Random musings

I was harping about how difficult it is to put the whole experience of being back in India into words.Was thinking more on the lines of listing out the main experiences and providing brief snippets of the rest of the trip... nothing but incessant hogging and very little substance.I decided to come out of the shroud of vagueness surrounding this 'coming up with a blog' thing and make a transition from my dormant state to a contributing one.

One of the things which concerned me during my recent trip to India was the misconstrual of the general idea of westernization, particularly amongst one section of the crowd, BPO employees (majority of whom I met). If one decides to follow the west, I believe he should be targeting the greater good, which it has to offer. Instead, speaking with an affected accent, hanging out at coffee shops, owning the latest IPODs and senseless, maniacal shopping at the mall seem to be the interpretations. I will dissect each of the points I mentioned in further detail

1. The accent: Shouldn't the focus be more on enunciation? well its clearly not. It is just a veil used by the linguistically challenged to hide their ineptitude. Take our case..what has changed about the way we speak? I think that we speak slow and clear now than we used to four years ago. Accents do undergo change but it(the change) is gradual. Enter XYZ, a person in my locality who joined a BPO in September. Here is the transcript of a conversation I had with him

XYZ (sporting a knee length Tee with a as-low-as-low-can-get pair of jeans and a NY Yankees bandana):
Yo man..whassup dude.
Aup: Chal raha hai yaar..tu kaisa kai?
XYZ: Man damn..keeping f***in busy man..skejule is scwevy
Aup: Whom do you work for?
XYZ: ABC consultants man..work the 9pm-4am graveyard shift.
Aup: Tere saath khade rehke aise lag raha hai ki mein nahi tu 4 saal US mein rehke aaya hai.
XYZ: Stop pullin my leg dude..you crackin me up
Aup: ( failing to srike any meaningful conversation) Chal yaar..I'll see you around. Thoda bahar jaana hai.
XYZ: Aite yo..ciao..laterz

2. Cafe Coffee Day: This is is a double edged sword. First of all it is expensive and on top of that the coffee sucks. Had visited this place in Bangalore and had a cup of lousy coffee with a tiny portion of pretentious brownie. The prices were dollar equivalents. Same day evening I had coffee at the Indian Coffee House on MG Road. Better coffee, 1/10th the price ..you do the math. Cafe Coffee Day or Barista for that matter try to be the Indian equivalents of Starbucks, but fail miserably at it. Starbucks , a coffee shop round the corner serves excellent coffee and most people sit there and work. Cafe Coffee Day, its Indian counterpart if you would like to call it one, is a place where budding relationships start on a wrong note.


3. Owning the latest IPODs and shopping at malls: Presenting DEF, a 1st year BCom student in Mithibhai college, who owns the latest IPOD mini black and also a Power Mac G4.He needs it because BCom studies can get pretty tough..you need the latest and greatest in technology.So what if you are a commerce student, studies are technology intensive, aren't they?. And to chill off once in a while, what better than listening to the latest 'Aashiq banaya aapne' song on your mini.His wardrobe features the latest "Zamkudi" fashion shirts from "Raghu-Leela" mall in Kandivli and did I forget to mention his hair color -- "brown with blonde streaks". Enough said

The only positive I can draw from my above experience is that people have money and it is getting into the market,which is good.The same item from the general store "Apsara Novelty Store", costs thrice as much in a similar shop in the mall, but surprisingly there are more than one buyers. I can't help but feel disappointed over this contagious wannabeism. I am not asking for a status quo ante because youth has to be affected by the winds of change.But isn't this kind of wannabeism a state of alienation from the self in a sense that the ‘being’ one now has is not worth having,and so must be exchanged for another. Doesn't that purely qualify as self-loathing?