Is the world really one big family?

Suppose you kill someone - any one random person, then kill everyone who would be grieving for them, all people who would be hurt or pained or angry or deprived because you killed someone, then you iterate and kill everyone still alive grieved by the deaths of everyone you killed. Hopefully you wouldn't have picked a well-loved celebrity in the first place, but nevertheless, you go on and on till there're no living people affected by the people you killed.
At the end of it all, you kill yourself, because a heartless inhumane mass-murderer like you doesn't deserve to live anyway.

The question is - how many, if any, people would still be alive? Half the world?


PS This morbid idea came to me when I was a kid and first learnt about over population (psycho-analysis, anyone?) Even then, I remember thinking about it as a sick, shocking but effective way to check the population of the world and all assoiated effects on the environment. Thoughts?

A tale of a few cities

Those of you on my Google Talk may have noticed oft-changing city names in my status over the last 10-12 days. Such is consulting life, and my brush with early morning flights and hotel-airport hopping has been tiring, but work-apart, also insightful in a few ways.

Delhi and Mumbai are both "home" now (yeah, I'm gonna give Mumbai-whining a break, this city has grown on me that much :) ) but Ludhiana, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad were refreshingly fun, even in the brief city. Ahmedabad felt good, modern and developing after all these years, even though my cab driver talked about the invisible parts of the city where poverty and discrimination were collected. Still, there was an energetic air in the city and in the people, in the smiling kids and buzzing households. Ludhiana was a completely different experience. The city has a lot of money, probably more than Ahmedabad, and definitely more per capita than Delhi (if you include "actual" and not "stated" income). Every home houses entrepreneurs, but sadly enough, the infrastructure is crumbling and governance seems to have fallen short on so mnay grounds it's sad. Education is a priority so low that an outsider will be surprised. 15-16 year olds in every home have taken to alcohol - the official figure for last year was 29 cr scotch/whisky bottles, up by 10 cr, not including Chandigarh (where it is duty-free) and only counting bottles actually bought offiially in Punjab. Even that, is almost 2 bottles a month per person. Holy shit. Over more conversations, I discovered most women in the city aspire to get married to an "NRI" and virtually very neighbourhood boasts of a few Amreeka, Canaida, London, Greece and etcetras. Marriage - sine it's easier if you have a degree - is the sole objective of most of the women who study, and the rest tend to move to other towns. The men run businesses, drink and make merry. It is a larger than life lifestyle for most of the happy, kind people of the town, and let, feels another country, another era altogether, in a few ways.

Hyderabad is a far more complicated place to make generalised comments about, even at a caveated opinionated level. I loved most of what I saw - it is no longer the sleepy town of the 80s, the infrastructure is pretty Goddamn good (awesome airport and love the roads, mostly!) and the people are nice, learned, hardwoorking and speak Hindi easily :) ! I was stuck in the curfew though, over the Telengana agitation, and heard mixed opinions while trying to find a way out of the city. It was almost painful, to see what I saw, but I admit I don't understand and appreciatew the full complexity of it yet.

Travellogues can be boring more often that not, but I was still amazed at the perspective I found in brief visits to three of the most important Indian cities the coming decade. Would love to know more.

Despite 530 am wakeups, some things are fun about this job.

The one where life feels utterly worthless to live in

*Crib Alert*

As time passes, I realize, I am liking life less and less.
Growing up is very confusing, very painful and increasingly lonely. Why the hell does anyone ever want to grow up?

Things were so much simpler when I was younger. And they just keep on getting worse - it's hardly worth complaining when I compare my life with a few other people around. Nonetheless, it's not worth it, this life.

Falling in love was so much simpler four years back than it is now. It used to be simple, joyous and strengthening - now it can make me feel weak and helpless, the same love. When did it become so powerful?
Deciding what to do in life was so much simpler. Limited options, enough time, and limited risk. One could just be good at what one chose to do. But now? What job? To study further or not? Where is the career headed? Where is the money gonna come from? My parents wanna know when do I plan to get married. Or why dont I want to stay in BCG till I make partner. Hell, I don't know where I am going to be next week.

Having friends was so much simpler. People just became friends, and stayed so. Now, there are colleagues, acquaintance, bosses, juniors, hangout gangs etc Old friends are as spread away and occupied in their lives as I am, many have simply moved on so far away from the lifestyle that afforded them the luxury of people like me that they're not even the same. Everything is so much more lonely around here.
Even family - they were around and wanted you to be around all the time. And then, somehow, in the struggle to gain some space and acceptance, suddenly there comes a point when my parents don't want me to take a transfer to Delhi office and shift here because Mumbai has better "career scope" and they're already used to this arrangement. And here I was fighting to get a transfer. I still don't know whether I am going to get it, but in Mumbai, where I don't like it alone, I am suddenly almost homeless with both my flatmates announcing they wanna move out asap and I certainly cant afford the rent alone, and back in Delhi, to be honest, what do I have to bring me back.
This when my job kills most of my waking hours and is making me travel all alone to random cities- airport to airport. And it's not as fun as it sounds.
All this is a mess, I know, with a hundred more complications, and I am supposed to decide all alone. Why the hell?

This life is getting lonely, confusing and too demanding. I'm out of energy.

I want out.

Because I'm not just one person...

I'm not just one person.

No, I haven't grown that fat, yet and no, I'm not schizophrenic (actually I probably do have a multiple personality disorder...I think...but not the point I'm making). What I'm trying to say is hardly anyone among us, is just one person. We are a composite of different behaviors and responses that become appropriate in different settings. And while there's nothing deeply insightful about that, sometimes the variations are so much that you wonder where you really belong, if anywhere.

Excerpts from couple of conversations today:

A: Excuse me, do you have some other bread, I don't like the croissant, it's not authentic.
AirHostess : (stunned) Let me check ma'am.
(To me) Hope you're enjoying your meal ma'am.
Me: (Smiling) Thank you, it's just fine, this bread.

B: So that day at the hospital, I ordered only a sandwich and coffee and I was charged 110 rupees!!! Loot hai! And that too, it was some paalak, and boiled corn. Yuck. Not even worth 15 rupees. Do you eat all that junk?
Me: Errr...may be they were out of normal options.

Again, someone today called me a heartless too practical woman, while only yesterday I was labelled a hopeless romantic by someone equally judgmental. To be honest. I had nothing much to argue. I often lose track of where I belong - in the world where you take the bus to avoid cab fare, or where you hop flights and chauffer driven cabs all day. In a world where love is the be all and end all, everything to live for and you could throw a tantrum for not remembering your fav color for the valentives gift or one where keeping the head above heart is necessary, where work comes first and love fills the void. I had an argument with my mother today over wearing a locket she thinks is critical and I think is just superstitious and yet...

I'm mostly a very blunt person, an excellent blunt bitch I'd say - something that would sooner or later get me fired even - and yet there are moments when I find myself too different in different scenarios in terms of how I respond. And while mostly it is convenient, once in a while I struggle to find myself somewhere near the middle.

I should write

What would explain a month of absence from something so dear to me as this page?
Frankly, nothing.

And yet, I have been away for far too long. A lot has happened in the intervening time, much for the good even, and I still haven't processed all of it. Rather, I don't want to. Which, as is now clear to me, a big part of the reason for not writing. Writing makes you think through, feel through and live through. I guess I was comfortable in just letting things happen and letting them go.

It's not such a bad thing.

However, it can't last too long. This morning, I ran into couple of my IIT profs at the airport. One of them is a jerk, but the other is someone most of us had respected. I got chatting, and he engaged me quickly in a refreshingly intellectual conversation about life, universe and everything that shot off from one of the books I really like - Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I found myself articulating some of the things I believed in, and some of the things I now believe in and internally noticing the differences. That's the thing with good conversations - they make you realise parts of yourself that you didn't know existed. And the unprocessed inside you could sometimes shock yourself.

That's when I realised I should write. It keeps a reality check even if I write crap.

Apologies to anyone who cared. I shall be back.

PS I am on a new project, mostly Delhi and some city-hopping. Life at work is making me age quick!