Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Misadventures of Language
Monday, August 31, 2009
A minority...
After my flight landed in my stopover at Helsinki, Finland, I started having a strange feeling. At the Airport, lot of activities were going on at the same time - people walking, kids playing, groups of friends chattering, waiters serving food and so on; but I was missing something, I was away from my fraternity. I was getting slightly uncomfortable, not because of any jetlag, but because of this odd feeling. And this feeling only got exaggerated each time I looked myself in the mirror. I was different!
The big blow – I was in the land of Caucasian (white) majority, wandering with a minority tag. No certificate or announcements required; my overall identity and appearance were testimony to my status. Each time I got closer to nonnative culture, language, people, traditions, and food, I felt myself much glued to this tag.
I was wondering whether I would get any special treatment or attention as these people get when they visit India. I don’t know if I was also termed something, the way they are termed ‘Goras’ in most of India, but I did observe that many times people avoided sitting next to me in buses & planes and also avoided making eye contact for longer.
Despite having the taste of minority, I realized that not everybody was same. I got opportunities to talk to people, make friends and share unique perspectives, many times because of my ‘m’ status. People were indeed interested in knowing about where I came from i.e. India and its diverse culture. I was always very excited while telling them that they would not believe that India is one, if they had seen all its parts. By the time my trip was about to finish, I was quite comfortable carrying my identity in the land of strangers. I had never felt so strongly attached to my Indian identity.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
What should I write?
Why is this so that a confused person doesn’t just end up being confused but also starts from being confused? Is this intelligence to be able to see more choices or stupidly to keep lingering the decision making process? Should perennially confused people also be considered retard? I don’t really know if this is a right platform to address these questions but I guess it would be right to talk about at least my own confusion.
The day I started planning my trip, I began asking many questions to myself, my family, my friends, and Google. I would ask question and in turn ask another question basis the answers I got. I even thought whether going with an organized tour would have been a better idea, since I could at least ‘for once’ avoid the notorious tag of confused person. However, I knew that I didn’t have much too loose, as I was going alone; so either I screw up my trip or I find the joy of my life, no one was there to critic me. This encouraged me to create the chaos of my life! I would wake up till late and do lot of research on the pretext of planning my trip but somewhere I knew that I was fuelling my passion for confusion. The more I saw, the more I did…
My first euro trip ended, and ended quite contentedly. I visited 3 countries and 6 destinations, met many people from around the world, and learnt so many new things about different cultures. I wanted to retain my memories of all those things that I did or that happened to me, that’s why I had chosen to carry a diary with me. Every night after returning to my hostel, I would devote around an hour and half to write down the details of my day. It’s been around 3 weeks since I came back and once again I am playing my favorite game… this or that?
Seeing the increasing heartbeats, restlessness and some strange movement inside my abdomen, you might say that I’ve got stress… but wait, don’t forget that excitement also has some similar symptoms! The excitement of indulging in my favorite pastime is really high. After all, I once again have a question to answer – what should I write?
After spending more than 20 days in planning the trip, consuming nearly 5 months of my savings, wasting roughly 1/15th of my time in just writing during the trip and clicking more than 850 photographs, I think I will have to do a similar mammoth exercise in just figuring out what I should be writing. By the way, what’s wrong in being confused if I have acquired a taste for chaotic way of thinking? If not, then just help me in answering what should I write?