Saturday, July 12, 2008

I should be saying something !!

That's what I always thought whenever someone wished me good luck, and I just smiled back at them saying nothing. This was the scene till I was in 9th grade, I think. Sounds silly..but no one ever told me anything to say. Well you can argue, you observe people around you and learn social behavior. But in my defense, ...I just did not. I was very certain that something nice should be said back, but wasn't sure what it was. It was around the time of my final exams in my 9th grade when one of my father's family friend wished me good luck and I just smiled back, and there was a small pause as if saying...hey kid you got to say something. Then his wife said the same thing, making me more anxious. Later my sister scolded me for the misdemeanor. I asked, "What am I supposed to say". "THANK YOU !! You dumb head", she said. And I was blessed...

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Hey bhagwaan..(Ohh..God)

Yes you guessed it right. This story is about how a dream made me realize how futile my life is as a PhD in US and directed me to move to the jungles of Somalia in search of The God 'hululoolu'. No that doesn't sound convincing.
Ok so what this is actually about is a shift in paradigm of peoples' ways of expressing themselves in certain circumstances. I realized it the first time when I was walking with my friend and he suddenly slipped on the ice and blurted out a bunch of exclamations. Now in earlier times if something of this sort ever happened the first words to come out were like 'hey Bhagwan' or 'hey Prabhu' or 'Jesus Christ' or 'oh God' and plenty of other such exclamations. But now the first thing you hear someone blurt out is like 'behan...' or 'ma...' or 'f..' .I don't know if I should conclude anything from this. Are they just cursing God to land them in that trouble or God has taken a completely different and modern form in their imaginations. Or they think that these kind of fu...rs are much more potent than God. Ok I think I should stop because the guy upstairs may be reading this and I am sure he won't be happy about it.