Incredible India!

This isn't my first visit to India by any means nor it is my last (hopefully), but it has surely been a very different one so far. It is unique, new and simply mesmerizing on many levels and I will try to illustrate it through this blog post.

Glimpse #1: Dubai Airport.

Having cleared immigration with the utmost ease, I was walking toward the departures gates at a casual pace, taking in the airport atmosphere; this being an airport where I have spent countless hours transitting as a child. I browsed through the famous Dubai Duty Free shops and bought some chocolates to bring with me as a gift for my cousins in India. When it was close to boarding time, I walked towards Gate #12 as was mentioned on my boarding card only to find it was moved to Gate #18. Upon gazing around, I noticed the number 18 gleaming from across the terminal, a few minutes away. When I got close to the gate, I saw that there was a long queue of people boarding the plane, and I wasn't sure what was holding them up. I was relatively late to board and I expected more than half the people to have boarded already. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and soon enough I found that the kind and courteous (pun intended) IndiGo airlines staff had brought with them a little weighing machine and stuck it right across the pathway to the aerobridge. Every passenger was weighed for their hand luggage and let go only if they didn't surpass 7kgs. Only a few lucky people had the honor of seamlessly passing through, and I found myself with at least 3 dozen passengers queueing up to pay for the excess kilos we had thought we could sneak past. Paying for bringing excess baggage sounds fine, but when they had asked us to pay for the weight of anything we bought through the duty free too, people were downright furious. Expletives were being exchanged in hindi/urdu and I think the only reason why a fight didn't break out was because the take-off was in the wee hours of the morning at 5.30am and people just weren't ready to throw punches. This is where I got my first glimpse of Incredible Indians, right here at the Dubai airport. On one hand we had the sneaky IndiGo airlines crew who managed to extort passengers for duty free purchases, and on the other hand we had the hard working Indian immigrants trying to catch a flight back home and were frustrated with the way Indian businesses try to stand them up for every penny.

Glimpse #2: Hyderabad Airport

After a boring and rather uncomfortable 3 and a half hours of flying aboard IndiGo airlines, I got to the new and shiny Hyderabad Airport. The walk from the flight to the immigration area was rather mundane until after we got there, and saw a huge number of passengers already lined up for immigration. A certain Mr. X with the airport authorities was 'assisting' the passengers with the immigration procedures by directing them to the respective counters. All was going well when suddenly Mr. X flipped out on a kid who tried to cut corners just so he could stand huddle with his friends in the long queue. The poor kid got shouted at and was sent to the end of the queue. Not surprisingly, Mr. X made sure everyone had heard him loud and "Kileear" (local pronunciation of the word clear) when he was schooling the kid and feeling great about himself. Finally it came my turn to smile at the officer's camera and I was cleared at immigration in 30 seconds (by this time I was feeling great too) when I was stopped a few feet later by Mr.Y who was in charge of scrutinizing passengers' passports for the arrival stamps. He demanded that I ask the immigration agent to re-stamp the arrival date on my passport since it wasn't legible for him. I tried to reason with Mr.Y that it was quite legible and yet I was sent back. Hardly surprising, the immigration agent's ego was at stake now. He got flustered when he heard what I had just conveyed to him, and started yelling at Mr.Y at which point I thought it best to go back to Mr.Y with a straight face and try to get past him. Seeing this commotion, Mr.Z walked towards us, looked at the stamped page on the passport and ushered me to just walk on. (Thank you God for Mr.Z!)

Glimpe #3: Hyderabad Roadways

Simply put, if every driver of every form of vehicle imaginable in Hyderabad-India deserved a dollar for each time they avoided an accident; drivers in India would all be millionaires in no time. It is not by any means an understatement if I were to say that anyone who can drive a car in India and keep it dent-free, should be given a drivers license anywhere in the world without question. It is really an art to drive in this part of the world, and I will tell you why. Close your eyes and imagine this. Actually scratch that; lets do this the 21st century way. Watch this video on youtube and you will know exactly what I am talking about (you don't have to watch all of it). Also, while watching the video keep in mind that you need to double the amount of everything on the road (cars, autorickshaws, bikes, pedestrians etc.), and that's traffic in Hyderabad nowadays.

Yes, its Incredible, isn't it! All you Indians readers out there might think its not a big deal, but trust me, if you don't live here or visit often, this is just insanity! What is truly mind-boggling is that even without any sort of traffic sense, or rules or restrictions, the traffic still flows smoothly, and you will eventually get to your destination albeit with a few dents on your car, or a broken brake light, or just pure frustration (if you are lucky to get away without any physical car damage). If I were asked where the creators of the "Incredible India" brand got their motivation for the name, I would say Indian traffic. And before I forget this thought, I have to get this out there. You don't really have to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day to get your lungs filled with disgusting stuff; just ride a bike around all day on Hyderabadi roads and you will get in your day's worth of carcinogens, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other fun stuff.

Once I got over the crazy traffic and ridiculous amounts of pollution, I started noticing the localities, the neighborhoods and the various parts of the city and the stark contrasts. We were driving through the city and literally within a few minutes of each other, I witnessed disgusting and repulsive slums which smelled of leaking sewage, followed by modern houses and villas that have price tags in the neighborhood of USD200K and above, which were followed by auto showrooms that sold Porsches, Jaguars, Audis, Mercedes and  other fancy boutiques that sold every top European designer imaginable. The magnitude of financial disparity just blew my mind away and it dawned on me how India is called a third-world country while some of the richest people in the world are also Indians (think Reliance Group, Wipro, ArcelorMittal to name a few). 

Unfortunately I had to take off in the middle of writing this blog which is why my thought-process got interrupted and I can't think of what to write next, so stay tuned for an Incredible India Part 2. So until then, Salaam (peace!).

Living in a Dilemma

Here it is .. a blogpost after God knows how many years, after I had promised to keep up with it the last time I posted here. But then again promises are usually meant to be broken. Right? :-)

Anyways, its rather unnerving how life constantly throws at you moments of dilemmas or confusion. Everything ends with a question mark. Should I wear the blue jeans or the black ones today? It it Tuesday or Wednesday? Do I really have a meeting this afternoon? Did I lock the apartment?

For some of us, the dilemmas end here; for others especially the homemakers amongst us, their universal dilemma lies in this one question: What do I make for dinner tonight? (I am serious, and you homemakers out there reading this know it! Hahah) Yet others have more complex dilemmas like, do I take the Porsche 911 or the BMW M5 for a spin? Yes, you name it and its a dilemma. Fortunately for most people, these dilemmas last a few seconds or minutes, and the choice is made. For some others, it takes an hour or two and the dilemma thankfully passes. However, recently I have found myself in a strange dilemma too that has no real choice.

I have been yearning for 'time-off' from work for the past few months, literally dreaming about a few work-free weeks in my life, when I can just relax in some far away land and pursue other rather fun interests. Strangely though, just when I have found myself exactly in those circumstances with no work, no responsibilities and living at my relatives' place for free in Dubai, I find myself wanting exactly the opposite. Instead of enjoying my well-deserved time off from work, I felt utterly guilty about not working. I mean, it couldn't get any better. Amazing weather all day, everyday! (look below). Great food, good time occasionally hanging out with cousins. And yet, my guilt trip knew no bounds.

My guilt conscience has been so overwhelming that I started going to my uncle's workplace everyday for 8 to 10 hours a day (even if it meant driving for an hour and a half to Abu Dhabi from Dubai and back) just so I can get away from home. This at least gave me the illusion that I had a purpose; to leave home everyday, even if it meant sitting in an office in a commercial district of Abu Dhabi and browsing through 100s of job postings online. 

What's sad is the fact that as soon as I will  إن شاء الله‎ (God-willing) get a job some day, I am going to instantly regret having spent all these days in constant worry and frustration. What's more worse is that I already know this and yet I still choose to remain worried and frustrated about not landing a decent job in roughly a month's worth of search efforts. Totally stupid of me, right? I thought so too ... 

But here's what it all boils down to in my opinion, UNCERTAINTY. The moment I will know of a job starting at a future date, I know I wont wait a second to plan things out that I want to squeeze in before starting the new gig. However, since there is no set date in the future, I choose to drag my life along in misery and frustration, without any sense of direction except for scrolling up and down on job websites. 

Someone were absolutely right when they said, "Truth is Stranger than Fiction". I think if my life were a movie,  it would be very intuitive and entertaining, unlike reality which is very strange and complex.

The Traffic Nation

So I finally got down to writing about the ONE thing that frustrates me every weekday morning (thank you Mandy for that motivating Facebook status of yours!)... If your educated guess was TRAFFIC, thats absolutely right! Living only 16 miles away from work, I thought I would get to work in a heartbeat; utilizing one of the best road systems in the world, the Interstate Highway system ... but little did I know that this interstate system also had other adjectives to it, apart from "awe-inspiring" and "huge". At around 5am every weekday morning, the cars start gushing onto Interstate 93 (yes, I use the word 'gushing') exactly as the water gushes through pipes when opened; only difference being that water moves faster than the cars on I-93  around 7am onwards. It is then on, that the dreaded journey begins... I swear you have to be more awake driving at 10mph than at 70mph, because there is absolutely no way you can know when the damn car in front of you is going to stomp on the brakes. RJs (radio jockeys) have aptly referred to the traffic jams on I-93 as "its a parking lot", "I-93 is a complete mess" and "its not a bumpy ride, its barely even a crawl", (alright, so I made up that last one there) but you get the picture, right?  Only when its about 10am, do the cars start "moving" again at decent speeds and one can then infer that cars are actually faster means of transport than cycling.

Now of course, being stuck in traffic is not fun for anyone unless someone has a car that can drive itself, and the driver can actually watch the morning news on his/her in-dash LED TV ... (yep, thats the future!). You can't change the roads, so lets change the cars. Anyways, this reminds me of a world famous and time tested quotation that goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention". What does this have anything to do with Traffic, you ask. Well, it doesn't have anything to do directly, but the thought of having time on your hands while being stuck in a traffic jam and having nothing to do is absolutely unacceptable. Time is money for the Americans, which is why, drivers here have come up with ingenious ways to utilize this otherwise wasted time. For an easy read, I am just going to list them first and then maybe comment on them, if I feel like it. So, here goes the interesting list of activities (in no particular order), that people indulge in when they are stuck in traffic jams. The normal tasks like sipping coffee and listening to the radio are not included, as they are too mundane of tasks now and probably every driver today can do them with their eyes closed (not that anyone wants you to close your eyes while driving). So here it goes,

1. Shave/Pluck hair
2. Apply makeup etc.
3. Cut/file nails
4. Eat breakfast
5. Read the Newspaper (print edition)
6. Check emails on smartphones/IPADS
7. Texting (A New LAW banning this into effect starting 30th September, 2010 in Massachusetts - All berry users, beware!)
8. Watch a movie on the custom installed in-dash TV (in very rare cases) - Beware of these people, chances are they are going to rear-end you sooner or later.

I can't really think of anything else apart from the ones there ...Thats all that I have personally seen happening on the roads here, if anyone else has seen anything more wackier, comments section below is where you will let me know! Unfortunately, after having driven like this for almost a year now, (8 months co-op last year, and 4 months currently) I dare say I haven't at all tried any of the wacky things, apart from talking to my parents on the phone on most mornings, which kills me at the end of the month, when I find out I have surpassed my alloted minutes by 100s ...

As long as no one gets killed doing these tasks, all is good; I say that because if someone's killed on the road, or gets into a messy accident, it adds to more traffic which is already worse to start off with. Just this other week, there was apparently a rolled over car on I-90 which was preventing the smooth flow of traffic for two days. Just imagine being the cause of that insane two day traffic jam; I don't think many people will sympathize with the person involved in the accident.

And yes, I know I should look for alternatives if I have so many issues with the traffic .. and believe me I am looking into that as hard as I possibly can ... I might end up driving half way to work in the completely opposite direction and then catch the train into Cambridge, but for now I guess ... thats how its got to be ...

Salaam (Peace)!

Tomorrow may not come ...

So I didn't mean to kick off my interest in blogging on something as sad as this, but this incident touched me and I thought I should use this blog as my canvas to convert thoughts into words.

As I was relaxing at my uncle's home around noon on this Sunday, after a morning of soccer with my colleagues from work, I hardly knew my rest of the day would completely change its course from what I had planned. One of my uncle's good friends, who lived with his wife and two young children, was out deep sea fishing with friends, when suddenly the phone rang and I found out he suffered a heart attack and passed away on the way to the hospital. This was the most shocking news I have heard in a long time, and I couldn't believe what I had heard. I just couldn't believe that a charismatic young man in his 30s, who I had seen only a week ago at an Eid party, in the best of spirits, smiling and jovially talking to everyone, isn't alive to see tomorrow. It was hard to swallow the fact that I wouldn't see him ever again, and my heart goes out to his wife and kids, who have to bear this immense loss.

After hearing this dreadful news, I sat alone at home thinking about life, death and everything in between. Nowadays I feel people are so engrossed in their everyday lives that they have totally forgotten that these peaceful lives of theirs can change course in the blink of an eye. Who would have thought that he would pass away today, on this beautiful Sunday morning?

It can sound harsh that he left behind two little kids who have lost their father in one morning... but thats the ugly side of life. Life is just too short to be spent on insignificant things such as fighting, arguing and in some cases not even upholding the ties of kinship etc.... Day in and day out, we see people holding grudges against their neighbors, relatives, friends and even their closest family members (parents, siblings); for what? Today they are there, tomorrow they might not be .. and then these grudges wouldn't even hold any meaning or significance.

It is really hard to cope with death ... in this case I only knew the deceased man (May God let him enter paradise) through my uncle, and yet I feel as if I have lost someone very close to me. I just wanted to tell everyone that Life is just too short to waste time on insignificant things ... make time for those who love you and for those who you love and value people when they are alive .. not after they are long gone from this world.