that matter! But I was only just about starting to settle in at HEC! For some reason, I keep relating to a book I read last year by V. S. Naipaul – A House for Mr. Biswas, in a very literal sense; the protagonist Mr. Biswas continues to move from one room to the next whilst nourishing a single consuming desire to own a place he could call home. I move next into a 6 months internship in Paris. That’s how much I have sorted out for now but all of the multidimensional probability vector space opens up for what can happen to me after that.

Well so, I thought maybe I should share with you Mr. Reader some 10 lines I spoke or heard at HEC which shall probably stay with me the longest. Oh you know for otherwise 10 blogs could fall short if I start to open up about  all of my thoughts at the moment!

#1. If I had voting rights, I would have booked a special flight to Hong Kong just for that.

[Heard from a Chinese friend as I was laughing at the idea of travelling back all the way to India just to vote]

#2. 'Where is the Aquaguard in this hostel?'

       'Oh you just drink out of the tap!'

#3. 200 £/Hour  

[ Ain’t not elaborating on that! ;) ]

#4. Paris is not really too different from London. I think they are quite like a couple- a perfect love hate relationship they have, having fought a hundred wars with and against each other for ages. They feel quite alike too, may be Paris is like the Lady, more delicate and fancier whilst London is the Man- looks just a bit sturdier.

#5. You are not in India. Deal with it.

#6. No matter what- Smile. Dress up. Network. That’s how you are going to make it alive out of here.

#7. Do it for your mother.

[From a taxi driver I had booked to take me to my internship interview.]

#8. Buy low, sell high.

#9. Trading is a bit like Physics really. Physics is looking at the Universe through the prism of mathematics, for trading you put a price tag on every event and product in the world. There is only one resounding message: be it a war or a tsunami we finance people can put a number on them all.

#10. It’s okay, just deal with it like you are a trader already but have just suffered a huge loss.

[A friend consoling after being rejected in a trading interview]

Miles To Go

I have always loved to travel; haven’t you too Mr. Reader? It makes such a perfect getaway from the consuming routines. For a short while you can let go of everything that makes your everyday and instead escape into a different part of the world which thrives even when you turn your eyes the other way, some another part of the world-theatre where you can become the spectator instead of the cast. Is it not the best feeling to watch the world from the sidelines for a brief moment, to just feel the rhythm of time and watch it slip by as you lean against the window of a car that is moving you through the fabric of space and time to your chosen picnic destination?

You can choose to slack comfortably and rest your head upwards on the top of your car seat and decide to view the blue sky. Can you ever have enough of those cottony clouds? They are always a little different you know. Is there anything more humbling than to just look heavenwards, up the sky? To watch as the clouds furl on it, to feel its all encompassing vastness, to realize the inconsequential of a dust speck that we make on this tiny planet that is floating in the belly of the humongously outstretched monster of a universe?

If instead you prefer otherwise, you can sit up a bit straighter and turn your neck sideways. Then you can concentrate on the ever changing landscape, except ofcourse you wouldn't be able to exactly concentrate; for there is again so much to look there as well Mr. Reader! The distant peaks, the trees, the roads, the other cars! Here you may indeed find two very similar cars; the same color, the same brand. But the trees shall all be different. No two pines grow the same. You can also count. Sometimes I count the number of yellow cars I pass; or the number of vineyards I see (or quite simply since I read 'The curious incident of the dog in the night-time’ just the power series of 2.) Watching the earth instead of the sky can also give you a similar humbling experience I must assure you (although sky gazing retains my favorite spot)

Is there anything else you may add? Oh yes, good loud music is highly recommended and may be a complimentary book to spare occasional glances! There you go, name a problem that this little combo of activities doesn’t solve! And guess what, you also arrive at your chosen holiday spot by the end of this little journey! So, don’t you just love to travel Mr. Reader?  

A Loving Conspiracy

So what happens when you break away from everything you held dear, everything you took for granted all your life and choose to fly off on your own to a land far, far away? Sometimes in my lone vain moments, I fancy my life being pictured as an adventure saga; it always stars someone innocent, someone unaware of the greater realities of his/her Age; the story always starts with a peaceful beginning with just a skimping hint of the troubles to come; and then soon enough the hero/heroine is thrust headfirst into the dangerous escapades. I will tell you what; my hometown is a small, small place. I never even officially studied sex in my biology classes. And if it weren’t for the 5 or so pages in my history textbooks in my very last year at high school, I would have never even have heard of the world wars (I think the first time I realized that there were two of them was when I was 16)! Add to that the fact that I grew up in an extremely sheltered and pampered manner, and you can probably guess how good I fare in non-academic skills. I never liked any sports, was never required to be too neat and managed to get straight Ds in everything from sports to art classes.

The only good thing I did to secure my continual existence was to love math and books. Mathematics got me into IIT and books put a more balanced view of the world in my head (and also led to my sex education, but that’s a different story). Naturally I have grown into an introvert. I think it is also why I particularly enjoy writing my blog for it serves as a channel to vent out my feelings to a wider audience. I love my little monologues, Mr. Reader; it is so liberating to write to you, to speak freely of my mind, uninterrupted. Do you know, I often fear I am going to make a terrible wife, for I would want my man to patiently hear out every little thing in my head every single day, and there is always so much on my mind! He also has to be emotionally available at all times and engage in an intellectual SWOT analysis of every smallest thing that bothers me. He also has to pull off a hundred other herculean feats for that matter; well Mr. Reader let us steer away from this rather tempting topic.

I think love is a big conspiracy anyway, conjured probably by some aliens who also built our beloved pyramids (for it is such an unearthly concept). You just cannot win against it. Is human brain capable of constant co habitation with one single person for more than half of a lifetime? Is it natural to fall in love or is it something that young individuals mistake to be natural due to the social conditioning? I for one have concluded that the Middle Ages must take the blame. I guess life was tougher back then and it might have helped to segregate gender roles which further boiled down to reducing women as mere beauty trophies. I think the logic was rather simple, men do the worldly hardships and women get to be their prize. Women were almost effectively bartering their beauty for their economic prosperity. And because women were denied any other means of survival than to depend on the men, the act of marriage had to be divinified. A cult had to grow around marriage, to ensure that men continued to shelter the wife. For if not for a moral doctrine of love, why would a wise man continue to accommodate the same woman all his life? Women evolved to nag, to flirt and learnt ever new clever means to keep a man in the palm of their hands. Also a flourishing marriage must have developed as a status symbol for the men to mark their continued worldly conquests. Only the best of the men could decorate their wives with the best of the diamonds. In turn developed the women’s diamond fetishes! Little girls were brought up to love beautiful dresses and expensive jewelry for if those things were not to interest them how else could they live through a long, dull life of little intellectual quirks?

I think for this matter all human emotions may have been our specie’s response to the evolutionary battle against existential survival. Why must a grown adult woman who just delivered a child continue to nourish the babe? Well for love ofcourse. But then because human love is much more mature than that of other species, it ensures that the child cares for the mother when she grows to be more fragile in turn. What about the father? A male cat does not care for the baby kittens, I suppose? But neither is the female cat constrained against pursuing her own independent survival and hence no concept of a marriage in the cats! Also why the greater part of the animal kingdom has so many of these ‘animal spirits’. The fitter creature survives the day. Ofcourse maternal love is so essential that it has been ingrained in even non-human genes. And hence why, mothers have so often found themselves being more glorified than their male counterparts. I think parental love comes so much more naturally to women. 

I recently finished reading the novel 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter'. It is such a tragic story- a girl is born to a couple with Down Syndrome and the father decides to give away the newborn. He does get affected by the guilt ofcourse and that's what the rest of the story is about but well could I ever imagine a mother doing the same in the first place?

 Now that’s for the love. What about other countless human feelings- mirth, despair etc? When I get rejected in the interviews it so naturally makes me feel sad, I think it’s the worst feeling ever. I think I hate interviews. I think I hate placements. I think I hate anything remotely to do with the placements. But well, if a strong reaction were not to be triggered in my brain, why in the world would I continue my job search? I must feel pain when all those things that can negatively affect my chances of survival occur. May be that also explains the intense emotional upheaval felt during break ups (for prospect of good marriage and life extension program are linked too after all).

Well, so where did I start? Ah yes what happens when you pack off to a kingdom far, far way? May be a fairy tale does not follow. May be you struggle a bit, may be you also fail a lot but most importantly it can make you think a lot; kind of cool, like some soul searching experience, but mostly it can make you think of elaborate explanations of how you feel going through what feels to me like an extended 2 year placement semester!