nowhere to go

I don't think I know my India any more
And that hurts

there are things which came into being after I left,
and now it takes a while for me to make sense of things...
And that hurts

It's like something you owned, and it owned you.
something you identified yourself with.
now it seems to be moving on, leaving you behind.
And that hurts

with time, they say, things are forgotten.
But I am not a thing!
When with every morning light, I open 'The Hindu' and call home
Home is still somewhere in India, but I seem to be losing my place
And that hurts.

Over the past years, as I came far away,
got stuck in the puzzles of life, struggle everyday,
In the struggle to grow with time, both of us seem to be too busy to catch up
And that hurts.

New roads have come about. New cell phone companies.
Nokia is no longer the leader, and new ways to make money
I feel like a stranger, looking at a foreign land... once my home.
I don't seem to belong to anywhere anymore.
And that hurts.

Discussing Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati over dinner on weekends
and playing Antakshari every 'potluck',
going to pooja every 'Thanksgiving',
it seems we are somewhere stuck
By the time we force our way out,
there would be nowhere to go
And that hurts.

The rise of Indian entrepreneurship: An outsider's perspective

Well to begin with, I do not want to be an outsider on this for long. But be that as it may, I am not involved and hence the topic...

I am excited to see that the bumbling energy in India about entrepreneurship is shining bright.  Bright enough to be visible to me sitting in the US. I think if there has to be a healthy way of life in India, it has to come from the society and not the government. Especially when people are so cynical about what the government does. Anyways its beyond the competence of a few minds to think up the growth strategy for the entire country! Lets the collective wisdom do the evolution of thought. The government should just sit back and create an environment where the society is able to do that.

What makes me this excited is that I can see this simple process in action now:

1. Common people, with all the humility in the word common, face issues in their daily lives.
2. Common people hence know what problems irk them more
3. Common people think of solutions 
4. Common people come up with enterprises to solve the issue
5. Other common people consume the service and compensate the service/good provider

And hence the circle of an issue and its solution was completed, with no visible sign of a government intervention. No matter how big/small the issue is, someone might want to earn a living out of fixing a problem. A win-win, where someone gets to earn money while reducing one issue in the society and everyone moves ahead!

I have begun to see an entrepreneurship fervor in India, which I see here in the US. Anyone who wants to open a startup/enteprise can work hard and open one! and thats a biig change from the erstwhile India. what is more exciting is the nature of startups. Many of these are about things which at best can be thought of as unusual, at least for India...

Here are 3 such startups I think are interesting. This list is in no way complete or exhaustive.

1. http://www.tulliho.com : This is an awesome idea for people who wanna get Tulli! (drunk) a yelp-esque website catering to people in Indian cities, helping them find good bars and pubs.
2. http://saleraja.com : Another site catering to the shopping needs of people, where you can get to know about sales going on in different places. 
3. http://www.babyoye.com : this site helps you buy stuff for your new kids. Sort of reinventing the buying experience with the web
4. http://windchimes.co.in : A social media company for Indian companies to use socail media advertising

None of these companies are using the 'outsourcing' model. Its democracy at its best: for the people by the people. They are interesting because what they offer would have been laughed at some years ago. I can just imagine friends, parent just yelling 'are you out of your mind' etc etc..

I guess not anymore :)

puraani photos

कुछ तो बात है इन पुरानी photos में
की दिल में कहीं एक चोट कर जाती हैं 
किसी गुज़रे हुए ज़माने की कोई बात याद दिला जाती हैं

वक़्त के हाथों जब उनका रंग फीका पड़ जाता है
तो वक़्त के ही बुने हुए sweater में अपने आप सी जाती हैं

कैसा था वो पल जो हमने इस फोटो में कैद कर लिया
एक हसीन वाकया जिसको हमने इतने सालो बाद फिर से जी लिया

गौर से देखें तो सिलवटें भी दिखेंगी उस फोटो पर
जो उसे संभाल के रखने के बाद भी उसपर पड़ गयीं
शायद तबसे आज तक की जी हुई ज़िन्दगी की दूरियां भी उसी तरह बढ़ गयीं

खैर, चलो एक बार औए कोई याद तो संजोये
और कल शायद उसो भी देख के मिल कर हसें, मिल कर रोयें...

Simple pleasures of life

Just remembered this small thing. It's not everyday that you get to notice your kid brother grow up, he just does! and when you look back at pictures from 10 years ago, you realise you have come a long way...

When we both were kids (I am 5 years elder to my brother), I used to tell bedtime stories to my brother up until when my brother came into 5th grade. Funny stories, filled with jokes which I knew my brother found funny. For many years, night after night, I will tell him stories of Hari or Raju or Nainsukh and their daily lives.. The stories weren't necessarily stories but a string of slapstick jokes woven together. And by brother would every time burst out laughing on silly slapstick jokes with people slipping over spilled milk or trash on the road,  random bicycle accidents and of rats fighting and what not. This went on for years and I really didn't have to change much content. Just a new name and a new way of narrating a slapstick story...
and my brother would gradually slip into sleep happily...

Until one day when I was telling him about how Haria fell on the road while riding his cycle over a banana peel, my brother didn't laugh. Instead he noted, "Dada your sense of humor is very crass". I paused for a second to take in what had just happened. All of a sudden my kid brother seemed to have grown. Grown out of the age he had forever been in, and grown into the next stage of life. I frantically tried to make up a new story line with new humor style, but he didn't laugh. I tried again with something else, but he still didn't find that funny enough. After a few tries he got bored and went to sleep.

And I lay in my bed realizing that I had just noticed a very simple, yet very profound thing. Things change. People change. Even your kid brother. And my brother was taking his next steps in this world. And with a smile on my face, I fell asleep... Happily..

Bye bye my ancestral house...

Yes. the house in which my I, my brother, my cousins, my uncles, my father grew up is going to go. The house in which I think (I am not sure) my great grand father moved in, and my grandfather lived his complete life, with his brothers, who later branched out into a similar house somewhere else in Lucknow. The house will be demolished, a new development will come about. A new cycle of great grand fathers, grand fathers, brothers, sisters will start. Life will come a full circle...

The Lalbagh house as we call it, has been around since 1859. University of Illinois, where I work, was established in 1867. So much has happened in Lalbagh that

Its going to be difficult to shift. It's 60+ years of stuff that needs to be sorted. Stuff we had forgotten existed. stuff which we lived around, but had grown out of. The small bed which was my favorite as a child, has been lying broken now for years with no energy and urgency in anyone to fix it. Then there are calenders for the past 60 years which we stumbled upon. not at one place, but sorta everywhere... one was in the grain room, some others were in the poultry room, etc etc. Oh we found an album too! from waay back when I was born.. it had gone missing so long ago that I forgot it existed. I don't even know if I should categorize that as new memories or really old ones.

 The guava trees, in the front verandah would have to be cut, and places where we rode our tricycles would be all a part of our memories only...

I have had all emotions in Lalbagh. Love, hate, rage, excitement, sadness, cluelessness, laziness. The excitement at the prospect of samosa jalebi in the morning. the fun of running from one corner of the house to the other and panting heavily in the process. You can get actually forget the world once you are in Lalbagh. I have spent many days just watching TV. all day...

 This is the view of the terrace from the inner courtyard. I always found this view particularly spooky in the night. as you can see in the picture on the right.

It's sort of humbling to see the circle of life on your own. Something which was a little bigger than all of us in the family will be gone. To pave way for new. Funny, but I feel maybe this is the best parting gift Lalbagh could give me.

the passage I have always been 

scared of

the passage to the terrace

 

the ceiling of the living hall..