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| The last two months were a maelstrom of proposal writing, presentations, more presentations, mad meetings, madder travel and what not. Today I suddenly have nothing to do and I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach - panic if you will. This is the price one pays to live the life I live. Pointless? I sometimes wonder myself.
And guess what, a new big driver in my life is greed. There, I said it. Growing up, my pleasures were simpler, my wants lesser. The more life throws at me in terms of experience, the hungrier I get. No, I don't want to be the "Noble Savage"; Donald Trump is my new icon. | | |
| Chicago
The mid-west is freezing and I'm freezing in it. I've been here before but man, each time you come here, the cold seems to have gotten worse. One step over the line. It's going to come to the point when it gets so cold that I'll probably end up as an ice sculpture.
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| Looks like some smarta$$ hacked into my punekar@yahoo.com account. I've had it for over 7 years now. Fortunately I was able to retrieve my address book and my contacts. I've sent everyone an email and also asked my credit card issues to cancel and reissue just in case.
Henceforth I can be reached at sureshnageswaran@yahoo.com
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| Dateline Tokyo
My chervissu apartamentu (service apartment) offers no service. It's a tiny room with a couch and a bed on the loft !! Each morning I have to step outside the bathroom to dry myself.
Upsides:
Fantastic metro system. Move over New York, London and Chicago. Tokyo metro kicks a$$. No need to buy a car in this city - you can just take trains everywhere. Extremely polite people wherever you go. You can "sumimasen" (excuse me) anyone and they'll go the extra mile to make the gaijin (foreign barbarian) happy.
J-chicks keep checking me out in the train rides wherever I go.
Downsides:
Very few speak English though I suspect they understand. Everything is in Japanese - I can't even order in a restaurant without someone accompanying me. Yesterday I walked into a KFC outlet and spent 5 minutes explaining chicken sandwitch to a counter girl who just wouldnt stop smiling though she understood zilch of what I was saying.
There's suits, suits and more suits wherever you look. I've started wearing mine to work to blend in with the sararimans (Salary man) and "Office Ladies".
TV: Slaindaaatoooohne Figura! That's the first thing I heard when I switched on the TV. Generally is rubbish. Irritating ad breaks every 60 seconds. No English. It's lucky I have Internet access and can listen to BBC news each morning on streaming.
Culture Shock:
Dirty, no, filthy manga in ready reach everywhere you go. Featuring tentacle r-ape of little girls and horrible stuff. Try selling this in India and we'll lock you up with Gabbar Singh in a federal prison who will be happy to give you a demo of the aforemenioned.
Work is very formal and you are expected to stay back until 7 or 8 everyday. Otherwise you'll be considered a gaijin slacker. Still learning. This is different from the last flying sales visit I was at. This time it's up close and personal.
Oh, btw, if you havent seen Sakura (peach blossoms) you have missed something most wonderful. Will see if I can snap pics of these. | | |
| There are some of us who constantly seek to constantly define ourselves either as a function of our profession or a function of ethnic, national or religious identities. When we arrive at some definition, a quick diissatisfaction sets in and then spend our energies trying to change it. This is not true of everyone, but it is certainly true of me and a select few I've observed. This is also not always a positive thing - there are any number of people who decry a static existence. But humanity thrives as much on stability as it does on change. I've changed many identities and continue to do so continually. Personally I do not believe I will ever be a single atomic, definable entity and I reject the very idea of definition vehemently. I feel stifled, like my independence to act, to think, to dream and to speak will be taken away if this happens.
This is something I've only begun to realize - and accidentally. On my layover at Heathrow, I browsed the bookstores there. London's Heathrow is by far the most professionally organized. As my eyes roved through the rows and rows of shelves, a brightly-coloured book in the Travel section arrested my attention. A large picture of Lord Shiva, the Hindu God of destruction on the cover and a title announcing the author to be Sarah McDonald. The back cover talks of a fantastic concotion of myth, holy men, cows and curses. Incredulous, I think, but then again, travelogues are not supposed to be taking a a lot of creative license. And the realization sweeps over me that I want to hear about how a foreign eye perceived my country. Not that there are not enough accounts of fantastic skirmishes with mythical babas, snake charmers, elephants and technology folks. But India is not a monolith and being Indian does almost nothing in terms of understanding the country. So I *do* look for definition - indirectly, trying to define myself in its wake. | | |
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