Indian men and Inter-racial dating

A post titled, Indian guys, white girls, and more..., prompted me to write this blog. In that blog, an Indian guy who has "no trouble dating women (of any ethnicity)" gives us a 10-point advice on making ourselves more date-worthy. He also seems to imply that the lack of these 10 qualities is the reason why we don't see a lot of white women dating Indian men. It's too much of a bait for me to resist. And for the record, I have dated a few white women myself.

The points listed in the above blog are generic good pointers for life, not only for just dating. And they will certainly help in the dating arena.

However, it is wrong to think that the lack of these qualities is the reason why we see less white women with Indian men. And having these qualities won't guarantee you a white woman either. It doesn't take a genius to realize that there are enough non-Indian losers in the US who don't have most of these qualities and still score white chicks.

In my opinion, the main reasons why there are not enough white/black/hispanic chicks hooking up with Indian guys are three:

1. Racial differences: This is the primary reason. Most women have very specific race (and also height, weight, looks) preferences when it comes to dating. This is especially true of the Western women. If you belong to the race which the woman prefers, you have no problem. However, if you belong to a different race, it is not easy to cross this race preference barrier, unless you are an exceptionally attractive specimen of your race (and being rich helps too). The average man - Indian/white/black - is not such an exceptional specimen.



2. Cultural differences: Even if a person is not very specific about ethnicity or race, there are still cultural differences to surmount. The cultural differences between an average American and an Indian raised in India are just enormous. Put the average white girl and the average desi guy in a room, and watch them talk. Chances are, everything about them is different - their language, their ideas and beliefs, their interests, their preferences, everything. They might have an interesting conversation because of these very differences, they might even be able to have a short fling, but anything steady or longer term is very very difficult. It takes enormous maturity, flexibility and intelligence on the part of both people to be able to carry off anything steady or long term. The average person - white chick or Indian guy - does not possess this enormous maturity, flexibility and cultural intelligence. And nobody blame the Indian guy if he is not in tune with the latest Western fashion trends or music! Why should he be? If he likes lounging around in a lungi, watching Kal Ho Na Ho, that is his culture and his preference.



3. Personality: I am talking of the personality of the average Indian guy in the US. What is his profile? Middle class Indian background, middle class values. Probably above average in studies. Probably below average when it comes to chatting up the girls, even in India. He is pretty stable and responsible, but he is not a playa by any definition of that word. How can he come to the US and play the field successfully? Especially when racial and cultural differences are aligned against him? It is too much to expect. On the other hand, I know a few players from my college days in Bangalore who could come to the US, not follow most of the 10-point advice listed in this blog and score more white chicks than even the average white boy. Scoring chicks is an in-born talent for them. It is in their personality. Fortunately or unfortunately, most such Indian players don't score good grades and end up in jobs which don't bring them to the US. I am not suggesting that you need to be a player to date foreign women. But you do need some skills to surmount the racial and cultural obstacles in the romantic arena. I don't think such skills are available in plenty among the typical Indian tech workers in the US.

Bottomline, most Indian guys in the US are just not made for inter-racial dating. I am sorry guys. I know it sucks to hear this. I know it sucks double when you go to a store or restaurant or tourist spot and see white guys or even retarded-looking hispanic guys accompanied by hot-ass chicks acting like kittens begging for their petting. I know it sucks triple when the most female social contact you have is either small talk with your colleague's wife or that average/ugly single Indian girl at work who usually has half a dozen Indian guys surrounding her and who shows nakhras like she is the Queen of Sheba.

That is the price Indian guys have to pay. It is the price for earning big bucks in a foreign land. It is the price for being born in a culture where dating is still not the primary method of picking your partner, a culture in which girls act as if talking to or going out with a guy who does not look like prime husband material at first glance, is the equivalent of losing their virginity to a stranger on the street. So, just grin and bear, jerk off to porn/fantasies of white women, get married to a nice sensible Indian girl, have smart kids and continue the glorious traditions of our glorious culture.

For the other Indian guys who are aware of all this and still want to score white women, I wish the very best of luck. I am a great advocate of inter-racial dating and mutual sharing of stories, dreams, food and various bodily fluids as the best way of experiencing other cultures and expanding one's horizons. And please guys, try your best to make it an experience she will remember with pleasure. We have got a reputation to build and maintain!

Here's a related post specifically for non-Indian women who are interested in Indian men: Dating Indian Men I

What is the scam with the phone cards?

I sometimes use this phone card to call India, from the US. Can you believe the number of digits I have to dial for my call to go through? First the 11 digit 1-800 number of the calling card, then the 11 digit pin number, followed by the 15 digit phone number (including 011-countrycode-areacode-phone no.). That is a total of 37 digits dialled to make one phone call! It is so very easy to dial a wrong digit when punching so many numbers. When I am in a hurry (need to make an urgent call before going some place) or agitated (argument with someone, need to call them back), the frustrations of dialling 37 randomly sequenced numbers and getting it wrong a few times, probably shaves seconds or minutes off my lifespan!

Add to that the unreliable quality of the connection in the form of dropped calls, noise on the line, the possibility of being charged even when the connection with the calling party is not properly established. And then throw in other things like service charges, connection charges, weekly/monthly charges, half-, 1-, 2-, 3-minute rounding. That completes the misery of the calling India experience. A droning lifeless voice announcing, "You have one more minute of talk time left", before the connection is cut-off abruptly, no matter how important, critical or emotional the conversation is, makes the experience even worse.

It is possible to eliminate each one of the above obstacles and miseries. I do use services which don't have some of these problems. But such services come with a cost. Eliminating one to almost all of the above woes can cost me anywhere from 2 cents to 20 cents to 70 cents or even over a dollar more per minute of talk time, as compared to the phone card I've described above. Apart from the extra per minute charges, there could also be a flat monthly fee of 3 to 6 dollars.

Now, what is this scam with the phone cards? Why can't my home phone or my cell phone company offer me unlimited, unrestricted, good quality International calling at comparable rates? It is not as if there is no bandwidth. The bandwidth is there. And it is being sold by phone card companies in pathetic tiny, inconvenient to use packages. If the bandwidth is available, why can't I have it without the need to dial long phone card numbers and pin numbers? Why should I get it only in small chunks, which abruptly run out and end my call? Why can't my home phone or cell phone company buy all these chunks of bandwidth from the phone card companies or whoever it is that owns them, and offer them to customers like me in one convenient uninterrupted stream, at the same rate? I am sure there would be lots of willing buyers, who will help such a telephone company realize the economies of scale.

The situation is analogous to this: There is a great, well-built highway, available for our use. The only choices of transport we now have are small individual cars offering rides of different comfort levels depending on how much we are willing to pay. What I am asking for is something like a big bus or train, a mass-transport service which can offer reasonable comforts, at reasonable rates.

But we don't have a cheap mass-transport service available. In America, the cost of long distance bus travel is almost close to the cost of some air-ticket deals. Similarly, Indians calling India from the US have to pay extra bucks for good quality connections or suffer through the experiences of poor calling cards. Even calling Australia from the US is so much easier and cheaper. Although Australia is farther and certainly has less number of callers from the US!

When, oh when will the situation improve? I know that there will come a day when all these problems will be a thing of the distant past. We will be making free phone calls from anywhere to anywhere in the world, with any device - phone, cell phone, computer, whatever. I can see such a world of cheap, seamless communication. It is not too far in the future.

The Internet is an incredible portal which reduces communication time and distance to almost nothing. Such an Internet is within finger-tips access of me most of the time. A major part of my current life is spent in close proximity to high-speed Internet connections - both with cables and wireless, both at home and at work. Through this medium, I can exchange data, voice, video and typed communication with people around the world, in almost real time. I pay a sizeable fee for the pleasure of having a constantly available, high-speed Internet connection. I don't even utilize the full capacity of the connection available to me. I do not want to pay anything more for any of my other communication needs - not for my cell phone (unless I am "roaming" away from a Net zone), and certainly not for lousy calling cards.

Being in close proximity, most of the time, to such a medium as the Internet and being able to imagine a world of cheap or free seamless communication from anywhere to anywhere, my frustrations with the current long-distance calling situation is multiplied many times. When I use these calling cards to call India, I feel like a Formula One driver from the future, who normally owns and drives F1 cars for free, being zapped into the past and asked to pay for the use of a pathetic mule-driven cart.

Accident Statistics for Workers of Electronic City, Bangalore

I know that one of India's foremost software companies - let's call it W - has a big campus at Electronic City (ECity), on Hosur Road, in southern Bangalore. Thousands of people work there. I also know that ever since this W company started to move its operations to ECity, it has lost the life of at least one employee - perhaps more - every year in accidents on Hosur Road alone. That is not a small number. That is a grave (no pun intended) statistic for a company of any size!

This makes me wonder about the following questions:

1. Exactly how many employee lives has W lost in accidents, on the way to and from office, on Hosur Road?

2. How many employees of W have only been hurt, but not lost their lives in accidents on Hosur Road? (I almost never hear about the no-fatal accidents).

3. Repeat the above two questions for W's employees encountering accidents to and from work, in other parts of the city, i.e., accidents which don't happen on Hosur Road.

4. Repeat all of the above questions for the hundreds, may be even thousands, of other companies which have setup shop in ECity and whose employees travel to and from work at all hours of the day and night.

I am sure the statistics would be staggering. It would be very revealing and explosive if some newspaper gathered these statistics, interpreted them in a proper way and published the results. I don't have the time or resources to do so myself.

If Bangalore is the technology capital of India, ECity is undoubtedly the technology headquarters of Bangalore. There are hundreds of companies here and lakhs of people who work here. The rush hour traffic to and from this place is a nightmare. For most people, the commute to their offices in ECity is a minimum of one hour journey in crowded, indisciplined, reckless and dangerous Bangalore traffic. For people riding two-wheelers, it is a literal deathzone. Even people in cars are not safe and could be easily crushed by the countless trucks and buses plying on this road. People in buses are not totally safe either. In fact, the last employee of W company to die on Hosur Road was travelling in a bus. Such is the notoriety of Hosur Road.

Incidentally, in the 90's, the condition of this road was much neglected by the government. Repeated complaints by the tech companies in this area produced no results. Finally, frustrated employees of Infosys and other tech companies, took up road repair tools and got down on the road themselves, "to repair it". It was a symbolic protest, but it finally made the government to sit up and take notice. However, as usual in India, each new development effort undertaken on this road is too late. By the time any development activity is completed, the volume of traffic would have increased manifold and neutralized the benefits of such development.

The result is that today's technology workers who set out every morning towards Electronic City in Bangalore, face an equivalent or greater danger to their lives as compared to a caveman in prehistoric times who sets out with primitive weapons into a dangerous and hostile jungle to get food.

Hot Heini

This is my favorite drink this season. It is a refreshing, tasty and above all worthy drink. Great for the summer.

The recipe was provided by some person with the username 'Heineken' on another message board. I was very impressed when I tried it. But the guy gave no name for it! I searched online to see if this drink already had a name, but I could not find one. So, I named it myself: Hot Heini.

Recipe:
A shot of vodka in a tall glass.

Squeeze the juice from a slice of lemon into it.

Pour in chilled Heineken.

Drop in a fresh slice of lemon.

Enjoy.

PS: In some parts of India, "hot" is used in lieu of "hard", as in the phrase, "hard liquor". Since we use the hot liquor vodka, I call this Hot Heini! :-D

Ladies (in) Toilet

Have any of you guys visited the ladies' toilet? I have!

I read recently that boys over 5 years old are not allowed in ladies' toilets. The last time I visited one, I was 25 years old or so, and it was at my office. My client-manager from my last work place stood outside, being my look-out. When I came out, I found that she had abandoned her post to send some email! I am not sure if the cleaning woman saw me coming out of the ladies toilet. If she did, she never reported me. Yes, fact can be stranger than fiction.

When we went to the Grand Canyon last summer, there was a very long queue at one of the ladies' restrooms on the South Rim. In contrast, guys were breezing in and out of the men's restrooms. A couple of women could not wait. They just coolly walked into the men's toilet, muttering apologies and used the facilities. The expressions on the faces of some of the men there was funny. Imagine if a guy had entered the ladies' restroom like that. There would have been a huge hue and cry!

I don't know what those ladies felt about their visit to the smelly men's public toilet, but my visit to the very clean and sanitized ladies restroom in the office was interesting. I was impressed by the fact that not only was the ladies' room functionally different from the men's restroom (no stand-up urinals, for example), there were also aesthetic differences. There seemed to be better lighting, especially at the mirror. The mirror itself was kind of tilted. The upper edge of the mirror was a few inches away from the wall, as if the mirror was leaning away from the wall or falling off it. Why was the mirror set like that? So that the women could look at themselves as taller men might see them? So that women could have a better look at their cleavage? I have no idea. There were tubes and vials of creams and lotions on the counter.

As I said, when I came out, I found my look-out person had abandoned her post. Thankfully, nobody walked in when I was inside. Imagine a female co-worker coming in and finding me there! How would I have explained it? The explanation is quite simple, although I am not sure how convincing it is. I was in urgent need of using the facilities, but found that the men's toilet was being cleaned. My client-manager, who had offered to drive me home, was in a hurry to leave. She did not want to wait for the cleaners and then me to finish our jobs. Since it was late in the day and almost nobody was working on the floor, she suggested that I use the ladies restroom, while she waited outside to make sure some female co-worker did not enter while I was still in there. That's what happened.

Two-Minute Cooking School: Prospectus

The idea of the Two-Minute Cooking School is to present a recipe which can be learnt in just two minutes!

Almost all the recipes are for Indian dishes. The recipes may not be 100% authentic, the way it is made in your state, village or home. However, they are 100% yummy. The first time I've tried most of these dishes and tasted them, I've gone, "Whoa! Did I really cook this myself? I wish I could show this off to my mom!" Many of these dishes, as cooked by me, have been tasted and appreciated by friends. So, you can be sure that the recipes are tried and tested to work.

Every recipe is accompanied by a picture taken in my kitchen, soon after the dish is prepared and ready.

Past recipes: Vaangibath, Lemon Rice, Aaloo-paalak, 7-Layer Dessert, Baingan Bharta.

The main target students for this school are young Indians like myself, who are neither total dummies in cooking nor accomplished experts and who like to try new recipes. I don't go into every basic step, nor describe every tiny detail, nor give the exact weight and proportions of the ingredients. I just describe the recipe so that it can be learnt in two minutes. I assume that the target students, who are not novices in cooking, can figure out the tiny details and proportions for themselves.

I have learnt most of these recipes from casual conversations with family and friends, from experimentation and intuition born out of eating my mother's South Indian dishes for almost a quarter century, from the Internet and even from packaging boxes of masalas and spices. Almost none of these recipes have actually been learnt in a kitchen, watching an Indian cook them in the authentic way. So, I make no claims for the recipes to be 100% authentic. I welcome feedback and suggestions from readers, but please don't crucify me when I am not being authentic or following tradition to the T.

I know several Indian languages, but I am not an expert in any of them. I know the names of cooking items and ingredients in some, all or none of these languages. I just use the names in any language that feels most convenient to me at the time. I will try to name the language I use in a recipe and I will try to provide the English or any other commonly known translation, but there will be inconsistencies. Please excuse.

If you try these recipes, please post a comment and let me know. I will be very thrilled if this Two-Minute Cooking School helps even just one poor (forced*) bachelor/ette, far from home, to get a taste for some yummy self-cooked Indian food!

Finally, here are some quick tips from personal experience, on learning to cook.

*Forced Bacherlor/ette: S/he is a married person who is currently forced to live the single life, due to circumstances. The circumstances are usually a work assignment in a different state or country.

Two-Minute Cooking School 3: Aaloo-paalak

Aaloo-paalak and Paranthas (Click for bigger pic)

Come on over for dinner! :-)

Recipe for Aaloo-paalak:
Aaloo-paalak is a North Indian dish. Aaloo is potato and paalak is spinach in most Indian languages. This is a yummy curry of potato and spinach. As with most other recipes in the Two Minute Cooking School, this may not be 100% authentic. But I can vouch for the fact that it is 100% yummy. And I am supported by my friends who have tasted this creation.

Ingredients: Potatoes and spinach in proportion. Little bit of chopped onions. A tiny amount of chopped tomatoes. Tomatoes are optional, but I like to use them. If not tomatoes, you will need lemon juice. Dried red chillies, as per your preferred spice level. You could use green chillies instead, but dried red chilli in green leaf curries is a South Indian tradition. I like the flavor of the red chilli in this dish. A tiny amount (and I do mean tiny) of your preferred curry masala powder. This masala is optional too. Tiny amount of ginger garlic-paste. Salt to taste.

Most of the ingredients mentioned above are required only in "tiny" quantities because spinach and potatoes together are quite flavorful in themselves. The taste of other ingredients must be really small and subtle, and not overwhelm the taste of spinach and potatoes.

Wash the spinach thoroughly. Put the wet and dripping spinach leaves into a cooking vessel, cover and keep on the stove-top. Set the flame between low and medium. You don't need to add any extra water to cook spinach, the wetness of the dripping leaves is enough. You will know the spinach is cooked when you open the vessel after a few minutes and see that the fluffy leaves have settled down into a soggy dark mass. Cook potatoes separately by boiling in water or using a pressure cooker. Peel and chop them into medium-sized pieces. Spinach and potatoes take different durations to cook. So, we cook them separately and not together in the curry.

Heat a little bit of oil in a pan. Just enough oil to fry the onions in. Add dried red chillies broken into pieces. When the red chillies turn a slight brown, add the chopped onions and fry them. When the onions are fried, add a tiny amount of ginger-garlic paste and little bit of chopped tomatoes. Fry some more, until the tomatoes become almost pulpy. Add the spinach and potatoes. Add salt to taste. If you did not use tomatoes, add lemon juice now. Add really tiny amount of the curry masala powder. Mix well. If the mix is too thick, you can add some water. Cover the pan and cook on a low flame for 4-5 minutes.

Aaloo-paalak is ready! You may serve it in a large cup garnished with a fresh slice of tomato and half a teaspoon of butter on top. This is great to eat with all kinds of Indian breads (roti, naan, chapaathi, paranthas, etc.), and also with rice.

Paranthas in picture above:
Featured above are Kawan brand frozen plain paranthas and they are really good. Just get them out of the freezer and heat on flat pan until they are golden brown on both sides. Transfer from pan to plate and gently pat on the sides, turning them round and round. Fluffy, layered, yummy paranthas are ready in two minutes!

Pimple on the P-Spot!

Warning: If yuck makes you puke, read no further. You have been warned.

Of all the places on the body, the ass or its vicinity is the worst place to get a pimple on. I know a pimple on the face can be an inconvenience before a hot date or interview or meeting or presentation, but a pimple on the ass can be a real pain in the... well, the ass! Depending on location and size, it can make normal everyday life hell for you. You can't sit comfortably and work, you can't sit comfortably and watch a movie or have dinner, you can't sit or squat for the Big Job in the toilet and you might not even be able to sleep in a comfortable, accustomed position on your back or side.

Believe me. I know. I have had a very bothersome pimple off and on for the past... oh my god, 5 years! Really? So long? Wow! My oldest memory of it is from my first visit to the US (in 2000), when a girl friend (not girlfriend) tried to burst it during a massage. But I digress...

Yes, I have had this one off and on for the past 5 years. And it is not even exactly on my ass. It is right in the center of my back, on the end of my spine, just where my back ends and ass begins, exactly on the border. It is the spot I have christened the P-Spot*!

I don't know how I got the pimple there first. I always blame one of my many unhealthy seating postures. Although you try to get up and walk around visiting co-workers, going to meetings, eating out, etc. on the average work day, spending considerable amount of time with your ass parked on a chair, in front of the computer, does lead to many unhealthy seating postures. One or more of these postures must cause the center of my back, the end of my spine, the exact border between my back and my butt, my P-Spot, to rub against the chair, and this might have caused some under the skin or over the skin trauma, which led to the first pimple. Long story short, once every 3 months or 6 months or 9 months, I get a pimple on that spot with which you are very familiar by now, the P-Spot.

The size of the swelling might be as small as a mustard seed or as big as a quarter (American 25-cent coin). When it is small, I may not even be consciously aware of it. It might only announce its presence with an unexpected spike of pain up my back, when I am in the shower, and I accidentally rub it when scrubbing my back. But when it is as big as a quarter, it is a bitch, a real bitch, I tell you! This happened once a few months ago and it happened again during the past 2-3 days. Although it is less painful right now and probably a little smaller than the last quarter-size appearance, the pain has been pretty bad both times. So bad in fact that, I have had a low fever because of the pain. No kidding!

It appears as big as a quarter, only when I look at it in the mirror. Otherwise, it feels like it is bigger - somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball! And seems to weigh as much as the latter. Imagine such a ball embedded under your skin, right on the spot with which you are very familiar by now! It feels as if my waist-size has increased by 2-3 inches. It is not really that much, but it feels like it. The result is that the waist-band of my pants and my belt press right down on the pimple, making it whine all day like a bitch, sending vibes of pain radiating in expanding circles out from the P-Spot. And if I do anything like go from standing position to sitting position, or bend, or turn my body, just anything to stretch the skin over the swelling even a little bit, the whine turns into a howl and the pain radiates out from the P-Spot to all parts of my body like a tsunami wave!

Have I not showed it to a doctor yet? I have. In 2001 or 2002, when I was back in India. I visited a general physician who had one look at it and said it might need surgery and I should go see a specialist. I did not believe him. Surgery? For a mere pimple on the ass... I mean, the P-Spot? No way! The pimple disappeared after that and I came back to the US. Since then the pimple has been visiting me sometimes after a 3-month break, sometimes after 6- to 9-month hiatus. After each brief visit it disappears and I think it will not return again, but it does. It certainly does. And it is so easy to put-off visits to the doctor out of sheer laziness and also out of hesitation that this might really need surgery. I live alone, in this strange country, with no family at all here. What if this needs surgery and someone needs to take care of me? Friends? No way! I don't want to bother friends for the matter of a pimple! Fortunately, I will be going to India soon. This time I am determined to have it cured once and for all!

Meanwhile, whenever the pimple makes its full 25-cent-size appearance, I walk around as if I am pregnant. It's true. I have seen full-pregnant women walk around, adjusting their posture and walking style and stride to the additional size and weight, taking deep or short breaths, easing themselves onto a chair or bed slowly and carefully. That is how I am with this pimple on my P-Spot. Pregnant with a pimple!


*P-Spot: You probably thought that spot on the center of the back, at the end of the spine, right on the border between the back and the ass, has been christened as the P-Spot by yours truly because of the pimple. Actually, no. The name, to that unfortunate spot, has a more aesthetic background. Years ago, I had a friend for whom that spot was an extremely erogenous zone. She really enjoyed being pleasured there. And her name starts with a P. That, dear readers, is the sentiment which led me to call it the P-Spot!

Most imp reason we should not lose our Dharma...

Discipline and self-belief arise from a strongly internalised set of beliefs, the moral equivalent of the American vanity of 'manifest destiny'. If we believe, we can work wonders.

- Rajeev Srinivasan in India can be creator of the future

The above statement is the most important reason we, the Indians, should not lose our Dharma today. Our Sanaatana Dharma is the best, and perhaps the only thing, which can inspire the discipline and self-confidence we need.

Through history, we have come up with countless philosophies and ideas. All the ones which succeeded and helped us evolve had their roots in Dharma. They were propounded by people who were immersed in and understood our Dharma very well, and who were not afraid to question.

The ideas that take us down, that set us back, that divide us, do not have a solid Dhaarmic foundation, although often they pretend to. These were/are pseudo-intellectual and spineless ideas such as pseudo-secularism, bhai-bhai foreign policy, rigid and restrictive caste system, etc.

If we lose our Dharma we lose the very roots and foundation on which we have built our civilization and nation over centuries. Areas of Bharatavarsha which lose Dharma have gone down the drain very, very quickly. Eg: Present-day Afghanistan, present-day Pakistan, North-east India.

For a tree to grow big and tall and flourish for centuries, the roots have to be deep and strong. Our Dharma is our root. Let us not lose it.

Heartache for R!

I was at a friend's place this evening. We were drinking and listening to songs in the background. They were playing a CD with recorded songs from Kandukonden Kandukonden, Alai Paayuthe and Kaakka Kaakka. All of these are songs which remind me of R. Felt very sad listening to them.

I met R close to an year ago in a chat room. We hit it off instantly. Our first topic of conversation was the female butt, of all the things in the world! It did not take long for R to have a crush on me without ever having seen me. I was not very convinced because she is about 8 years younger than me.

I met her when I was in India last July. When we were together face to face, the 8 years age difference did not seem like a big thing. We liked each other. We committed to each other.

I came back to the US, having spent barely a month in India. R continued with her final year bachelor's course. Meanwhile, her parents came to know that we loved each other. They disapproved solely because of caste differences. I am sure that if I belonged to their caste, they would have been very happy about our association and given us their blessings.

For me, there were no blessings. Instead, her father sent me a very frank email in which he made it very clear that this relationship would not have his approval and that it would bring down the stature of their family in the community.

I felt very bad to read that email. Nobody who has been associated with me has ever felt that their stature has been lowered. I have always tried to live my life such that people who personally interact with me go away being/feeling enriched or better than they were when they came. And here was somebody who was almost a total stranger telling me that association with me would reduce the stature of his family in society!

It was not a good time for R. She was a very young person, just a student who was dependent on her parents for everything, including the means to communicate with me. There was a coldwar-like atmosphere in her home. She could not talk to me on the phone. She had to get up in the middle of the night and chat with me in stealth, and run away when somebody in the home woke up.

I was not there in India to share things with her. I was not there, close to her or with her. She was with her family, which totally opposed our feelings and interaction. We did not have any opportunities to share our feelings, thoughts and lives like young lovers usually should. All we had was the stealthy chat.

We started to have doubts about the feasibility of our relationship. I had doubts because of the difference in our age. She had doubts about being able to go against her family. We decided to split.

It's been just over 6 months since we decided to split. But it seems so much longer. And I am still sad. I don't know what went wrong. We were both nice, young people. Nothing wrong with either of us. We never desired bad things for others. We never wronged others. We just wanted to be together and share our lives and be happy. What went wrong?

A couple of months or so after we split up, she came back to me, asking to take her back. But I Told her that I did not love her anymore like I used to. I hurt her. And now she thinks we are not meant to be together.

We were/are both appreciative of each other. We really like each other and how we are and our individual talents and natures. She is very pretty, smart, talented and wise. She accepted me as I am, knowing all my shortcomings, my mistakes, my past. She accepted me as I am, with no complaints, without asking for anything about me to be different. She called me an "adorable goundar rapist", with affection. She was the first person to address me as kanna! And, she is the only person to have told me that she wants to bear my children!

I don't know what I ever did to deserve that much love and acceptance. After a long, long time, she was the person whom I really thought of as my wife. I loved referring to her as my girlfriend. I loved belonging to her. I liked being possessive of her and having the feeling returned. I thought I was finally settled for in life.

I don't know what went wrong. All I know is that, neither one of us deserved all that pain. And both of us are unhappy. I miss her youthful enthusiasm and affection and admiration. We are both just nice young people, who never wished anything bad for anyone. We deserved better. My heart aches!

அழகிய திருமுகம் ஒரு தரம் பார்த்தால்...

அழகிய திருமுகம் ஒரு தரம் பார்த்தால்
அமைதியில் நிரைந்திருப்பேன்...

A man & woman have the same IQ score; is the woman smarter?

If a man and a woman have the same IQ score, is the woman smarter?

I think, she is.

It is not a trick question or answer, nor is it an April Fool's joke. Here's my theory:

Almost all IQ tests I have seen are oriented more towards evaluating left-brain (masculine, logical, mathematical) intelligence. There is little or no evaluation of the right half of the brain (feminine, intuitive, artistic). Most people would agree that women have a more active right brain than men. So, if a man and a woman have the same IQ scores, their left-brain intelligence is almost same. Since the woman's right brain is probably more active than the man's, over-all, the woman is probably smarter.

PS1: Like everything, there are surely exceptions to this theory also.

PS2: My theory does not claim that women are smarter than men, in general. It is just that the IQ tests are designed that way. Not only are the tests partial to the left-brain activity, they are also partial towards certain cultures and languages.

SULEKHA SUCKS and SULEKHA knows it!

Update on 3/29/2005 12:30:00 PM:

I posted the link to this blog on Sulekha weblogs on March 28th, 2005 and it was deleted!

Message to Sulekha:
Why was the link to this blog on Sulekha weblogs deleted? Just because it tells the truth and Sulekha knows it? So, Sulekha won't let us tell the truth on their weblogs now. This is yet another reason why Sulekha SUCKS!

Sulekha and I are not the only ones who know that Sulekha SUCKS. Check the comment posted on this blog. Quite a few Sulekha bloggers have moved out and are posting on Dud Sea Scrawls, which is hosted on Blogger.com!

Warning to Sulekha:
The first time, I posted the following only on Sulekha weblogs. Sulekha deleted it. So, I had to host the content here and post a link on Sulekha weblogs. If Sulekha continues to delete the link I post on Sulekha weblogs, I will be compelled to post the link on many more forums on the Net.

Original blog posted on 3/28/2005 06:34:00 PM:

On March 27th 2005, I posted a blog on Sulekha weblogs and someone from Sulekha deleted it! I am reposting the contents of that deleted blog below, as closely as I can remember. To be polite to Sulekha, I originally posted the blog only on Sulekha weblogs and not on my personal blog here on Blogger.com. Sulekha, which knows no respect and courtesy, deleted my blog.

Well, bad move, Sulekha! You leave me with no choice but to post here on Blogger.com that SULEKHA SUCKS AND SULEKHA knows it! Incidentally, the title of the deleted blog was "Notes from my experience with Blogger.com" or something similarly simple and neutral.

What follows is a close reproduction of what I had posted yesterday, March 27th 2005, on Sulekha weblogs:

About a month ago, I stopped hosting my blogs on Sulekha weblogs section (I am deliberately not providing a link to Sulekha here) and moved to Blogger.com. I made this move because Sulekha edited one of my blogs without asking or notifying me. (You can read the background to that here: Moving out of Sulekha weblogs). Following are some of the notes from my month-long experience:

1. The look and feel of this blog, hosted on Blogger.com is much much better than Sulekha's simplistic and primitive weblog.

2. My blog has its own unique URL (http://libranlover.blogspot.com), which makes it very easy and convenient for me to share my blog with people. I can even post my blog's unique URL on message boards, as part of the signature in my emails, and on various other forums which market websites, getting exposure and visits to my blogs. This is so unlike Sulekha blogs where a person has to come and search for your blogs buried among hundreds of others.

3. The editor on Blogger.com is far better than Sulekha's archaic, outdated editor. Blogger.com's editor allows you to play easily with different fonts, sizes, styles, templates to help you get effect you want. It has other tools which make it easy to insert hyperlinks into your blogs, block-quote text, have bullet-lists and numbered-lists. You cannot even compare that with Sulekha's pathetic text-only editor, which is a very very tiny window that displays just 8-lines at a time. Why don't they at least make that window bigger?

4. Blogger.com has the awesome feature to post pictures. Yay! I am more a written words person than a pictures person. So, I have made limited use of this feature. But I would love to see fellow Sulekha bloggers go wild with this feature.

5. You can even post audio on Blogger.com! It is not a very advanced feature though. You have to call a 661 US area code phone number and record your audio blog over the phone. It is not even a toll-free number. I wish they also had the option to record audio blogs through the mic connected to a computer. I sound better when I record my singing through the mic, than on the phone. Well, something is better than nothing! One of these days, I will sing on my blog. However, I think my first audio blog is going to be stupid reports from a party in which we tried to get drunk and failed!

6. My next comment is about my beloved Sulekha readers' comments or rather dearth of it: Ever since I moved to Blogger.com about a month ago, I have had over 800 visits to this blog and I know that most of my readers are my friends from Sulekha. However, the number of comments people have left on this blog are quite low. I wouldn't think much about it, if people generally did not leave comments. But people who are quite unhesitant and prolific about leaving comments on Sulekha weblogs, don't do that on my blog here. I don't understand why. What is the hesitation? Can someone tell me?

7. Anonymous comments! Blogger.com allows one to post comments anonymously. There have been a few anonymous comments on my blogs which are quite personal. It would be nice to know who posted those comments. I am not asking for the reader's name, last name, the whole story with kula-gothra. Just the reader's Sulekha handle would suffice. Imagine getting an anonymous email, which has personal comments in it. Wouldn't you be disconcerted? I don't mind anonymous comments which are non-personal and generic.

8. I am very happy with hosting my blog on Blogger.com. I feel safe and free. I don't have to worry that some insecure, discourteous moron from Sulekha will edit my posts or delete them. It would be great if the Sulekha bloggers tried Blogger.com and experienced the wonderful features for themselves. I know that at least one other Sulekha blogger, d_w, also posts on here. However, he does not share his Blogger.com blog's links on Sulekha, like I do. So, I won't post his blog's link here.

9. If Sulekha cannot provide great features with its own weblog tool, it should seriously consider doing what I am doing: Sulekha should encourage its bloggers to host their blogs on Blogger.com, and share their links on Sulekha weblogs page. Sulekha could easily continue to provide the feature of displaying the blog title, along with the first few lines of the blogs, on its blog listing page. There are simple, ready-to-use tools available to do this. This makes everyone a winner: the bloggers get the best world-class features, Blogger.com gets more users and Sulekha continues to have its vibrant blogger community intact.

10. In its current form, Sulekha's weblog feature SUCKS and Sulekha knows it. To make that worse, SULEKHA SUCKS because of its discourtesy and disregard for its user community, the very same community which makes Sulekha what it is today. I have said this before and I say it again, Sulekha's user community is the probably the only good thing about it.

Freedom of Women & Loss of Womanhood

The following paragraph is from an email sent to me by a dear friend, Priyamvada K, who happens to be a single-mom with an office day-job. I am posting it here with her permission.

Today we claim women are educated, go out do this do that blah blah and how great that is. But the sad part is we don't get to exercise our nurturing side, not to the extent we want to. In the quest for freedom, more education, earning power, money etc - are we losing out on family? Is society or women as a group thinking a woman can do it all, and pushing her to be everything to everyone - that she may not be able to be? I mean, energy is finite. Where is the energy to sit down make someone's favorite dishes, spend hours playing with one's child teaching her stuff, telling stories, taking time to relax, having a place where child comes straight from school and relaxes, the time to swap the day's stories and share.....really share as a family? Instead one is out till 6:30 pm and then in the remaining 2 hours the kid is rushed from one task to another and then off to bed. And the cycle repe! ats. Is this freedom for women? I'm not so sure about that....perhaps its financial insurance for her in this uncertain world where marriage/family structures are changing and men may not be dependable - or don't want to be depended on. But freedom? I think it probably gives less freedom for a woman to be a woman - and exercise her nurturing, feminine self. It seems to me that family life has become like an assembly line - go from task A to task B to task C and finally rest. Somedays my heart weeps at this, but I have no solution at this time.

My heart goes out to Priya and to others like her. At least Priya realizes that she does not have the time and freedom "to be a woman" and she most probably does her best to make up for it. I wonder how many women there are, who don't even realize this, who are quietly losing their womanhood without even being aware of it themselves.

We are in a time and place of increasing androgyny in roles and responsibilities. These days, women also undertake activities which were conventionally considered to be masculine, and similarly, things that were normally done by women are also being done by men. I believe that this is basically good. I think that an amalgamation of the masculine and feminine talents, the union of yin and yang energies leads to an increased awareness and wisdom, accomplishes more and is the higher stage of evolution.

I am not against the education, independence, equality and empowerment of women. I am all for them and have consciously made choices to encourage them in the women in my life. But what is the price we are paying for this to happen? In their drive to be financially independent and "equal" to men, women are certainly losing certain aspects of being a woman. Some losses are welcome - such as the loss of weaknesses which enabled men to oppress women, treat them badly, curtail their freedom, etc. Along with these, we are also losing some things which are invaluable and cannot be replaced, things which have implications at all levels - family, society, the world. It is a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Despite having an active, aware yin-side to my psyche, I am not a woman. I don't know enough about women. So, I would never be able to make a comprehensive list of all the aspects of womanhood that are lost or will be lost in the future. But as a grateful receiver of many blessings from women, I can think of a few things -

• 100% nurturing time and care for the children and family cannot be provided.
• "Quality time" for the family as a whole is greatly reduced.
• Parents may not be aware of everything happening in their children's lives, and of all their needs and requirements.
• Women do not have enough time to take care of themselves and their personal needs, to form sisterly bonds with other women, to gather in women's circles to share, support, gossip and help one another.
• Old recipes are lost. The talent to come up with new ones is eroded. Families are not as nutritiously and healthily fed as they used to be.
• Family lore, traditions and practices are lost. On a wider scale, the traditional cultures of whole societies and nations are getting eroded.
• Home-grown knowledge, wisdom and medicines are vanishing.

That is just a short list that came off the top of my head. I am sure women themselves can add more items to that list, items which are more relevant and valuable to themselves, to their families and societies. As I mentioned before, these are invaluable things which are extremely difficult or almost impossible to replace once they are lost. If you think of more things which can be added to this list, please post them in this blog's comments.

I have to pause here to clarify that all women who work outside the home are not losing all of the above. There are certainly awesome women who do a great job on multiple fronts - career, family, personal, feminine. But looking at society/world as a whole, the erosion and loss of womanhood and feminity is undeniable. The fact that many women do not even perceive the loss, caught up in sweeping societal and global trends is lamentable.

My heart is as sad as Priyamvada's heart, when I think that my sons will not know women in a way that I've known them and my daughters will not be women, in a way that I've known women to be. I mean that in a very good way, especially as excellent care-takers of children and family. However they are, I can only hope that my children will be safe and happy, loving and well loved.

PS: The increasing androgyny in roles and responsibilities is also causing erosion in masculinity, but that is a different discussion.

Beware Girls: I am just another guy!

I am just another guy… with the same damn expectations… with the same damn goals, as someone put it. I don't know if I was always like this and am only now realizing it, or if something changed to turn me into just another guy.

I used to be different before. I used to be more innocent and loving, kind and considerate with women and girls. I genuinely respected, admired and loved them. I treated them with a special feeling which was beyond mere desire or chivalry. It was a genuine appreciation of their value and worth as feminine beings, as representations of the goddess, as someone to be pleased and pampered.

I did not treat them as just sex objects. I did not look at them as inferior or weaker humans. I was into feminism - the real, positive, empowering kind - and more aware of it than most women I knew personally. I was attuned to women's feelings, emotions and aspirations, to their pains, fears and doubts. I was deeply affected when I saw them suffer. I sincerely believed that every woman who comes into my life should have positive experiences. There used to be a time when almost all the girls who knew me thought of me as a different guy, as the "better than others" kinda guy. That is how I tried to live.

All that has changed now. Now I am just one more lecherous guy, with loose principles and barely enough smartness to justify almost anything I do as being right. There is no smartness or wisdom in me to know better. The ability to justify that everything I feel or do is right makes me selfish and inconsiderate. Often unyielding and uncompromising.

Women are no longer representatives of the goddess. They are just sex objects to be taken advantage of whichever way I can. Beyond that I barely think about what to do or share with them. Most of the typical feminine characteristics, fears, hesitations, clumsiness bring out mild contempt and resentment, instead of the fond indulgence and affection I used to feel in the past. If the woman has a strong personality or talks too much or is too assertive or looks too good, the contempt and resentment I feel at her feminine wiles, needs and demands is more than mild.

There is anger towards the attitude of the modern women who expect to have all the good things and preferential treatment that women traditionally had on account of simply being women, plus equal rights and privileges as those of men, plus more. There is bitterness towards the ease with which women get attention, admiration, affection, love and sex, simply because they are women, while the average guy does more than his fair share of donkey's work and may not even get a kind word thrown his way.

When a woman is displeased or angry with me, I no longer feel inspired to do much to make her feel better. Instead, I am ready to ignore her and move on. When I don't get enough attention from her, I am even more ready to move on. Contrast that with the olden days when I would have literally worshipped the girl I loved, made her the queen of everything I have, loved, cherished, pleased and pampered her, and been devastated when I learned she did not reciprocate the affection. All that is in the past.

Today, there are only two groups of women who can expect anything good from me:

1. Those who work with me - I am a no non-sense professional. I look at them as just other professionals who help get the work done. It's only about work. No feelings, no emotions.
2. Those who are in real trouble/pain - I am deeply empathic. When someone is in real trouble/pain, I forget myself and try to do what I can to help them. It's only about them. Not about me or my selfish needs or messed up emotions. So, they are safe.

Every other woman/girl must beware of me. At this stage in my life, I am not good or right for any woman. Any closeness or close interaction will only result in pain for one or both people. I am not in a place of balance and contentment. I am not in a place of love. Nobody deserves that!

Two-Minute Cooking School 2: Lemon Rice

Lemon Rice, Lime Pickle and Chutney Powder! (Click for bigger pic)

Come on over for dinner! :-)

Recipe for Lemon Rice:
Lemon Rice is a rice dish from South India, containing a very simple seasoning, mixed with hot cooked white rice and fresh squeezed lemon juice. It is extremely easy to make. I think it's a fabulous summer dish because it is not too spicy and the fresh squeezed lemon gives it a light, breezy flavor. The following recipe may not be 100% authentic compared to how the dish is made in South Indian homes.

All of the ingredients I use in the following lines must be in just enough proportion to mix in with the quantity of rice you will cook.

Start cooking white rice in a pressure cooker or rice cooker.

While the rice cooks, chop a little onion and tomatoes. Add 2-3 teaspoons of oil into the frying pan and heat. Add some mustard seeds, and when they begin to pop, add minapa pappu, senaga pappu and dried peanuts. Fry these. When they start to turn slightly brown, break a dried red chilli into pieces and add. Fry everything till they turn brown. Be very careful not to burn them. Next add the chopped onion, and fry till it turns a very light brown, losing the pungent smell of onion. Then add a few curry leaves, if you have them, and a pinch of turmeric. Fry slightly. Add the chopped tomatoes and salt, fry some more until the tomatoes are slightly cooked. The lemon rice seasoning is ready!

To the seasoning in the frying pan, add the hot cooked white rice, squeeze fresh lemon juice, mix well adding more salt if necessary. Hot, yummy lemon rice is ready!

It is good to have curry leaves, but even if you don't, that is quite fine. If you want, you can grate some fresh coconut into the rice at the very end.

Sides:
Lime pickle - this was made by a friend, with fresh lime grown in someone's garden in the Phoenix area, Arizona. This is the best lime pickle I have ever tasted! The flavor of the lime is different from the Indian ones and the pickle seems to have preserved the fresh taste and aroma of the lime, in a way that I have not seen any other pickle do. I got a small cup of this pickle from the friend and I made it last as long as I could. When it was over, I moaned about it to the friend and she was kind enough to give me more, in a bigger box. I am gonna make this last and last.

Chutney powder - This is MTR brand chutney powder.

Two-Minute Cooking School 1: Vaangibaath

Vaangibaath and Flamin' Hot Chips! (Click for bigger pic)

Come on over for dinner! :-)

Recipe for Vaangibaath:
Vaangibaath is a rice dish from South India, containing primarily eggplant and some special spices, mixed with hot cooked white rice. The following recipe may not be 100% authentic compared to how the dish is made in South Indian homes.

Chop brinjal (also called eggplant) into medium sized cubes or 2 inch long pieces. Chop onions, just enough to season the amount of brinjal you have.

Heat a few teaspoons of oil in a frying pan. Add some mustard seeds. When the seeds pop, add minapa pappu (Telugu for urad daal) and senaga pappu (Telugu name; I don't know what it is called in Hindi; it is used in South Indian seasoning). Add a dried red-chilli, broken into small pieces. Fry until the pappus and chilli pieces turn brown. Take care not to burn them. Add some chopped onions and fry the whole thing until the onion turns just slightly brown. This is the seasoning. Keep this aside in a plate or cup.

Start cooking white rice in a pressure cooker or rice cooker.

While the rice cooks, add more oil into the frying pan, heat it. Add brinjal pieces and a pinch of turmeric. Fry until the brinjal is cooked. Add a little tamarind extract and salt. Fry just a little bit more, mixing in the tamarind and salt. Add MTR (or any other brand) vaangibaath powder, mix it in with the brinjal, continuing to fry. Lower the flame and add the seasoning of mustard, pappus and onions you kept aside earlier. Stir everything together a little bit more, without removing the frying pan off the stove. The whole mix of vegetables, spices, seasoning and oil is called vaangibaath gojju. When properly done, the gojju should look an exotic reddish-brown, with an awesome aroma and yummy taste.

Add hot cooked rice to this gojju and some grated kobbari (dried coconut). Mix them all together. Squeeze a little lemon juice into it, if you so desire. Garnish with fried cashew nuts. Hot, yummy, vaangibaath is ready!

Vaangibaath is normally spelled vangibath, I just like to spell native Indian words as close to the pronunciation as I can.

MTR Vaangibaath powder ingredients:
Coriander, Black Gram dhal, Chillies, Cumin, Fenugreek, Cinnamon, Refined veg. oil, Cloves and Curry leaves.

Flamin' Hot is a new flavor of potato chips from Lays. It is alright, although not as good as the jalapeno flavor.

Old Groucho Marx joke & The Coolidge Effect

I just don't want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member!

- Woody Allen's characater in the movie Annie Hall

I don't know what context Groucho Marx made a similar statement in, but Woody Allen's character says this in the movie when he realizes that he is avoiding sex with a woman who is good in every way, who likes him and who wants to have sex with him.

This is a situation most people would be familiar with. Somehow, the person who is far from us, who is almost a stranger, who won't have us, who outright rejects us, ends up inducing more interest us, grabbing more of our attention than the person who is close, who is familiar, who is open and available to us. Never mind if in actuality, the former is a very ordinary person and the latter is very special.

It is the age old Chaser-Chasee syndrome. The typical "familiarity breeds contempt" funda. It is the stupid, maddening Coolidge Effect!

And no one tell me it is true for only men and not for women. It may be more obvious among men, but I have known, seen and heard confessions from enough women to know it is true of women also!

Caste System in India

Caste system is not unique to India! It has been practiced by civilizations around the world. It's just that Indian civilization has been around for so long. Hence, the system had more time to become established, institutionalized, percolated into family and social life.

Identifying and differentiating other groups by various factors like economy, education, cultural and religious practices, as well as birth seems to be a way for humans to establish their own identity as well as dominance.

Caste can be used or abused:

Uses: For self identification, for building supportive communities, for preserving tradition and similar positive things. This is good and even necessary.

Abuses: For establishing one group's dominance, suppressing other groups, highlighting the differences and provoking fights, tearing apart society and country, suppressing individual ambitions, suppressing individual relationships, breaking love and marriages. These are obviously very bad things.

The role of caste for the purposes identified in "Uses" section above is becoming increasingly irrelevant in modern times. Supportive communities are built in other ways. Identities are formed in other ways. Tradition... I will come back to this later. The fact is that, we don't need caste for these purposes in today's world.

Unfortunately, the purposes described in "Abuses" section above have gained prominence over the recent centuries and decades in India, with active provocation and support from powerful political, intellectual and economical groups/individuals. Other groups not directly involved in the Indian caste system have taken advantage of this system and may be, also unwittingly (or not) caused it to continue. Examples of such groups are the British, the missionaries, the historians with vested interests, etc. The reality is that today, the caste system has become more representative of the abusive purposes than the useful purposes. For that reason, it has to go.

Ironically, the most precious and permanent casualty of the caste system is our culture and tradition, the very culture and tradition which practitioners of caste think they are protecting. In a new world where everyone can and does almost everything regardless of congenital identities and status, caste system cannot be sustained. With modernization, we are fast losing our culture and tradition. People who have been conditioned by centuries and decades of caste-based thinking, are not able to come up with innovative ideas of preserving culture and tradition. Seemingly educated and intelligent people who nevertheless support caste system, instead of coming up with innovative ways of preserving and continuing our culture, want to stay back or go back to the old system with all it's inherent abuses.

Although untouchability, denial of facilities/services for caste-based reasons and similar practices seem to be almost completely absent in much of Inida, other harmful practices like caste-based reservation for academic and job opportunities, and casteist politics are as strong as ever in our society, across the length and breadth of the country. A surprisingly large percentage of people - even urban, young, educated people - are not free of casteist mentality and thinking in certain aspects of life. Meanwhile our culture and tradition is being irredeemably lost. Loss of culture is a huge loss for our country, for our present generation and for countless future generations to come, for our very Dharma!

Some people argue that the caste system helped India flourish and grow for centuries; so, it is not a bad system and we should continue with it. This argument is analogous to the following: We had a machine that used to function very well. Over the years it degenerated and started causing more harm than good. This machine is on the way to being phased out now. That is not good. Let us clean and repair it and bring it back into usage.

The problem with this argument is that the machine has some inherent design flaws which led to its degeneration and harmful effects, in the first place. These inherent design flaws cannot be discarded or repaired away because that is the nature of this machine.

It is better for intelligent people to realize this, hasten the phasing out of the caste system and think up other innovative systems to preserve our culture. The urgent need is to protect, preserve, help the evolution and adaptation of our Dharma!

Soulmate

Someone asked on a message board:

Soulmate: What the heck does it mean?

My response:

The concept of soulmate(s) is similar to the concept of god(s). Most of the arguments, thoughts and theories about god(s) can be applied to soulmate(s) with little or no modification:

1. Does god / soulmate exist?

2. Is there one god / soulmate or are there many?

3. What is the gender of god / soulmate?

4. People have debated god(s) for centuries. They will continue to do so. Reason: It is impossible to reach any one conclusion which applies to everyone, everywhere, everytime. The same can be said of soulmate(s) also.

5. Any person who argues that their idea / experience of the god(s) is the only true experience is being foolish and short-sighted. The same applies to soulmate(s) too.

6. The experience of god(s) is very personal. For the same person, the experience is different at different times. This is true of love and soulmate(s) also.

So on and so forth.

--- End of Message --

PS: Here's a soulmate story published on this blog: Soulmates

To My Users: Take your business elsewhere!

Dear Users,

Just a note requesting you to stop using me and take your business elsewhere. I wish I could tell this to you personally, but I don't have the heart... nor the guts, I suppose.

You know who you are. If not, check the following list. If one or more of the following applies to you, then this note is addressed to you.

1. You disappear for days, months or even years, with barely a word to me, and then when things are no longer going well, you come back seeking my time, attention, friendship, advice, comfort, whatever.
2. You hardly remember me or think about me when things are going well. You get in touch with me only when things go bad or you are absolutely bored and don't know what else to do. You disappear again the moment things get better for you.
3. It has been a long time since you truly and genuinely wanted to know how I am doing. Even if we keep in regular touch, you don't know exactly how I am.
4. You almost never make time for me. You talk about doing it. But I am the least priority in your busy life, coming even after the hospice for which you volunteer or the refugees to whom you teach. So, of course, you can never find time for me. But when you need my time, you just come and take it for granted, without knowing that even I have a busy life and I make time when friends need it.
5. You flirt, suggest, lead me on, use me for your amusement, use me when you need help, use me when you are feeling low and need a "lift", use me when you want to be reassured that you are still attractive, desirable and have a nice ass.

I admit that I have allowed myself to be used. I did that partly out of love and equally hoping that I would get your nice ass. Now that we know there is no chance of my getting your love or your ass, I ask that you take your business elsewhere. Let me save my time and energy for those users whom I can't avoid (my employer, for example) and for those few people who have some love and some ass for me.

I am starting to feel bitter towards you. Let's stop this before I start hating you.

So long.

Libran-bitter-Lover

Fantasy - My own radio talk show in Bangalore!

One of my favorite fantasies of life on going back to India involves hosting a morning talk show on FM radio in Bangalore. My primary fantasy, of course, is to be a filthy rich writer, wherever I am. But hosting a radio talk show comes right up there, along with owning a successful landmark middle-class-family-institution kinda restaurant.

Hosting a radio talk show in my own city Bangalore, interacting with all kinds of Bangaloreans, having a finger on the pulse of the city, being part of the city's cultural makeup, helping the city get up and get going every morning... how cool would that be!

I think I am well-suited to do that. I am born and brought up in Bangalore. I lived there for the first quarter century of my life. Like a true Bangalorean, I know five different languages, which are most spoken locally in Bangalore. I love interacting with people, facilitating discussions, and I can get them going quite nicely with my ability to see different sides of an issue and my penchant for playing the devil's advocate. I can just see how it would all play out.

I wake up at 4 AM every weekday morning, get ready and go to the radio studio. I am joined there by my team: a young vivacious talkative female co-hostess with plenty of attitude and pizzaz, a totally wacky male co-host who is good at doing all kinds of crazy pranks, a "hottie" female phone operator and a guest host of the month or quarter.

My female co-hostess is smart, quick with the words and more than an effective counterfoil to me. While my views might tend to be idealistic, controversial, playing the devil's advocate, wacky or downright weird, my female co-hostess will be the voice of common sense, reason and sanity. The male prankster is probably the guy who got into all kinds of trouble when you were in school or college. And that is precisely the talent which will come in handy for my show. We will get him to play all kinds of tricks and pranks and dares with our listeners. The phone operator looks and sounds hot. People will call in just to hear her voice, if not anything else. She will effectively field the countless calls we receive day after day after day.

The wild card of our team is the guest host. This is my original idea. We will choose the guest host from countless everyday Bangaloreans who would like to appear on our show. A guest host will be chosen for a period of one month or one quarter, during which they will be on the show with us every single weekday. For the next month or quarter, a new guest host will join us. I will have lunch once or twice a week with people who apply to be our guest host to select a person with the attitude and talent our show needs. The guest host is very important because they will provide us the perspective, the point of view of the everyday Bangalorean. They will bring their background, their culture and conditioning, their language and slang, their attitude, their personality to the show. For example, imagine having a college student on the show daily. S/he would provide the student perspective and the student slang that the rest of us in the team would have lost touch with. The guest host will put us in closer touch with our listeners. Nice idea, huh?

Apart from the core team above, we will of course, have our sound technicians, etc. who are the regular fixtures in the radio station. But what I've described above is the core talk show team.

So, every weekday morning, I will reach the studio at 6 AM and meet my entire team. We'll spend half an hour daily, taking a walk or working out or whatever to get warmed up and get into the groove of one another. We will come back to the studio at 6:30 AM, have our breakfast, coffee, tea and start the show at 7. And for the next three hours, from 7 AM to 10 AM, every weekday morning, we will have all of Bangalore listening to us, laughing with us, being entertained with us. We will play music. We will initiate debates and discussions on myriad interesting and often controversial subjects, including politics, social and family matters, entertainment, sports, religion. We will be frank, we will be bold and we will not compromise on the truth. We will have interviews of celebrities and common people. We will play pranks, practical jokes, experiments on the phone and in real life. We will generally have a ball! And doing all this, we will make a lot of money and hopefully help make things better for Bangalore, India and the world in our own way.

We will end the show at 10 AM, to get out and do whatever each of us does. I probably will write and/or run my own restaurant, do the legwork and preparations for the next day's show, participate in various events in Bangalore in my capacity as a local celebrity. :)

What a fantasy! Now I will go sleep.

Moving out of Sulekha Weblogs!

I have decided not to host my blogs on Sulekha.com Weblogs any more. I have also decided to move all my blogs to this site on Google's Blogger.com. The primary trigger for this is the fact that Sulekha edited my last blog: If Dad is taking a shower with Mom,DO NOT tell your BPO rep!

I had posted a picture at the beginning of the blog so that it would display as an embedded image. The link to that picture is also available at the top of my blog. The original blog looked like this: original look of the blog. Sulekha edited my blog and removed that embedded picture. Without asking my persmission. Without requesting me to remove the picture myself. Without even informing me. Is it too much to expect some basic courtesy from Sulekha towards its user community?

This is uncivilized, unevolved and unprofessional behavior. This is a serious breach of good faith. This is also a violation of my rights to my writing. The fact that I post a blog on Sulekha does not mean they have all rights to my posting and they can edit it.

The only good thing about Sulekha blogs is the user community which gives us a feeling of belonging. The nice close-knit kind which exists (existed?) in village communities. Otherwise, technically, Sulekha weblog section is PRIMITIVE and SUCKS. There is no incentive for staying on here when there are better options and tools available.

Google's Blogger.com is an excellent site I have started to use. It has great tools which are easy to learn to use. You quickly get a hang of them. The editor allows one to easily change font, size, style, color, to create hyperlinks, to align test the way we want them, etc. And it has the awesome option of being able to post pictures. Imagine sharing your pictures with fellow-bloggers, an option Sulekha does not have and does not seem to encourage! There are different blog templates which you can use and customize to suit your style. You can copy your previous blogs from Sulekha, post them here and even set the date-time, so that you continue to keep the original date-time from your blog on Sulekha.

To see what other bloggers are doing on Blogger, go to the top of this blog page where you see the NEXT BLOG link. Use this link to view another random blog. This link appears on every Blogger.com blog and you can keep clicking on it to visit random blogs and see how other people are using Blogger.

As I already mentioned, the best thing about Sulekha weblogs is the user community. We are a happy, close-knit online village. The features and facilities on Sulekha weblogs are also primitive in comparison. Blogger.com is a big international city with the comforts and facilities which come with it. We can continue to maintain our online community ties, and yet enjoy the advantages of Blogger's facilities. There are two ways of doing this:

1. Post your blog on Blogger.com and post a link to that blog on Sulekha weblogs. The Sulekha community can click on your link and see your blog. They can post comments right there on Blogger.com. This way, we continue to maintain our network of friends and readers through Sulekha! This is exactly what I have done with this blog.
2. Get your Blogger.com blog listed/registered (a one-time thing) on other blogger communities like BlogStreet India and Blogwise.com. These communities have thousands of other Indian bloggers from all over the world. Blogwise.com is an international site. Click here for Indian Bloggers on Blogwise.com.

I will no longer host my blogs on Sulekha. I will just post links to my blogs there. It would be great if other Sulekha bloggers joined me. It no longer feels comfortable having my blogs hosted on a site which does not think twice or have the courtesy of getting in touch with me before editing them, a site which has primitive features, and which becomes inexplicably and unapologetically unavailable about once a month or more!

PS: If you have questions or suggestions please post them in the comments section of this blog.

If Dad is taking a shower with mom, DO NOT tell your BPO rep!

BPO Honest Case Log (Click for bigger pic!)

Disclaimer: I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the above screenshot. It could well be a hoax. May be a BPO Urban Legend. But read on...

The above screenshot came to me in an email forwarded to a bunch of people in different parts of the world. Apparently, it is a funny "Example of honest case logging" at the call center of a prominent multinational company, selling computers worldwide, whose name allegedly begins with 'D'. I do not know where the call center is located. It could be anywhere in the world. It is not possible to guess from the name of the BPO representative who created this case log, which part of the world he belongs to.

The humor in the case is apparent and I suppose we could laugh about it. But what concerns me is that, the above screenshot came to me without the personal information of the call center employee and the customer being blacked out. I blacked them out before posting here! And the original screenshot without black-outs is probably being forwarded by people via email to their friends across the world, as I type this. Pretty soon email users around the world would have seen it.

In the original screen shot I received, you could see the customer's first name and last name, his email address and telephone number. You could also see the call center employee's first name and last name. I think it is the employee's true name because it did not sound like a Westernized name which call center people use for their Western customers. I could be wrong, of course.

Just to check further, I called the customer's phone number and asked for him by name. A female voice answered. She told me that he is not home right now and I should call later. So, the customer's information is probably true too!

If you were that customer, the world knows what you were doing with your wife at a particular time, on a particular date. The world also knows your email address and phone number. They can call you or write to you to discuss it with you! Think about it. Scary, huh?

9-year-old stumbles on love!

Love is a thing you keep discovering again and again in different ways... provided you are open to it. One such profound discovery happened when I was 9-10 years old, although I did not know at that time that it was profound.

There used to be a woman in our neighborhood who worked as a maidservant in several houses. Her face was what could be termed simply as "disfigured". I don't know if it was congenital or caused by an accident. It was severely contorted on the left side. The flesh near the left cheekbone was disproportionately swollen, her mouth was stretched back to the left and up somewhat permanently, she had one or two long front teeth, and several other teeth in the front were missing, she could usually be seen with dishevelled hair, wearing old rag-like clothes. She looked like a classic scary witch!

This lady had two beautiful daughters who were teenaged in those days and helped in her work. They were either twins or very close to each other in age. The girls were true South Indian nubile beauties. Dark skinned and long haired, pretty faced and slim built. Even as a 9-year-old boy, their beauty was not lost on me.

The contrast between the mother and her daughters made me wonder, how such an ugly woman could have such pretty daughters. And then I wondered about her husband. How did he feel about her? How did he marry her in the first place? Then it dawned on my little 9 year old heart and mind: he married her probably because he found her acceptable and loveable despite her looks. The thought progressed some more and I concluded that is probably true of every person in the world: no matter how ugly or undesirable they looked to the rest of the world, there must be at least one person who would like them and love them. And then my thoughts drifted to other things.

Years later, as an adult, I remembered those thoughts and conclusions I had about the maidservant in our neighborhood and I was amazed. I figured out how old I must have been at that time based on the circumstances and I was amazed again. I realized that it was truly a profound discovery, and that too for a young boy to stumble on it was a wonderful thing.

Most of us go through life as if we are not deserving enough of love. We are afraid to love or express it because we think we don't deserve it. We hold back love from others because we think they don't deserve it. All of us end up being miserly about love and acting as if there is a great scarcity of it in the world. While the fact all along is that, there is an abundance of love everywhere. Yet, daily we come across people who are malnourished with lack of love.

Scarcity of love in the world, is like the scarcity of food. The problem is not one of production, it is one of distribution. The first step to resolve the problem is to realize what I discovered when I was a 9-year-old boy: everyone is loveable. And then, to live by that realization, to love a little more and spread a little more love everywhere.

I hope the lady and her daughters, who inspired this discovery are content, happy and well-loved, whereever they are now.

Five Years - a simple, real love story!

Just stumbled across this short real love story: Five Years

It's so simply told with no pretences. Sounds so sweet. And I am beginning to sound like a girrrllll!

Transformed From An Ugly Duckling to The Charming Beast

This piece of writing has been long overdue. I have had conversations about this with a few close friends. I am finally inspired to put this down in writing after reading this blog: Chronicles of an Ugly Duckling by mountain_dreamer.

As a child, I have been told frankly by my mother and grandmothers, and at times by assorted aunts, that I was dark, ugly, thin and weak. Apparently, I had been much better looking when I was a chubby, yerra (meaning "red" in Telugu, they meant fair-skinned) baby. For years as a growing child, I was criticized for not looking as nice as I did when I was a baby. They did not hesitate to talk about my bad looks in any place, at any time, in front of anyone. But I heard their rants most often when I made a fuss about eating. As a child, I was very particular about what I ate and how it was cooked. They believed that talking about how bad and weak I looked would encourage me to eat better. They also believed that frankly appreciating someone's good looks would put an evil eye on that person. There is something terrible about the culture of Indian elders which makes them talk more loudly of their kids' shortcomings than of the good things about them.

As an innocent child who is most influenced by the older women in the family, I believed that I was ugly. I often stood in front of the mirror to figure out just why I was ugly. I could never figure out. I had normal eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, face. Where was I ugly? I just could not find out. Nevertheless, I believed I was ugly. Now, in retrospect, I just can't understand how adults could do that to an impressionable child. In the US especially, I see how delicately and sensitively the kids are treated and that makes me wonder just what the hell the elders in my household were thinking.

I don't mean that they did not love me or not treat me well. In fact, they took very good care of me and I was a favored child. It was only when talking about how good or bad the kids looked, more so in the context of eating well, they seemed to think I was not upto the mark. And their opinions stuck in my head.

Things became worse in my teens. I had a bad case of acne. In mid- to late teens, the first "premature" grey hair started to appear. So now, not only did I hear rants about being dark, thin and ugly, I also had to hear about my acne and grey hair. I was acutely aware of looking different from most other boys my age. Different in an unattractive way.

I knew that I did not have the kind of good looks girls would moon over. Unfortunately, I was very interested in girls. Romantically interested too. But none of them liked me. I never got a single girl to like me in those days. I saw so many girls get together with the good-looking guys. I saw the girls being obviously interested in such guys. I have seen girls I had a crush on, in turn have a crush on other guys who seemed to be better than me in looks only.

Not one of the girls who rejected my interests told me why they found me unacceptable. Almost every single one of them just said, "I don't feel that way about you." I was left to wonder and speculate why they did not feel "that way" about me. I could not see anything wrong with any other aspect of myself. I was alright academically and on the career front, had a good home and family. I thought the only thing that was obviously "not good" about me was the way I looked. I was convinced that all the girls I was interested in did not like me because of my looks. Perhaps, I was wrong. But the point is that things became progressively worse for me as I grew from a child to a boy to an adolescent to a young man.

In my early 20's, I thought of myself as The Beast and the girl I was interested in as The Beauty. The Beast archetype became predominant in my consciousness. I was a sad young man who thought the first impression girls would have of me was to be repulsed. Then later, when they got to know me better as a person, may be they might become friendly. But it would all stop there, at friendliness. Needless to say my self-esteem was very very low.

During all those years of adolescence and early 20's when I was down with a bad self-image and low confidence, all it would have taken for me to feel so much better was for just one girl I loved, to love me back and tell me that she found me attractive. Just one girl. I can't believe how much power just one girl would have had. That is the kind of power a lover has.

So, I came to the US as a sad young man, low on self-esteem from years of conditioning, low on self-confidence and emotionally scarred because of all the unsuccessful trysts with romance. The Ugly Duckling. The Beast.

Things changed in the US as if by magic. Within months of landing here, I went out a couple of times with the prettiest white girl on the floor, who said I looked "trim and smart". I pursued other women. The reactions of American women to my interests were refreshingly different. There was no ambiguity in their responses. If they did not like me, they told me frankly. If they liked me, they expressed it even more frankly. In words and in actions. There never was any reason for me to wonder if they liked me or not. They made it very clear at all times. Nor was there any reason for me to wonder why they did not like me. They usually made that clear too. What is more, when it was obvious that they did not like my looks, I could even tell myself, that was only because they were not used to the South Indian looks, and/or they were not adventurous enough to like foreigners. I am really appreciative of the American unambiguous communications.

But more than that, I am deeply grateful to the American women who accepted me. Not all, but some of them did. The ones who did, showed their attraction and appreciation without inhibitions. They made me feel like a worthy man. I still remember the first time one of them told me that I looked "so handsome". I frankly did not believe her. It took some sincere repetitions by her and by others, backed by self-evident actions, to convince me that they really found me attractive and they were not just being kind. It did wonders for my confidence and self-esteem. Since then, I have been complimented for my presentable personality, my smile, my eyes, my butt and other more personal aspects. I have had a girlfriend caress my butt in public and even had gay men hit on me.

If you knew me well, you would realize that I am the devil-may-care kind of person who is not too concerned about what others say. I do not seek external validation for my thoughts and feelings. My sense of self-worth is built on a solid foundation of adequate self-cognition and evident achievements. Despite all that, I was not immune to the conditioning about my looks nor feelings of inadequacy brought on by consistent rejection from Indian girls. I have heard and read the usual lines and phrases: "Looks are not everything", "There is nothing wrong about your looks", "Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder", etc. I have tried to tell myself that I have things going great for me in every other aspect of life and looks don't matter. But none of that helped. When healing came, it came from the solid actions and expressions of others, not from any cliched lines. It came from shared love and passion.

I am indebted to American womanhood. They accepted me with open minds, open hearts, open arms, open eyes and open thighs. They loved me and they healed me. They kissed me and transformed me from An Ugly Duckling to The Charming Beast.

Today, I am secure and content about how I look. I dress the way I want, I style my hair the way I want, I eat the way I want. I have found that no matter how I style myself, there are those who like it and there are those who don't. Even when I grew a beard for 3 months and looked like a barbaric cave dweller, someone told me they found it attractive (BIG grateful thanks to her!) And when I grew my moustache really big and thick like Kamal Haasan in the movie Devar Magan, an ex-girlfriend told me I looked like an adorable rapist (she's a hottie who doesn't know just how hot she is)!

I think it's all good. Very very rarely I fantasize about having the kind of looks which would make all heads in a room turn, which would make any woman fall for me. But sanity comes back soon enough. I am glad that there will always be those who like my looks and those who don't. I think looking too good would have spoilt my mental and emotional health, may be even my physical health. I like the fact that I can never predict a strange woman's reactions to my looks. She may be very repulsed or she may be very attracted, or she may feel anything between those extremes. I like that mystery. It suits me and my looks just fine.

Awesome Break Dance Video

This break dance video is awesome. A MUST SEE!

http://www.el8.net/~gb/breakdance.wmv

Eating alone and waking up alone in the morning!

Watched a Korean movie last night: Shiri.

Really liked it. It is a political action thriller with a romantic story woven in. It is apparently the most commercially successful Korean movie to date.

I watched it at this colleague-friend's place Friday evening, after work. (Was surprised that he had chosen a Korean movie; did not think he was the foreign movie type). Anyway, I was going home later, driving alone and remembered the romantic moments from the movie and the heart-movingly cute heroine. I remembered the romantic moments... their going to a play, their having dinner together, their standing on the side walk, taking shelter from the rain, their kissing... And I remembered my looong single status and loneliness... Felt unhappy and frustrated. Left with a feeling of helplessness and inadequacy.

I wonder why I am alone. It's not like anything is wrong with me. I have consciously made myself into the best person I could be. I am stably employed, I am well educated, I am smart. I have good tastes, I am polite and cultured, I am deeply interested in spirituality. I am friendly and kind and romantic. I can sing, I can cook, I can make a woman feel like she is the most special person in the world. I can even dance when I am in the mood. And I am really really nice.

So, why don't I have an equally nice girl with me right now? To share similar romantic moments as the ones I saw in the movie? Someone to fill my life and world with the yin energy, the feminine smells and sounds and preferences. Someone who would eat with me and who would be there when I wake up. The heroine in the movie tells the hero, "You did not like eating alone and waking up alone in the morning." That is exactly what I do, and what I hate!

"Difference between love, romance, and sex?"

Question on a message board:

So, what do you think is the difference between love, romance, and sex?

My response:

For animals and gods, they are all the same. That is why I ask people to get in touch with the animal and divine sides within themselves. Every person has three aspects: animal, god and human. Getting in touch with the animal and divine sides within us will help us love and make love truthfully, sincerely, joyfully.

- Swami Libran Lover