Time travel

With each passing year as I grow older, there's nothing I want more than to go back and live my childhood again. I know people go through a phase like this when they're fifty or somewhere near that age but I guess I'm just aging faster...mentally atleast!!

If someone asked me what I wanted as a gift, I would ask for the gift of time travel. So that I could go back and be a child again, and live in the times that I grew up in. A much simpler time.

Simpler because it wasn't infested with a lot of the crap that comes along with and in the name of "development" or "progress" or whatever fancy name you want to give it. Also simpler because mine (and ours) is probably the last generation that has seen a time when technology hadn't taken over human life so completely.

A time when we breathed relatively fresh air and the weather report did not include a scary part on the SPM levels everywhere. A time when a cold or fever was a once-a-year phenomenon and not something you had to live with. A time when the words "Lifestyle diseases" hadn't even been coined by some genius. A time when you still waited for sundays and late nights to make a long-distance call to your folks in some other part of the country. A time when you read books to find out the answer to something, and 'googling' wasn't an option. A time when you thought Govinda and Mithunda were 'cool'. A time when a little was a lot and 10 bucks in your pocket made you feel like Bill Gates himself. A time when an evening with friends did not mean being on facebook, super-poking each other to death. A time when you waited all year round for that month long vacation. A time when you did not think that going to work would be such a burden. A time when you thought you could be anything you wanted as long as you worked hard. And making compromises hadn't become a habit, a daily affair.

'So what's wrong with the world today?', you might ask. Well, use that same time machine, travel about twenty-thirty years into the future and you have your answer. Good luck.

Home sweet home

Everyone has one place in the world that they feel most relaxed, comfortable and peaceful at...at peace with themselves and the rest of the world. Most of us call it 'Home'.

It's the place you associate childhood memories with, a place that comes to your mind when you think of your childhood, of all the games that you played, where you learnt to ride your bike and the place you made your first friends, little children your own age...a simpler time, a time with a few worries, the biggest being homework or the exam tomorrow.

You grow up a little, to become an adolescent and suddenly the same place you thought was the centre of the world seems so little. Parents seem to become more strict and intolerant of your 'natural' behavior, natural to you because of all those hormones kicking in, turning you into nothing but a pain in the backside. You want to break free like that song Queen wrote and explore the world. Suddenly, your world's a much larger place, a place with interesting people, limitless possibilities and most importantly, no one to answer to. Like they say, the world is your oyster...!!

You move out, see a lot of different places, meet a lot of interesting people, do a lot of interesting and weird and not-so-nice things, all along the way thinking that this was all you ever wanted. Freedom. To think, do and act as you thought right.

You mature, eventually, and one day look back at everything you've done. Suddenly, most of it seems so little and of such little consequence. You yearn for a simpler time, a time when everything was exactly what it looked like. When just sitting around with your parents and siblings and a few close friends and watching cricket, or sharing a meal, or sipping endless cups of chai was the high point of a day.

You yearn for all that and realise you wanna be home. After you've done it all - gotten drunk, had wild parties, made interesting friends, had sex, gotten hurt, hurt other people, earned some money, lived on your own - all you wanna do is go back to the place where no one really cares how dumb or stupid or pathetic you were while you were away. They're just glad you're home.

The bucket list

I saw the movie 'The bucket list' yesterday...interesting concept, with a list of things to do before you die and all that...surprising how the Americans, especially the ones in Hollywood come up with these things and make successful movies out of them...However, the movie made me wanna write one of those lists for myself, not that I'm dying anytime soon...but then one never knows...so here goes...

1. Go to atleast all the European capitals...Paris, Rome, Berlin and yes...London...try and live the history of the continent
2. Get on stage infront of a lot of people and sing 'Light my fire'...
3. Skydive (yes, I borrowed it from the movie)
4. Adopt a child
5. Write a book, a poem and a song
6. Make a few more friends, I find myself always short of them
7. Travel, actually wander...take off without a destination in mind, just like that and not look back
8. Get a tattoo
9. Be part of a revolution, god knows we need one...!!

The ideal life...!!

The beginning...

Well....first the reasons for the blog. I think too much (which in no way implies that I am a 'thinker'), and secondly, I am just too bored these days...so I thought what better than to give in to the demands of a few friends who've been persuading me to write for quite a while now...
I would be more than happy if you guys suggested topics for me to think and write about...otherwise it's just gonna be me ranting about stuff that you might or might not be interested in...so here goes...!!