Awaiting responses!!

Friends,
I have decided i shall reduce the frquency of my blogposting, its getting a little too hectic and information overload is dangerous too !!! :-)

However i will be active on comments section and awaiting your comments on my posts below.

CHeers

Lets paint the Indian Identity

Iam unsure as to how best i can adress this issue to the masses and at the same time elicit the kind of response i expect. However, i shall try.
Friends, I have been working on writing a book aiming to elucidate India. I have been travelling to cities,meeing people and experiencing various cultures in order to get the idea of India in as many perspectives as possible. India has always been a distant ecret. Even if you are a part of it , you never know most of it.
Kashmiris can characteristically be diffrentiated from a malayalee or a bengali and yet all ofus are Indian in all respet. We are identified as Indians. The new age bangalore techies, who breakfast their way to the office, endorse pizza and emulate the best of accents still prefers to have masala dosa on thesuday morning!!!
We have remained a country that accomodates almost everything that comes its way. Everything that entes India is embaced and goes on to become the part of Indian Identity.
So what exactly do you think the Indian idntity is. Are there any defining moments or people or places or picture or anything that speaks India for you? How best you can give clarit to this surreal yet existent identity??

Day 2

Today.
I have spent my time thinking of India, its identity and its plurality. Lot of chaos in mind. Shall put everything down together tommrow . Its a saturday and i need to catch a good nights sleep.Meanwhile check out http://www.natgeotv.co.in/MomentAwards , Galleries for a picturesque insight into India of peoples minds. Its truly amazin.

Adeios

Arrived.Fresh.New - With Ugadi

I woke up to an auspicious morning. Yes. Today is UGADI- a festival that marks the beginning of a new year in a few cultures in south India. Yug refers to era and Adi means Beginning and hence this festival is the beginning of a new year according to the Hindu lunar calendar. It is celebrated with great fanfare in the Indian states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Ugadi is celebrated on the "Shukla Paksha" of the first month of "Chaithra Masa" i.e. during the spring month ('Vasanta-Rutu').The onset of spring marks a beginning of new life with plants acquiring new life. The Panchangam (Hindu calendar) is calculated using Ugadi or the spring season as the first month.It is the beginning of a new Hindu Lunar calendar with a change in moon’s orbit starting from today. People, on this day , are to wake up early!! Have an oil bath, visit temple and spend the day with friends and relatives with sweets doing the rounds.

But joy aside, I think, complacency has crept into our society when it comes to celebrating festivals. The underlying aim of these events seems to have been lost in years of habitual celebration. Have we ever thought of assessing their relevance to the modern society or rather I must say our relevance to these auspicious occasions?

Do these festivals still hold ideological relevance in modern life? Do we still yearn for these festivals because they a social message or the joy is purely out of the fact that it breaks the monotony of life for yet another day?

It’s quite disheartening and equally distressing to know that the variety of festivals we have inherited from our culture, today, hold not ideological but practical and materialistic importance. Today, festivals are identified for their fanfare and grandeur and not for the cause that has given us a reason to celebrate. Festivals have just remained to be imageries for meaningless indulgences.

How many of us actually know that Ugadi is a day when, supposedly, Brahma is known to have begun his creation (of earth), how many of us knew that this festival marks the beginning of spring season and therefore the new life’s beginning. The onset of spring also marks a beginning of new life with plants acquiring new life, shoots and leaves. The vibrancy of life and verdant fields, meadows full of colourful blossoms signify growth, prosperity and well-being. It is a tribute to Mother Nature and the festival is yet another characteristic feature of the Indian civilization – we have learnt to evolve in harmony with nature.


Festivals are social philanthropists. They aim at bringing together people from all walks of life. They are a reason to celebrate but never to forget they have a moral obligation. Festivals are the cause for socializing. They are for breaking the monotony from strenuous life . It is a reason to celebrate with people and spread joy and happiness all around.

With the advent of “modernity”, the intellectual tanks of people are drying up. Today to the college student, festival is a break from the mundane hours of lectures, to an IT pro, it is a reason to sleep late and start the day with the characteristic “Sunday brunch”. Where have all the granpa-grannma stories gone. Weren’t they supposed to have taught us why we do the things we do in our culture? The parental generation of today holds perhaps the last chord to the yester-years. Gone are the days when summers were meant for grandparents, when festivals ever had some meaning and when we ever bothered about knowing certain elements of our making.

Today, I still celebrate Ugadi but not knowing about it as much as my father did. Tomorrow, my child will just celebrate Ugadi and may be my grand-child will just take an off in the name of Ugadi.

Aim being no preacher but just a self-conscious man who begs to get back to his roots

Chirag

PS: No offence meant to anyone with this blog. His is not to target any particular group or people. Apologies if you feel offended.

Iam arriving..... !!!!

Its been more than a year now since I first began my affair with blogs and today at last I choose to begin.

I have realised by now that you will always want something or the other in life but till the time you will keep wanting it you will never get it. Yes its been more than a year now that I first thought of starting my own blog. I had dreams explicit and elaborate dreams of how I will write something unique and people will notice it , they will start reading me often, me being recommended, me being talked about , Oh me being in picture , wow , me being almost famous and yes aim a hotshot now man!!! Awful !!! Because I only remained there and never moved an inch.

You know why?

I thought if I needed to be known and appreciated I needed to be the best. My writing skills need to be honed , I need to think, start thinking and not just think but think deeper and better and then sort it all out in mind, rehearse , practice and there you go !!! start blogging. Yes I made plans for the same but just that they never got a chance to be on my priority list. Whenever I reminded me of the blogs, me always postponed the idea saying “Beta, time is not ripe!!”.It kept getting postponed and now here aim, no better than what I was a year back. But now aim back with a dertermination to JUST DO IT.

I needed to know that to be the best , it was first important for me to be better which required me to be good and man a year back I was good enough!!!

Anyways , the clarity of thought is still my greatest foe and i will battle my way to successful blogging. To begin with I know very well what I want to do – I want to think, share and make myself aware. I truly believe in the power os social media and the very thought of digital/virtual friendship sounds Kicka**. So I have decided I will do what I want to do but for how , I have an idea

Here’s how

I shall wake up in the morning and think about something. Anything. may be the continuation of my dream or the newspaper feed or sundried tomatoes and cheese!! I will think through this thought for the entire day , discuss it with people and create a concoction of thoughts. I shall then prepare a rich and dark filter coffee out of this and serve it to you all. Now , you will drink it and not just that you need to bring snacks along. You will need to reply – criticize, appreciate , suggest or do masti but JUST DO IT..

I will make sure that the topic I choose will be relevant to the readers and thoughtful. At the end of the day , we must all feel satisfied after a session of thoughtful blogging.

I will begin soon . Soon after you begin.

Awaiting

Chirag

PS : Look, I have done it. This has taken a year of “intense preparation & research”. Lets see how this gets going.