Growing up is funny business

Growing up is funny business. For example the whole idea of wearing ties to work is a funny thing, it is laughable to even think that we need even more ties at and to work. The work to-do list has even replaced the singing in the shower. But what is even funnier is the sight of kids playing cricket in a small open area and our hope that they will maybe hit the ball towards you today, so you can throw it back and feel like that you are also a part of their game. Like you are not playing enough games as it is. One game at work, blaming your co-workers in office in front of the boss so that ask for a better rating and appreciating the same people to their face so that you can ask for favours. The game of drinking enough coffee to stay awake through the day and enough whisky to stay asleep through the night. The impossible game of saving enough money to keep the parents happy and spending enough to keep the wife and kids happy. At this time we must remind ourselves that we are not boys anymore.

There is maybe one thing equally droll, which is browsing an electronics shop or shopping website looking for ACs and toasters when an offer on some good speakers catches your eye and you train of thought goes towards all the things your younger self wanted to buy like 350 CC bikes, iPods, gaming consoles and bean bags. It almost feels like they are desires from other life. Because this life has FDs and real estate to take all your savings, and then some more. Who the hell would actually want a guitar? And where is the time and solitude to listen to the songs you wanted to listen anyways, right? It is hilarious why we even wished those things, equally hilarious that tug on the heart still when we think of those things. Quickly now before it gets any worse - we are not boys anymore.

There are other desires as well, most of them half forgotten, fully planned and never realized. All of them are so ridiculous that they border on the farcical. Desires of bike trips, treks in Leh and going to New Zealand for bungee jumping. Side-splitting to think of all these things now, when even meeting friends for a dinner requires juggling work timings, location in the city near to everyone, deciding on which restaurant to go to, promises made to wife etc etc. Promises made to selves have been forgotten long ago though, promises that I will never ask my parents for money anymore, promise to be able to buy the clothes that you really wanted to buy, promise that we will always keep in touch with our friends, promise that one day I will spend an entire week in Goa and do whatever the fuck I wanted. But then we are not boys anymore.

Now when I think of Goa I can think of one thing even more hysterical than the last one; that is planning vacations. The thing that is supposed to make you relaxed is so stressful that I am surprised that all travel portals do not sell medication to lower blood pressure along with their usual stuff. First you have to decide a place where you and your wife want to go, then think of whether your kids will have something to do there, then whether anybody would want to go with you will the dates suit them, whether you will be able to convince your boss to grant you leaves for the vacation, whether the hotel will be good but not too expensive, are you buying the tickets for the right dates and so on and so forth. Then most of us will anyway sleep through it, apart from the time that you are on call with office people or fretting how much over budget this trip is getting on and lastly; an occasional throwback to the time where vacations were a bunch of impromptu plans, fifteen friends coming together on a whim, five minutes of packing, cheap booze and cheap hotel, a night full of antics and hilarious stories. But who would those kind of vacations now, right? I mean we are not boys anymore.

Equally amusing is the constant struggle of us aged people to try to look older and fretting about how we are looking older. We start growing moustaches and beards so as to look older, wardrobe starts seeing addition of only greys, blacks and pastels. Then there are the replacements of bikes with cars, dress watches with sports, polos with round necks and so on. That carefully rehearsed list of hobbies such as reading business magazines, watching Oscar winning movies and taking trips to culturally significant places. Even though we prefer reading Buzzfeed over Business India, David Dhawan over David Lynch and watching Big Boss over visiting Bodh Gaya.  All that is done on the passive mode. Actively we search of white hairs to be clipped from head and beards. Look for gym memberships and affairs with 20 something women. We can’t help chuckling when we think about when once age was a number we had to only calculate while filling in entrance examination forms. But we can’t afford that now, we are not boys anymore.

But the thing which is the most crazy, comical and capricious about this whole thing is the thinking of the reason we even did grow up in the first place. From the point of wanting to get away from home and be free to the point where the thought that you can’t call your dad to fix everything keeps you awake on some nights. The dream of having your own car, your own house is just that, a dream. The house will never will be yours, not at least for another 25 years, and the car is not your getaway machine, it is another thing that require money, maintenance and a constant struggle to keep up with Joneses. Or that odd realization in a lonely hotel room that why you were keeping score of how much you got you forgot to realize that what you actually wanted was something else. The whole thought that the world forced you to grow up and moulded into the thing that you made fun of as a boy is so funny that it hurts while laughing. Or the dawning of the fact that getting older consists not of Hugo Boss suits and mansions but EMIs, long commutes, tuition fees and regret of roads not taken. It is a ‘Killing Joke’. With the infusion of such hilarity in our life I am sure we all ecstatic that we are not boys anymore, right guys?

Guys?

Anyone?

Grow Up

 

Grow up. Wear formals. Act formal. Be afraid to make a fool of yourself. Cry in bathrooms. Comb your hair. Get a wig if you don’t have them. Don’t dance in weddings. Leave that to the kids. Work even late on your birthday. To make sure nobody suspects it. Don’t eat your cake. Try to just have it. Wear spects to look older. Shave every day. Don’t join the cricket game. Smile for the sidelines. Hope the kids hit the ball towards you. So you can at least throw it back. Don’t take personal calls in office. Say no to reunions to attend meetings. Don’t drink too much. Reprimand others who do. We are not boys anymore.

 

Give up on that cruiser bike. Get a FD for that money instead. Think of your bank balance every 6 seconds. Go for cheap furniture stores on your weekends. Download MoneyControl app on your phone. Delete Hitman: Sniper to make space for it. Don’t leave home without a plan. Check your hotel has a business center before booking. Pool is secondary. Try to learn Golf even if it bores you. Get a polo shirt. Good speakers are a useless expense. Invest that money into gold. Laugh at boys trying to skateboard. Secretly wish you had tried it too. Curse and shout at youngsters who overtake you. Try to get a look at the bike model quickly too. Cancel your subscription for AutoIndia. Get a Business Today instead. Skip the cartoon section in the newspaper. We are not boys anymore.

 

Abandon the idea for a Leh trip with your friends. Suggest a resort near your city instead. Grow a French beard to look older. Count the number of grey hairs in the mirror every day. Getting a tattoo is a stupid idea. Or at least keep telling yourself that. Get the ice cream flavor with discount on. Get the good liquor out only when you have guests.  Don’t call your mom when you are sick. Don’t run on the grass. Go to a gym instead. Don’t show anyone that you can cartwheel. Lament the world that is forcing you to grow up. Push the thought of your head to rehearse how you are going to bargain with the property dealer. See the reviews before going to movie and not the star cast. Leave early from the party to maintain your sleep cycle. Scowl at 20 somethings wasting their time. Convince yourself that playing cricket over the weekend was a bad idea. Doesn’t matter how fun it was. Dismiss Valentine ’s Day as a marketing gimmick. Ignore you spent your entire teenage wanting to have someone fir it.Imagine yourself with a trendy haircut. Then try to laugh it off. We are not boys anymore.

 

Crib about not getting the promotion. Day dream about being a pilot though. Pass by the PS4 even though you finally have the money to buy it. Look at it and want it anyways. Stay indoors on Sunday. Sleep on vacations. . Scoff at Snapchatters. Wonder how to use it when you are alone at home. Look at the new Gizmo section in airplane magazines. Try to push it out by fretting will you find a bus home at this time. Get bitter at the world that is forcing you to grow up on long flights. Get bitter at the group of friends travelling with you them. Convince yourself that they are wasting their father’s money. Know probably your college group is never going to meet in Goa. Think about getting a new credit card to finance it anyways. Scold yourself to jolt yourself back to reality. Reality that consists of EMIs, kid’s tuition fees, long commutes and roads not taken. Resign yourself to it. Try to Grow up and remind yourself that we are not boys anymore.

 

Fuck Pakistan (and its good, sweet people)

 

Yes yes I know their soldiers are trying to kill ours, their entire nuclear arsenal is made to annihilate us, they send insurgents to spread terrorism and their fast bowlers have been fucking our batsmen for a longer time than I want to admit.

But try as they may, in the golden words of Ramsay Bolton “You can’t kill me, I am a part of you now”.

And the funny thing is ……..that outside India and Pakistan we are not even trying to kill each other, we are actually one. One army friend of mine said that even the Indian and Pakistani army officers get along well while at UN Peacekeeping missions.

I remember eating in a restaurant named Kathmandu in Paris, which served Indian food, which was run by Pakistanis. I heard them speaking in Punjabi, so when the guy came to serve I asked where is he from, he said Islamabad. I asked if they speak Punjabi in Islamabad, he said Punjabi and Urdu are both spoken in Islamabad. He finally gave us 10% discount and refused to take the tip I left. He said “Arey aap aur main to ek hee jagah ke hai”. Indeed.

There is another Pakistani guy near where I stay in Madrid, he is extra warm towards me and my Indian colleagues from office. The last  timeI went to eat at his restaurant he first refused to take money and when we forced him he gave us a discount and then gave three cans of coke free on top of that. He works in a shop run by a Bangladeshi. I would have thought that he would like him more than us because they are both Muslims but he doesn’t, in fact he complains about the Bangladeshi guy ruining his Hindi. .

We are part of them too and they are a part of us. I remember my friend saying “Saggy (another friend of us) ke to Lahore lage hai abhi”. Lahore lagna = having a jolly good time. “Lahore na dekha to kya dekha” is another Punjabi saying that he quoted. They are some more of those in Punjabi. They (Pakistanis) also watch all the Bollywood movies and follow our movie stars and we should (reluctantly) agree their Coke Studio is better than ours. There is so much overlap that if you take out the religion factor there is very little to distinguish us from them.

So I wonder where the blood lust comes from, the will to take lives and kill each other. We eat the same food, we like the same things, we nearly speak the same language, we were enslaved colonized by the same people, we look the same and we both swear by cricket. The Pakistanis I met in the Paris restaurant asked where am I from, having no good answer I said Bangalore (I just randomly say whatever I feel like whenever I am asked this, see this post), when the guy brought me food he said, “arey Kumble aur Dravid wahin se hai na”. I nodded yes without saying what I was thinking. That we , me, Dravind and Kumble actually don’t speak the same language or eat the same food or even look too much alike, in fact I am closer to you than I am to them. Thus, for a second I felt a strange kinship to him. But for a second only, then all the scenes of them invading our country filled my head. So Fuck Pakistan, it’s good, sweet people and everyone who made us and them do that shit to each other.

Why can’t we all make Peshawari Naan and not war?

 P.S - By the way the photo I uploaded is a Indian restaurant in Segovia run by a Pakistani which is named "La Juderia" which means the 'The Jew'.

2019 Update - Another anecdote or rather another meeting with a Pakistani guy. My wife were roaming around in Valencia late at night and we stumbled upon a pizza restaurant owned by a Pakistani, not that we love Pakistani pizza but I like pizza and that was the only place open at that point of time. It is usual in Spain that only the Chinese and Indian/Pakistani people keep their restaurants open till late in the night and on a Sunday.


We got to talking how he moved here with his brother and his sister has moved to London and another brother is in Netherlands (basically his whole family has moved out of Pakistan). We chatted for a while and made fun of Spanish people that how they don't know any English (he added that 'Aap logo kee , that is Indians, Angrezi to Mashallah bahut hee acchi hai) and they cannot eat spicy food. When I was leaving he put extra chilli flakes for us and said they he made a separate sauce for us which is spicier and asked us not to worry he washed everything before making our Margarita Pizza since I said my wife is vegetarian. I had a difficult time imagining why should I feel like we should bomb that guy's country out of existence.


I don't know what is the solution, if there is solution and I think that there is no one who knows for sure. So in the end I will leave you with a quote from the A song of Ice and Fire book series (yes the Game of Thrones ones) said by Prince Doran Martell - "It is an easy thing for the Prince to call the spears, but in the end, the children pay the price."

Life for rent

 

Have you watched Outlander? I haven’t, except for the first episode, and one scene of it stays with me. The one where Claire, the protagonist, sees a vase and has a sort of existential crisis. For that moment I felt exactly like her, she saw a vase and said this “Like the moment I realized I'd never owned a vase.
That I'd never lived any place long enough to justify having such a simple thing”.

I have no show pieces that I own, nothing that that isn’t purely functional, except maybe a few fridge magnets and gifts that I have received over the years and I carry along. I have no home so to speak of, just houses that I rent for a while. And probably no concept of one either, my parents stay abroad in a rented house, the house that they own is rented out to someone else. Also I have been staying away from them for 14 years now, cannot even call their home as mine. So where is my home?

I have lived in six different cities in the past six years. Moving everywhere permanently and staying everywhere temporarily. I gain things and friends wherever I stay and lose some of them every time I move. I attach myself to every city I move wholeheartedly, always knowing that I have to move soon. It fuels both my nihilism and hedonism every time I think about it. Nothing is of consequence because nothing is of permanence, I can make friends or be hated by my neighbors, I can buy a nice house or rent a shoddy one , buy comfortable chairs and a vase or sit on the floor; all of this does not matter because I am going to be moving soon anyways. But on the other hand it also tells me to go the extra mile to agree with people, to really try to live like a local, to see the city and try to understand it and its people, to try to grow roots; because there is nowhere else to go, no home to return to, no normal situation that I expect to come back, this is life, and right now is the only time to enjoy it.

There is perhaps no word for this feeling that I have, at least none in English or Hindi, there is one in Portuguese though – Saudade. Saudade is a sense of melancholic longing of someone or something that you liked too much and you lost, the understanding that the thing lost is permanent in suppressed but also known. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. So it is sad and happy feeling at the same time, it really is hard to describe and understand except for the people who have felt this.

Every time that someone asks me where I am from, I give a different answer, depending on what I think would be easier to explain, to people here in Spain I say I am from Bangalore because that is where took the flight to Spain from. To people in Bangalore I said I am from Jodhpur because that is where I went when I was getting married, to people in Delhi I said I am from Kota because that is where I used to go on college breaks. The people that I meet while travelling here in Europe I say I am from Madrid.  I can’t speak Spanish, Kannada, Hadoti or Marwari good enough to pass for a local in any of these places though. Every city that I go to, I am an outsider. A ship without a port, so to speak. A lot of people ask me where do I want to settle down, or they ask me don’t you want to move closer to home? And I have to reply every time, where is home? My parents don’t stay in Jodhpur anyways, Kota is a place I wouldn’t want to settle down, Bangalore is going to the dogs and Madrid is too foreign to even consider. Why would anyone want to go to the city they were born in? They just happened to be born there, there is nothing magical about it, no reason to even care. Many kids are born in airplanes, ships, military camps and soon to be abandoned mining towns. They would have turned out to be ok, right? Except that everybody wants to go home. Home is where the heart is, or so they say, so perhaps you have no heart if you do not have a home.

Of course it is not all bad, I like Samosa, Kabooli, Masala Dosa and Spanish Omelette equally and can ask you to fuck off in five languages, I have houses in so many cities where I can turn up and would be welcomed into. I have a better perspective on cultures and people than some scholars of anthropology. Unlike some people I know my life is not a constant struggle to get transferred to North India or Delhi or Jaipur or any of those places. And I do not have to spend loads of money on every Diwali to go home, I utilize that on Scotch and Seekh Kababs. There is no culture that I have to carry and uphold. No lamentation that this is good but it not like home. I know I have limited time everywhere so I try to do things today rather than later on. There is nothing so emancipating like this feeling in life, except maybe very high number of Jager Bombs.

There are others like me, I see them transiting through places and life. You learn their names, say a few kind words and then prepare for a goodbye. People who are of nowhere, like the Wandering Jew cursed to wander the Earth till the second coming. People who always stay in rented houses, look for furnished houses, try to make friends with other outsiders, who struggle for coming up with address proofs and dread things that have to be posted to their permanent addresses. People who poke fun at the things that are in the city that they live and the cities that they have lived, with very less baggage, physical and emotional. Taking up prepaid phone connections, looking out for DTH boxes with less deposit and good taxi services instead of good cars. Enjoying both the city park picnics and legendary eating places. Searching for English speaking people and depending on Google maps. But the most I identify with something is the ocean, it is all one and connected everywhere but goes by so many different names and behaves so differently wherever it goes. It is Pacific somewhere and Indian someplace else, it is hot somewhere and frozen some other place, it is teeming with life at some places and also dead some other place.

It is both a boon and bane, living without a home, an anchor, belonging to nowhere, with no one to go back to and nobody holding you back. Of short visits and long promises. Enjoying the impermanence and dreading it at the same time. The life with rented houses, coolers, TVs, cars and beds. The life, itself and wholly or partly, for rent.

P.S - This is a video of Fado music from Portugal, a music which very deeply signifies Saudade

 

Curious incident with two boys at midday

There is a small park in front of the hostel that I'm staying in right now in Lisbon. I was killing time yesterday, waiting for it to be time to formally check in when...... 

Two boys, most probably brothers aged around 4 and 6 were playing football. Both were running for the football and in order to get to the ball first the older one pushed the younger one away, all the while both were running towards the ball. The younger and smaller boy fell, got hurt and started crying. The bigger one got the ball. 

The younger boy stayed on the ground, he had fell face first, but got his hands down first to break his fall. I felt really really bad for that small boy, I wanted to go pick him up, ask him to stop crying, to tell him that in life a thousand times more people will push you to get some metaphorical football first and you will fall on your face and be hurt. But be strong, don't cry. You have to man up, the world is a shitty place. You have to get up again and push that boy back. I was angry at his older brother, thinking how could he push his little brother like that, I was angry at the world for being unfair where big kids push little kids, I was angry at all the people who ever pushed me, literally and figuratively. 

But there was another voice in my head, that is still to console that young boy, but to tell him that it is ok to cry. Bad things will happen in life and it is ok to cry sometimes, you don't have to be strong everytime, sometimes the football is not worth it. I wanted that boy to be protected from the world and never play football with bigger kids ever again. 

I pondered on both these choices for a second or two. I didn't rush to pick up that kid, I didn't know them and I didn't know if my talking to those kids will be ok or not. And I got my answer to the choices a second later. 

The bigger kid after seeing his younger brother crying ran back with the football, picked him up, dusted him off and gave him the football. The little kid still angry threw the ball away, his older brother got it back to him. And I realized the answer. You will fall down many a times while playing football, you'll get hurt and cry. That will happen, and that is ok. That's why you have your loved ones, your older brother, your parents, your sisters, your friends, your spouse, to pick you up and dust you off so that you can play ball again. 

So be out there, run for the football and if you get pushed and you fall, cry for a while, let your loved ones dust you off so that you can continue running for the ball. Don't be that guy who always ran for the ball and didn't care who he pushed and don't be that guy who's afraid of playing with the big kids, the best path is somewhere in the middle. 

When I started walking back towards the hostel as it was 1, I saw those two kids playing football and laughing again. The world was a alright place again 

The best representation of an Indian middle class family - Khosla Ka Ghosla

I assume that you all would have seen the Khosla ka Ghosla. If not, then do yourselves a favor and watch it. This along with 'Bheja Fry' started the trend of small budget, non-slapstick, colloquial comedies, with Bollywood then destroyed by churning out innumerable cheap copies very fast, the same way they destroy every genre.

But its merit as a movie is not the point I wanted to talk about here, but how it most accurately described the typical Indian middle class family. We (the assumed readers of this blog) are the 80s and 90s generation, much has been written about us but now we have been largely forgotten because the Millennials are now hogging all the ink, except for the occasional memes like “if you remember this you had an awesome childhood” which surface on Facebook every once in a while. But even less is and was written about our parent’s generation, the people who were born in late 50s or early 60s. The people born into free India, the people who saw one war lost and two won. They had the ‘cautious optimism’ the term that we often read about in the so-called financial market news. They saw the euphoria of independence and the idea of how we can be whatever we wanted to be of the 50s and also the economic stagnation and unemployment of the 70s. Back in their days having a telephone was a status symbol, a scooter had a one year waiting period and buying a house was something you saved for your entire life.

And buying a house is what the movie starts off with, rather buying a piece of land on which the house is supposed to be built upon. Anupam Kher’s character K. K. Khosla short for Kamal Kishore Khosla (referred as KKK from here on) put’s his life’s savings or his provident fund money, which was the working class’ life savings, into buying a house where his kids can have some space for themselves. This was the most typical thing of our parent’s generation, to save it all for the kids. Spending money on yourself was an absolute no no after you have kids, from the vacation destinations to menu for dinner was decided keeping in mind what the kids would like. While I am certainly thankful to them for what they did, but I really do wish that they spent some more time and money on themselves. Investing was a totally unheard of thing except in gold, the mandatory PF and the new mysterious thing called LIC which the neighboring Uncle’s brother claimed was a very good thing and should definitely be taken. As the movie progresses K. K. Khosla reminds me of my dad very often and so would he remind you of yours.

The scene where they discuss the new name for Cherry is the first one that pops up in my head, when KKK is watching news and his wife tells the kids to keep quiet. All dad’s news watching time was sacrosanct, more important than their prayer time, absolute silence had to be maintained, TV room had to be vacated and meals and other things were planned around news time so as to leave dad undisturbed and free when he watched the news. And watching the news was serious business; actually DD news was serious business with none of sensationalism and ridiculous headlines as of today, it was succinct, to the point, and wrapped in 30 odd minutes. Remember the days when movies on DD had a news break? That’s when I ran away to do my homework and stuff, mom got up to make dinner and dad sat there for the most important thing of the day.

Second scene that really nails the middle class family dynamic is the scene where KK Khosla tells his wife to tell Cherry to drop his plan to dupe Khurana. The indirect communication is the most typical of all middle class families where Mom was the go through, she was the one who was able to talk to both sides. My Dad did that every time he was angry or disagreed with what I was doing, actually he still does that. He tells my mom to tell me to do stuff, to not spend money on eating out a lot, to be not too late if I’m going out, to find out why I want to change my job etc. etc.  Even phone calls with Dads in all our families are the same, he goes on to ask the basic questions like “How are you, How is your job going. Do you need anything” and then mom takes over to ask the real questions. And the reverse is also true, whenever I wanted permission for something I went to my mom first and her answer was always ask your dad and my reply was that you ask dad that I want this. Then she would break it to my dad; that is if the request wasn’t too ridiculous to be directly rejected by her and then my dad would call me and say “You mom is saying that you want to…..” I never had the gall to ask my dad directly about wanting a new cycle or spending a night at my friend for studying or any of those things. Dads in that generation were I guess supposed to be tough and authoritarian and a bit distant, they were supposed to play with their kids and indulge them but never to molly coddle them or use baby talk or try to be their friend; that kind of stuff was left to moms. Because of strictly defined gender roles maybe.

Moms knew how to diffuse a situation and to play referee as well. They knew the subtext and reasons behind every argument, like women nearly always do and we man at most time have no clue. Dads of their generation pretty much never knew the likes and dislikes of their kids, they spent most of their time working and the remaining time worrying. Heck my dad still thinks I like Dairy Milk and my brother likes Aaloo Matar even though we only did that when we were five. This was outlined by the scene where KKK buys whiskey to bond with his sons and then gets shocked and embarrassed when Cherry says that he doesn’t drink. While this is certainly better than my Granddad’s generation, the brother of my grandfather had 9 kids and did not even know the ages of some of them, but this is still kind of bad to not know that your son is teetotaler or not. Perhaps our generations will do a little better in knowing their kids and the generation after that still a little better.

The whiskey scene is preceded by the scene where he goes out to buy the bottle, he is thoroughly embarrassed and hides the bottle while coming back. There is also a scene where one of Cherry’s girlfriend’s friend comes in smoking and she tells her to put it out. KK Khosla knows why the girl is in his house, she is there because they are trying to swindle Khurana for a lot of money, but while cheating and fraud can be tolerated by him, a girl smoking certainly cannot. Alcohol and Cigarettes were the biggest taboo of that generation, no matter how many songs Rajesh Khanna sang with a glass in his hand and how many smoke rings Helen blew, this was still taboo in homes. Buying booze was still shady business and drinking it had to be in secret, quickly and behind closed doors. My dad drank his tea outside in the porch on Sundays but his whisky was always only in his room or in the drawing room when he had company with curtains drawn. He did not even throw the booze bottles in the waste bin, not because he was very environmentally conscious, but he did not want everyone seeing that we had whiskey bottles in the trash and by inference in our home. We still have situations where two generations, that is him, my uncles etc. sit and drink in one room and we sit and drink in another, both fully knowing what is going on in the other room. Add a smoking girl in this mix and all hell will break loose.

And finally I want to talk the very first scene of the movie, which is the best and most tragi-comic. Comic because of the obvious jokes being made there and I will talk about talk about the tragic part after this. The first scene is his funeral, a dream sequence of course, this is not American Beauty or Sunset Boulevard. On his funeral one guy comes with a bill and his wife rejects it, saying “Ye nahi rahe to kuch bhi bill doge? Chinese calculator pe ek ek cheez ka hisaab rakhte the”. That in a nutshell was the finance policy of the Indian middle class household, penny wise and pound fool. They kept a check on the most miniscule of things like how much they spent on buying milk and which vendor has the cheapest vegetables but never on the bigger stuff, whether they can invest their money on anywhere else than PPF, was the home loan being offered really came with best interest rate, were they actually losing money on their old scooter. All my lives my parents spent too much time and effort on spending less, never on earning more; even talking about the way to earn more was the equivalent of being greedy. And interest rates, stocks, cost of ownership etc.? All those were left to Harshad Mehta and other Gujrati businessmen.

The last but the foremost, the tragedy that he thinks will happen when he dies is the greatest tragedy of the middle class, small dreams and small disappointments. KKK’s nightmare was that when he will die his daughter would be wearing a jeans, his son will be late in office, other son will be talking tall about a watch, wife would only be worried about how to cook for so many people and the cancelled trip to Bangladesh, neighboring boys will lech at his daughter and the newspaper boy will charge him extra. If that is worst fear when you die that you either had a very good life or a very mediocre or perhaps both. Which was the case of that generation, the dreams and nightmares were both small. Whenever Amitabh Bachchan tried to reach for the stars he was always humbled at the end of the movie, either by giving up his dream or being shot in the abdomen, only the bad men got rich very fast. Actually movies of a generation are a very good indicator of its aspirations, fears and rebellions. KKK’s generation prized mother over cars & bungalows, thought of running away with Bobby as a rebellion, even second cousins were family, getting a job deserved running with joy to your mom and saying “Maa ashirwad de maa, mujhe naukri mil gayi” and they believed that fate would unite everyone by the climax. The next generation does not believe in fate, it believes that if you want to correct Khurana’s wrong then you have to do it yourself, by hook or by crook.