Dirty Rotten thingies!

Nope, I am not talking about me. So, we moved to our new house. Everything looks new and shiny…I wonder how long it is going to stay that way. As days passed in our new haven, and mom continued with her decorating, we chose to ignore the racket that used to go on near my bedroom window. They were city pigeons, using my window as a rent free sexual refuge. At least they were getting some. Then after three weeks in our new apartment, we received two guests.

They are one day old baby pigeons. They are the ugliest things I have ever seen, and I even said that aloud, but I think, momma Pigeon didn’t like it. She filled my window with nose hair burning shit. Now, my mom, who thinks of herself as Mother Teresa, decided to feed those little fuckers, along with the free house. She would place a cup of water and seeds near them, every day, and I swear to god, Momma pigeon, and many of her baby daddies would gorge on the free food. Fucking freeloaders. You might wonder why I am so angry at those ugly pigeons, right. Well, here is the thing. I always wanted a dog, but mom used to refuse point blank. Her excuses ranged from, “we can’t afford to have one” to “I am feeding you, just be grateful about that...” And, here, these ugly, smelly, pigeons have enforced themselves on us, and mom actually adopted them….sheesh! C’mon, a lab is so much cuter than these unsightly thingies.

But, then something bad happened. Two mornings ago, my mom found the baby pigeons dead, and momma pigeon was missing. I swear to God, I was depressed. I had invested so much time in hating them, that I suddenly started missing them. I was going to click a picture of their dead bodies, but mom thought it would be rude. D’uh! They are dead! D-E-A-D! You can’t be rude to something that is not moving. But the look on her face ceased my intentions.

Ever since the pigeons died, I have noticed my mom looking at me in this strange, suspicious way. I think she feels that I killed her precious pigeons. I mean, ok….so I was mean to them, and would make creepy noises to scare them and call them ugly to their faces, but still, I did not kill them. But since we don’t know the cause of their death, or the mystery behind the missing momma pigeon, I guess the doubt is still on me.

And yes, you just read a blog on ugly, DEAD, baby pigeons.

Boo!

Ok! I am convinced that my house is haunted! Yes, there is a ghost co-habiting this house with me. And this ghost is tech-savvy and likes ketchup! In one week itself, I experienced two utterly bizarre incidents.

Creepy Incident one: I am having one of those lazy naps of mine in the afternoon. Nobody is there at home. Everything is quiet. I am fantasizing about Seth Cohen, and out of the blue, BANG! No, it wasn’t a gun shot. Something fell down in the kitchen; I just didn’t know how to describe it best. So, moving ahead, when I went to the kitchen to check what the noise was about, I was surprised to see a container (which contained oregano, by the way. I don’t know why I felt the need to tell you that but I just wanted to share) fallen down from the upper shelf. Well, we don’t have any mice here (thank god for the pest control program that we paid for!) and I was alone in the house, so how did this thing fall? Well, if that wasn’t creepy enough, there was ketchup all over the floor and in the container. But the fricking ketchup bottle is kept on the opposite shelf. How did the ketchup get on the floor and on the container???

Creepy Incident two: Yesterday, I got a birthday reminder on my cell at 9am. Apparently, it was Deepa’s birthday. I don’t know any Deepa. I ignored. Then within ten minutes, my mom got a birthday reminder on her cell. Again about Deepa’s birthday. She doesn’t know any Deepa either. And the most freaky part is, my mom doesn’t know how to activate a reminder on her cell (yea, my mom is technologically challenged. It runs in the family.) Who is this Deepa? How did she manage to get her birthday reminders in our cellphones?

Does this mean that my Ghost’s name is Deepa? So that means my ghost is a she. Crap! I was so hoping for some hot male ghost. So, since ghosts can move around anywhere, does this mean, my ghost must has seen me taking crap, or the time when the sandwich fell on the floor and I was too lazy to make another one, so gave the same one to my brother. Hopefully, my ghost ‘Deepa’ is a nice lady ghost and would keep our secrets. I would be happy to share more ketchup. There is more where that came from!

Will you be my FRIEND???

Today, if one needs to get in touch with his or her friend, there are multiple options available- phone, email, sms, and even social networking sites. Social networking sites are websites where one can create ‘profiles’, add friends, comment each other, write testimonials, and blog. Popular social networking sites are Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, Friendster, etc. Most of these sites started in US, but they have won over the Indian youth. So much so that, Orkut was named the Youth Icon by Mtv for 2007. But is this ‘Icon’ really safe?

It’s relatively easy to create a profile on such sites. It doesn’t require one to be tech-savvy, and the membership is free. This has attracted majority of our youth to join these sites, to keep in touch with their current friends, search for the old ones, and to make new ones. But what exactly drives us to create an account in the first place? An average Indian teenager has many things on his/her mind. There is school or college, homework, assignments, projects, coaching classes, extra-curricular activities, and so on. The teen is burdened with so much work, that interaction between friends is limited. Here, these sites come to their rescue. They help in maintaining their social network and even increasing it, however only virtually. A boon for otherwise socially awkward teenager.

Apart from the academic examinations, today’s youth has to give another kind of a test. The popularity test. It is much of a necessity for teenagers to adhere to the popular norms and trends, just to fit in. These sites provide the ‘space’ for individuals to express themselves, chalk out their likes- dislikes, and their thoughts and views on varied topics. This is also the ‘space’ where one implements their impression management techniques. The profile of an individual speaks for him/her, so, it is of utmost importance for that person to create an appropriate impression. One may upload pictures, videos; exaggerate one’s qualifications or reading prowess, or the type of music that they listen to. These sites are like popularity contests, where the number of friend one has, or the number of testimonials, determines the winner.

But what many love about these sites is the privacy that it provides. Essentially, they are open to public, but these sites give teenagers to engage in their networking without any supervision from their parents. It’s a kind of privacy that every teenager yearns for. But this privacy is non existent. Anyone can read one’s profile and have access to their private information, friends, pictures etc. It’s a playground for sex offenders, which questions the safety of these sites. India is just waking up to cyber crime, and much worse, cyber bullying among adolescents. Fake profiles, hate groups and embarrassing blogs are just some of the means of bullying that takes place.

Apart from the compromised safety, these sites are creating socially inept youth, for them initiating and maintaining relationships is limited to the virtual world. It creates a feeling of loneliness, as it lacks the warmth of physical interaction. It makes one lethargic emotionally. It has become essential for research in this field to determine the increasing popularity of these sites among the youth and what is it that attracts them there. It is important to get them back to reality, leaving behind the lonely virtual existence.

Its not you, its me.

I don’t think any such thing as ‘commitment phobia’ exists. I am not one of those who are skeptical about mental health diseases, but I know one thing for sure, that no such term as ‘commitment phobia’ exists in DSM IV. In my opinion it is just a term some lazy dude coined together to get rid of some psycho girlfriend. But what the lazy fucker didn’t realize was the repercussions of that. A whole generation of other lazy dudes and dudettes using this term to hide the fact that they are emotionally handicapped. It is just a lame excuse and only weak need to take support of it.

But, it’s a rule, every lame thing, has to sort of ‘catch on’, and so has this term. Frankly speaking I feel like punching every whiny person out there who blames his/her break up to this reason. It’s like you aren’t strong enough to really look inside and search for the real reasons. How much more lazier can we get than this? We are getting emotionally obese as well. Many of us claim to be going through ‘one of those days’. Which categorically mean, feeling the blues? This is just a side effect for being emotionally obese. Those episodes of frustrations, those moments of weaknesses, those moments of despair, and those moments of apathy, all are the side effects of the same. Being emotionally obese is similar to being physically obese. However they don’t necessarily share any kind of relationship. A physically healthy person can be as much emotionally obese, as any physically obese person can be. One main casualty of this ‘disease’ is the effects on the person’s self esteem.

Any physically obese person goes through phases of self doubt, low confidence, and completely beaten self esteem. This is true for emotionally obese people too. They are actually nothing but individuals with fluctuating self esteem. They may actually suffer from low self esteem, which limits their attention to only themselves. They are never attuned to others, and more conscious about their feelings and reactions to situations. They want to appease others, and therefore monitor their every action. But they attend to only their superficial needs. They refuse to dive in deep into their emotions, and work with their self esteem. If they do that, they can probably get a better perspective on why they fail so miserably in their relationships.

I don’t believe in term superiority complex, because, it’s basically people with low self esteem pretending to be superior than they really ever be. It’s their conflict between the real self and the ideal self and only thing is that, they believe that the ideal self has won. Surprisingly, these people too seek help from the term ‘commitment phobia’. They can never take the fact that they were unsuccessful at a relationship or even a work assignment. Their ideal self will never allow them to take the blame on themselves. So this term comes to their rescue. Putting it all on commitment phobia, allows the individual to project his/her failure on something external to them.

I think we need to take a hard look on the reasons that we are giving ourselves to avoid having a rational dialogue with our own self. Once we accomplish that, we wouldn’t need to take support of such lame terms. And finally, it just makes one look really whiny and stupid.

My fair lady

India won independence in 1947, sixty years ago. But somewhere, we are still being subjected to some kind of subjugation, especially women. What is utterly annoying, is the fact, that we Indians, ourselves are doing it. Open any matrimonial ad in any regional or English newspaper; it starts in a similar fashion. “A fair, good-looking, Gujarati/Marathi/Punjabi/Tamil lady wanted for an educated, well-settled man...” Why do we need to only fair damsels? What is wrong with brown skinned girls or the variations of the same? We are Indians, a mixed race of Dravidians and Aryans, we are supposed to be brown, and for few ‘lucky’ of us, beige. Being fair skinned, with light eyes and hair, is being Caucasian, which we aren’t.

Many say that it is a colonial hangover. A brown man’s burden. Being fair is likened with being good, and being dark, with bad. In matrimonial settings, a girl who is fair skinned is always preferred over a dark skinned one. This is encouraged by the advertisements that we see on television. All fairness creams commercials reflect only one thing, dark skinned girls always face failure, and then with quick application of these fairness creams, they suddenly become casperish fair, and immensely successful. The treatment meted out to the dark skinned girls, before their make over is very disturbing. They are made fun of, insulted and refrained from taking up jobs due to their skin colour. Discrimination on the grounds of skin colour is called racism. Everyday, when Indians watch their favorite television shows, and then watch these advertisements during commercial breaks, are watching an act of racism take place on their television screens. Indians are racist. A bold, inexcusable, fact. We are against our own kind.

When a child is born, every body wants to know whether it is a healthy fair child. Even in commercials, one can never find a dark skinned child/ baby artiste. ‘Dark skinned daughters are a burden’, a theme currently running in two television shows, reflects our society. A mother worried about her dark skinned daughter’s marriage prospects, but forgetting, the charm and beauty and brilliance of her child is a reality which no Indian can deny. We as a country are obsessed with being fair. We have fairness creams for women and a new range of fairness creams for men. Many forget that fairness creams contain bleach. When people apply these creams on their face every day, they are bleaching their face every day, thus, blemishing their natural complexion. Unfortunately, fairness creams is a huge industry in India and has an enormous consumer support. Until we realize the irrationality of our expectations, the consumption of this product and utter racism that it spews, is going to continue.

To summarize, it is of utmost importance for us recognize our folly and make amends in our thoughts and actions. We need to stop this foolish discrimination against our own people and accept our skin colour the way it is. Whatever one may call it, brown, wheatish, coffee, chocolate, or beige, it should not determine who we are as a person, but just be a part of us.