Deewane

Can The Pythons ever do any wrong! April 28, 2009

I have a gazillion things I want to write about….o.k. there are two things I want to write about — one funny and then one not at all (and I mean NOT AT ALL) funny. But since, like always, I am overdosing on anxiety, panic and misery (don’t blame me, blame the weather! It’s giving me allergies and making me miss home all at the same time. Diabolical I tell you) so I’ll take the easy way out, thanks to the geniuses collectively known as Monty Python (I dare you not to start whistling with them :)) and will quote my favorite verse

“For life is quite absurd

and death is the final word

you must always face the curtain with a bow.

Forget about your sin- give your audience a grin

Enjoy it-it’s your last chance anyhow”

Why I haven’t been blogging more often… April 10, 2009

Need I say anything more?

4484 April 4, 2009

That’s my birthdate. Yes folks I turn 25 today!!! And it seems momentous to me (seriously, HUGE, GIGANTIC!!). To people older than me –Lay off! I don’t want anyone telling me that 25 is not that old, coz it is! I know it is, coz I am 25 you see so, I know exactly how it feels to be 25! And that gibberish probably sets the tone of today’s post.

A little less than 3 years back when I was in Delhi (and 22, so young!) and pretty much clueless about myself, after having done my graduation in what I thought was the most viable career option (can you really be a judge of that at 17??) available to me. And knew the next logical step was the GRE (well, you know, American degree and all that). My brother who was already in the U.S. and done with his masters, so the idea wasn’t totally out of the blue (and not mine, thank you Dad! that was sarcastic if you don’t catch the tone!) . The point is that I sorta, kinda had a plan, it wasn’t a plan I was in love with, but it sounded logical and achievable. The plan was to spend 2 years doing my MS in molecular nutrition, work for a little while and then see where life would take me. But what I didn’t know was what I would discover about myself once I landed in the US of A. Drumroll please : How incredibly naive I was; and My dad is the one with my umbilical and he isn’t gonna let go anytime soon!

3 years down the line I am pretty much where I started, career wise, spent the last 10 months see-sawing between feeling extremely guilty and indifferent toward my work, decided it just won’t do and jotted down what I would want on my epitaph, yes I threw logic to the wind and thought about what was important to me, and call me the biggest geek on earth but I wanted academic success most of all! May be it’s because that’s what I was told was most important and may be because I never have felt like the smartest one, anywhere, ever, and I need to prove something but that’s all I could come up with. Don’t get me wrong, people are important to me, family, friends, I love them to death and that is exactly why I couldn’t live with any of them, to trust and love someone completely is relativley easy, it’s the expectations that mess things up! And even that’s not completely me, it’s my Dad in me. I should have seen that coming, since I spent half my life trying and wishing to be like him and then to my absolute horrer actually did end up like him! I just thought he was so cool, only saw his achievements WITH his neurotic behavior and now that I am as mental as him, his success is all that’s left to appropriate. Not the best order of things to do but what can I say, you gotta do what you gotta do! So thank you Dad for making me the basket case that I am, thank you for giving me the confidence to make absolute crazy decisions with my life, thank you for giving me the freedom to think that I could do whatever I want if I want it bad enough, thank you for not being the conventional Indian parent (though you can be the worst kind at times), thank you for always talking to me like my opinions really were the best kind (since I was 6, and that is how we ended up with green walls in the bedroom! Sorry Mom).

Your opinions/guidance/orders/advice haven’t always made me happy but I am still grateful for them, because they were borne out of love and a little bit of fear (regarding my future) and I would have been absolutely lost with out them and worse, with no one to blame!!

I am 25 today Dad, alive, healthy, hopeful and with a plan for my life, thank you for that. I hope we keep discovering what’s important to us and reach a point where we are peaceful with ourselves, God knows we spend enough time speculating on that. And congratualtions, it’s your 25th year in to being the greatest father I could have asked for 🙂