There is too much going on in my mind. Sometimes there is so much to think about, I start thinking about the fact that I am thinking. It’s happening right now. I don’t know if this qualifies me as a weirdo, but my mind can wander from the cow sitting on the road to naked children playing with broken tires. As I pen these thoughts down, my mind races to the Landmark bookstore where I see books by young Indian writers, hoping to make it big like Chetan Bhagat. The other time I went to Landmark, I wished that it was a giant library instead where I could read old books and be surrounded by a frothy silence that tastes of learning and solitude. Oh wait, I have to think about the housing situation back in school. Really, I almost missed that deadline. My mind needs some loose shackles; something to keep it from wandering too far away. I wonder what heavy chains smell like. Too many thoughts make my head dizzy sometimes. That means a lot of dizziness. Sometimes I wonder if thinking about dizziness can make you feel dizzy. I guess it would be the same logic as saying thinking about headaches gives you one. Maybe a hypochondriac could explain better. Or maybe he’d think talking would make a malaria mosquito jump into his mouth and spell his doom. Today’s Hindi newspaper informed that the situation in Kashmir would cause India to meet her doom very soon. The next page was about the ‘party circuit hitting it up in town’. Is it ethically correct to ‘party it up’ when our nation faces imminent doom? I wonder if the ‘fashionistas’ ever give it a thought. If you give it serious thought, the money spent on one Christian Dior bag could probably feed at least fifteen families for three months. If only every Indian fashionista thought about this before splurging. Its easy to think that those tucked deep within plush velvet and mahogany chambers are duty bound to feed those lesser than themselves. I think if the middle class as well as the rich did their bit, we could stop all the angry growlings of India’s hungry stomachs. Rummaging in last year’s section of my memory, I dig up the image I saw in my dermatologist’s clinic. It was advising a tummy tuck. Patting my stomach, recently stuffed with noodles and AppyFizz, I don’t think I need it. Tummy tucks are probably expensive. Being completely unaware of the way the whole cutting and pasting job is done, I would like to think that they sedate the patient, or ‘tummy conscious’, before poking a knife through their digestive organs. I saw a movie that was based on the illegal organ trade that was ravaging Indian hospitals some time back. Maybe it still is. The newspapers are too busy with Kashmir and the Fashionistas. Salman Khan recently said it wasn’t cool if people only stood up for the Taj hotel bombing and didn’t bother enough about the other blasts. I think he’s right in some way. Unfortunately, his shirt tearing and pelvic thrusting have earned him little credibility with the general population. Only young Indian men want to be like him. It’s cool to ride mean bikes, wear body hugging shirts and jeans, rip shirts off in public and be like him. I don’t think I dislike him. No, not all. It’s the men who want to emulate him that annoy me. Thinking about Indian men, those adorning our already dirty streets, makes me pretty furious. For one they desire to humiliate girls by singing songs, then they want to follow girls again to trouble them, then they want to whistle at them to achieve the same purpose. So, I guess, the desire is one. However the methods of achieving that are varied and cheap in different levels. I wonder if wearing inexpensive clothes, qualifies as cheap. The meaning of the word varies. The tone with which it is used can tell what is being indicated. Maybe. We are an equivocal people. Politicians freely abuse the use of ambguity in the parliament or show their expertise in using it in front of cameras when asked trivial questions about education and hunger. I am getting back to problems of the Indian society. Are my thoughts coming full circle? A circle has no beginning or end so maybe my thoughts fall in the same category. the only problem with this prolific thinking is the distraction. Sitting here in the hot and dirty third world, I think about the cool limes of New England. While in New England, ambivalent thoughts about my duty to India occupy my mental recesses. The food is especially tempting when I’m 12 hours behind. The chicken biryani and kebabs make my mouth water. Just like my dog here, who’s sitting and staring at the cupboard that houses his favorite chewy bone. I wonder what the bone tastes like. He chews on it so voraciously, you would think his life depended on it. I can hear the sound of plates clattering on the dinning table.
Ahh, good old Indian food. I guess its the one thing that can stop my mind from running wild. I think I should go down before all the kebabs disappear.
