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Travel Redefined

I travel to Bangalore fairly often. The journey has almost never been comfortable. My trips were far too unplanned for me to be able to procure train tickets and so I usually ended up taking the bus. Each experience was unique. I got stuck in the rain, the bus was often late, the driver would never tell me when we were expected to reach, I was "upgraded" to a different bus because the one I booked was cancelled, and so on. On one occasion, I decided to prioritize comfort over economy and booked Olivea Travels, the very definition of wanton expenditure (and therefore, luxury) because it costs half as much as flying even though it takes nine times as long. The bus was five hours late. Incidentally, Olivea Travels' tagline is "travel redefined" - quite fitting; I swore off buses thereafter. 

On my next trip I decided to fly - an equally eventful experience because my 35 minute flight was delayed by 45 minutes and the landing was truly memorable. I returned by car, got caught in traffic and missed work. I was quite delighted. 

Having tried every mode of transport other than trains, I decided that the time had arrived and I booked my tickets well in advance. I took Shatabdi and I loved it - it was like a plane except that the scenery outside keeps changing, you can keep your phone switched on and you don't get a faceful of whatever you're eating when the person in front of you reclines their seat. 

It was on that ridiculously comfortable journey that I realised the many ways in which even those who claim to love travelling numb their senses to the journey by reading a book or listening to music. On earlier occasions, I did everything possible to escape the sensation of travel altogether by forcing myself to sleep on the bus or read until the battery died out. In essence, these are attempts to modify the experience of travelling into something else. It is a refusal to acknowledge that waiting is as much a part of travelling as anything else. 

I felt a very strong urge to write all this down at the time but I became entangled in the question of whether recording an experience at that point would diminish its intensity and amount to a modification. Also, I took a different train on my way back, which was an hour late, and I was able to remember just how much I hate waiting, irrespective of its role in the overall experience. 

Sharing is Caring

I believe a commentary on the public transport system in my new hometown is overdue. I miss the metro. Even the weird uncles who would repeat, "Metro sahi hai" to anyone who looked in their general direction. The buses here are no better than the buses anywhere else in India. But I must admit that the bus conductors here do have a better sense of irony than those in Delhi, who yell, "Andar ho jaao" to passengers who can't even find any space for their hands - in their desperation they put them in other people's pockets. Local trains are just larger versions of buses without the convenience of dropping you close enough to your destination, thereby ensuring that you to turn up for work looking far from presentable. 

Autowallahs here are so awful that I feel like I should start praying for the good health and longevity of the autowallahs in Delhi. On the bright side, autowallahs here don't discriminate. It doesn't matter if you're a local or an outsider; if you take an auto, you will be fleeced. It often costs more to take an auto than a cab. In exchange for the cost advantage, cabs are delightfully unreliable and cab companies are yet to figure out call wait. 

That leaves share autos. Travelling in a share auto is a lot like life. You keep waiting for an auto that will "be right" for you: not too crowded and headed towards the place you want to reach. But when you start feeling like time isn't on your side anymore, you take what you get. You struggle to get your foot in the door. You fight for your space. You let people step on your toes and put up with much discomfort because you have to reach your destination somehow. And as soon as you get comfortable, it's time to get off.

The level of ingenuity and dexterity displayed by most of the people on the road makes driving the sole preserve of those with infinite patience and wisdom. There are two activities that can seriously compromise your psychological health: dealing with bureaucracy and driving. I foolishly undertook both roughly around the same time. As a result, I have become  ridiculously foul-mouthed, at times surpassing my own knowledge of my proficiency in the area. 

Experience has taught me that in order to feel that warm afterglow after you swear, that feeling of being in perfect harmony with the universe, you have to swear in Hindi. Our national language is brilliant, for no other language could permit you to be so concise and still curse in such detail. 

iNegotiate

I've spent a good part of my life negotiating with authority figures about how late I can return home. I belong to a certain social sect that thinks monsters and werewolves slink about the streets at night. The first time I did stay out late at night, I was quite disappointed by the conspicuous absence of vampires. 

Suppose the curfew-setters believe that the risk of something untoward happening at night is normally distributed, then after 9 PM, we can say that the probability of being a victim of crime increases steadily, reaching its peak at 1 AM. But even the criminals need to go home and get some sleep to be fresh and alert for the next day, so after 1 AM, the probability of crime reduces, returning to pre-9 PM levels at 5 AM. So parents shouldn't tell their kids to "return home by 12 or not return home at all." They should tell them to return home before midnight or after 3 AM, thereby avoiding travel during the peak crime hours. 

But behaviour usually doesn't follow this logic, so I'm forced to assume that the normal distribution idea doesn't appeal to most parents. In fact, considering how their impatience escalates with time, I surmise that they probably think that risk is uniformly distributed over the 9 PM to 6 AM interval. As time goes by, the total area under the curve increases and that explains their panic. Worry not. I have the perfect negotiation strategy. At all events, it is unlikely that the distribution of the probability of crime at night is a discrete distribution, because that would suggest that a crime can only be committed at specific points in time. A continuous distribution is far more plausible. However, in a continuous distribution, only intervals have positive probability. The probability of crime at any given point of time will be zero. Explain to your parents that while you understand that there is some risk spread over the time interval in question, if they think of your safety at a specific point in time, their fears are inconsistent with their beliefs. 

Let's assume that doesn't work either. As a final resort, I recommend negotiating for spending the night at a friend's place instead of coming home late. You don't actually have to spend the night at anyone's place. You push your friends to party till the wee hours of the morning and return home like a good kid just as the lamps are being lit and the prayers recited. Your parents will love your devotion to family life and your friends will think you are a party animal of sorts. If that isn't a win-win, I don't know what is. 

Ageing Gracefully and Other Lies

I am absolutely terrified of getting old. Not the lines, wrinkles and knee replacement fears, no. I’m afraid of turning into one of those people who are so not fun that you just can’t accept the fact that they were once kids. You take one look at them and it’s implausible. “Nooo! That guy? Why, he must have worn a well-tailored suit and a frown ever since he was a baby!” Horrifying, isn’t it?

Age figures quite prominently in pop culture. There are numerous hilarious references to ageing and old people.  And that’s just as well. Pop culture is, after all, a youth thing.

So do “I hope I die before I get old?” Well, I don’t really hope to die. I know I will someday, but I think we can all agree that it’s not something that most of us really look forward to. That said, I must admit that dying young has its perks. You never have to worry about ageing gracefully, whatever that is. You remain forever youthful in everyone’s memory because nobody has ever seen you any other way. You don’t get to the point where you have to eat your words because you don’t live long enough to be brought to account for your verbal diarrhea. And you get to leave the world having severely pissed off your insurers and bankers. That’s got to feel good.

How about Benjamin Button? Get old age over with as soon as you’re born? That arrangement makes dying early really suck. Besides, I’d hate to have to worry about my dentures and cataract when I should be a curious toddler excited about the world. Not taking that deal ever.

That leaves Dorian Gray: staying young forever. I would’ve said Peter Pan but the boy could never get a drink. Most of us fancy being Dorian Gray. Botox takes us halfway there. But I’m not impressed. I don’t think we stop doing foolish things until we realise how foolish we look doing them.

I think Biology has got it about right. 

Acceptance

I've been telling myself that I'll update my blog for a while now. Evidently, I never got around to it. Until today. Today is the first day in a long time that I didn't have to fight my impulse to create a hectic plan to make the most of my weekend, mope about the fact that getting a job has made me a lot less interesting (and politically incorrect, thereby rendering most of the material I write unsuitable for such a public forum) or worry about how old I’ve become. Today is a day of epiphanies. It's a day of acceptance.

My age has finally caught up with me. I've decided that it's best to accept that. They say age is just a number. But so are all other numbers so it’s not particularly comforting.

I’ve accepted the fact that my memory is awful. I’ve been clinging to an illusion of good recollection based on a lousy internet connection that makes me type everything over so many times that I can't help but remember it. 

I've accepted the fact that my dreams are no longer as fun to recall as they once were because my sub-conscious mind is not as creative in its use of new imagery and abstraction as it once used to be. 

I've accepted the fact that inspiration will never strike when I want it to. I can only write when I have no point to make and my thoughts are only interesting when they fulfill no purpose, as they once used to be when I was truly jobless. I formally recognise joblessness as a virtue. Even the most casual youtuber will concur.

I've accepted that, all its idiocy notwithstanding, TV is an inspiration because of the sheer volume of writing material one could generate while staring idly at it. If I were to run a firm (to the ground), I'd put TVs in each cubicle instead of computers. Instead of ads, I'd slip in compulsory reading material. The employees’ brains would be so soupy by the time they've gone through two hours of programming that they wouldn't know enough to unglue their eyes from the screen. 

And lastly, most importantly, I've accepted that French toast is the only breakfast in the world that can reliably guarantee a good day.

Sick (on) Saturday

I know I hailed "casual Saturdays" as a day to... well, wear jeans. But I'm against the practice now. I strongly believe that the only acceptable garment for Saturdays is pyjamas and the only valid reason for asking you to turn up at work on a Saturday is if your firm is showing cartoons on a giant screen and offering you a non-stop supply of milk and cookies all day. 

I don't really believe in doing anything that may seem useful on Saturdays. I never bothered showing up in school or college on Saturdays if I was required to. I would hate to betray my own belief system, and so I'm trying to model the likelihood of falling sick each month so that I can use the rest of the sick leaves on Saturdays. On the non-academic side, I will probably need to learn to exercise some restraint to hide my boundless joy and triumph on Friday evenings right before I "fall sick." 

Last Saturday had the office looking more uniform than they do when they are conforming to some dress code. Almost everyone wore black T-shirts with blue jeans. One guy even wore the same T-shirt as I did in a slightly different colour, thereby making the gender divide meaningless too. The inference from all this is that there's really no need for standardisation. We all follow self-imposed dress codes and uniformity is assured by the retailers. Or perhaps my firm's HR department is exceedingly good at assessing the compatibility of new recruits - we even have the same taste in clothes.