Puky Liberation...

I’ve come back from work early today…started to feel a bit sick in the middle of the day. The day was kinda good until afternoon, was gearing up on new things at my new workplace. On my way back home, in the bus, I was thinking how I’ll miss this place for the next few hours of the day: my new friends, their chirpy voices, going for the coffee breaks with them, silly jokes that we all feel like laughing about, chit-chatting in the parking lot while going back home,….I’ll miss all of that for todayL. No brownie points for guessing…Yes, it’s my first job :P, after long slogging years of academia, in a land where the word “education” means differently to different people.

I reach my home feeling pukier than before due to the pollution…toss off my sandals and bag & lie on the sofa, like a dusty piece of upholstery that needs a quick rinse in the washing machine. My dog runs up to me as eager as ever to lick my face, as if I were the icing on his birthday cake. I don’t feel like petting him today with all the nauseated feeling. My mom hands me over a huge mug of some age old concoction which according to her is supposed to make me feel better. She’s the self-proclaimed Arnica (an all-curable herb) of the house & probably it’s the modernized version of the concoction that her Arnica used to make her have in her younger years :D. She looks too busy today, goes to her room with the newspaper & her glasses. I’m told she has to sleep after that to wake up afresh for the evening AOL classes….AOL Classes! Wow!!! “America Online’s actually educating people for using their internet services ! ? ! ? Strange marketing strategy, I thought :D. It’s good & relieving too to hear that, but I’m still confused how AOL has become gracious enough to start all these evening classes to teach my mom how to use the internet! To my utter dejection I soon discover, that’s not “America Online” & u’re a jerk like me if u thought that AOL meant that…it means “Art Of Living” :P). I think to myself…Art of Living!?!?...Why???...She’s been living her life quite artistically as of now. Why does she have to attend classes for that! Or is it some fashionable means to spirituality which people can only experience while chanting hymns and songs, draped in starched cotton sarees, sitting amongst other such spiritual fashionistas??? I soon realize it’s her much-awaited & new found “talkative daughter gone for work-hurray-liberated feeling”. I quickly finish up the puke relieving tea; pull up the sheets and go to sleep.

I wake up after an hour and a half, feeling much better. Arnica’s tonic has worked wonders yet again! J She asks me how I’m feeling now & then strikes off a confident & triumphant smile on her face as I give a positive response, sheepishly though. Less does she know that I also drank up half a can of Pepsi after she left the room :P. It surprisingly worked pretty well, being cock-tailed with the age-old concoction I guess!

I go up on the internet, my usual recreation on the social networking site, when I’m at home. I read one of the wall posts…One of my cousins jovially comments on her own slumber party pictures & calls herself & one of her girlfriends a BTM. Well…It’s an acronym for “Behenji turned modern” :P. I start to think about it, wondering how many BTMs I’ve come across…the list seems never ending. In fact I’ve witnessed the whole metamorphosis of some people who have evolved out of the “B”-word for good or for bad, I really dunno & I’m no one to decide…. I believe that man is the best judge of his/her own being.

Sad to say, but being an engineering graduate from Mumbai university (I’ve just heard, never experienced, that it’s one of the reputed one’s :P), I’ve spent more than half of my youth within people mostly confused about their existence on the earth. Strangely or so, in the so-called reputed places as this one, there’s this huge clan of oily haired, shabbily dressed (mostly non-fitting, over-sized Punjabi suits), diffident looking, geeked up people who always convinced the world how intelligent and worthy they are through hours of rote learning & then puking it all out on their exam papers. They didn’t ever feel like discovering themselves as creative people capable of many other things than just puking theory on papers! These are “the over achieving Behenjis of our nation”. But u shouldn’t be surprised if u happen to meet them someday with a completely changed exterior. By exterior, I mean the very obvious things people hold on to, to groom themselves appearance-wise…And it’s only the exterior, because if you attempt to strike a conversation with them, you’ll find nothing’s changed. And not to mention, there are the male counter parts of the behenjis clan too! Ahh, now what do we call them??? They exist at all different levels in society & u bet, they’re here to stay !....Indian societies have been ranked the top-most in coining such words mostly with females….”behenjis”, “kakubais”, “Sandra from bandra”, etc; all of these phrases are used with the female gender alone – It’s convenient in a male chauvinist society like ours. But if u’ve ever noticed, there are several male BTMs too, who have all of the feathers in their caps for being baptized as a BTM. They do all their best to cover their sheepish compulsives with freakish props like some ear-nose piercings, tattoos, silly and tacky pick-up lines, some rote-learned cliché lines which someone sometime must’ve told them, sounded intellectual :P. But what these BTMs do not know is that the more they try to hide all the “BTM-giri” the more it shows :D. It somehow gives a direct hint that the “male-counterparts of behenji’s” (although an ever so growing clan in their population) feel extremely insecure in their existence: D. They need serious help!

According to me, all this just goes way too beyond a person’s attire, appearance & gender…it’s the way u think!!! Few people irrespective of the way they appear to be, have their own mind and are comfortable in their skins. Creative minds respect other creative intellects & that achieves larger goals…that’s education for me. I could never understand why and how people manage to “not be themselves” & just do or not do things because the world is doing it or not doing it! I mean why would people wanna waste their lives getting intellectually stunted and stagnated??? After having lived and moved around different people, all I respect in them is what they think…the courage of conviction & a sense of belief in themselves. I feel liberated when I know I have said what I think, feel and mean. That’s true liberation for me…

I leave today’s blog with a good dialogue that I heard somewhere & liked it: “I don’t want to be product of my environment; I want my environment to be product of me”