The four things that have disappointed me the most in my life

 

I checked my blog today (for no reason) and saw that I haven’t written anything for over a year, so to get started I wanted to begin with something light. And there is nothing lighter than a Listicle (that is a portmanteau of List + Article) this is a six and half minute read.

Four things that disappointed me the most in my life –

Paris

Yes, Paris. Imagined in movies and books as the most romantic city of Earth. The rendezvous point of all artists and free thinkers of the world. The fashion capital of the world and place that is always attacked second by Aliens (first is New York).

I don't know whose idea of romance is crowds, filth, and spending a small fortune on a 10 m2 room? Because that is what Paris is. That was our first destination when my wife had come to Europe for a vacation and we were so excited, we had photo spots in mind, food we wanted to try and an Excel file for things to visit. What we got is the smallest hotel room I have ever stayed in for over 100 Euros. . And when I wanted to have a beer, we walked into a bar and met the most hostile waitress ever, who was just straight up pissed that we couldn't speak French; and this was in the 12th arrondissement, a fairly touristy area. Which, now in retrospect was a good indication of things to come: which were crowds everywhere, Metro was dirty and one guy just ate a donut and washed in his hands right there in the train, we were man handled up to the way to Sacré-Cœur, a cup of coffee on a al fresco café was 6 Euros, and I realized that Eiffel Tower is a giant metal tower surrounded by tourists and a badly kept lawn. The best thing about Paris was an Indian cuisine restaurant run by Pakistanis who talked to us in Hindi and gave us a discount on the bill saying “hum aap to ek hee mulk ke hai”. Ok that was the second best, the best thing were the Parisian women. The average Parisian woman is better dressed going to work than I was on my wedding day.

 Wireless chargers

You know I was born in the wireless era. Please don’t misconstrue this as an attempt to hide my age, on the contrary, it shows my age. I was born at the time when there were no wires, because in India we didn’t have many things that needed a wire. The only three things that I can remember having wires were TV, 2-in-1 music player and the Mixie (food processor or my preferred name which gives it a Sci-fi touch – Robot de Cocina). There were no phones, not even landlines, no computers, no mobile phones, no video games – none of the usual culprits that caused wires. Soon we saw a wired thing which was the landline phone or just phone back in the day. And in a decade the house was full of wires: mobile phones, chargers, video game controllers, VCRs, washing machines, computer cables that Logitech 2.1 speaker wires, Internet modems joined the party soon after.

Then suddenly, the wires started disappearing again, Cordless phones started the trend, then it was wireless keyboards and mouse, Bluetooth speakers, the Play Station controllers and then the revolutionary Wi-fi. Now tables and TV cabinets could be used again to the store the junk in the house, like hair bands, candy wrappers, random stationery, pieces of paper with cryptic notes scribbled on them that not even the author could understand after a few days.

So, naturally, I was ecstatic when I heard about wireless chargers, thinking they'd eliminate the last thorn in my side – the mobile phone charger's wire. I imagined plugging the charger into any socket in the house, which, no matter how many you had, were always too few, and lo and behold, my phone would start charging.

Only problem was that I was too poor to afford a phone that supported wireless charging, ok perhaps not the only problem, another problem was that I was too over this tech thing to bother even upgrading my phone or even trying to see a YouTube video of how it works. So once in office a Tech Enthusiast colleague of mine had something on his desk that resembled a mobile phone holder we had in our old Hyundai Accent car. After staring it for a while I mustered the courage to ask him what this device is. He replied, "It's a wireless charger. My eyes lit up that this is the Holy grail I was looking for, even though it looked nothing like I had imagined it. I requested a demo, which he begrudgingly obliged with and then went on to add that you actually have to keep the phone on the charger at all times, it takes several hours to charge a tiny fraction of the battery and heats up the phone a lot.

Soul crushed, and faith in the marvel of technology forever lost.

College

Don’t worry, this is not a tirade about how I wasted my studying the stress strain curves and differential equations in college which I am never going to use. I am more worried about he important stuff, like girls playing basketball in short skirts and romances blooming in the college canteen.

You see this was late 90s when American Pie was already here in India but I had an idea about high school which was nothing like the Hollywood movies showed it. I had convinced myself that might happen in America and that really is the land of opportunity, but India is different. Real India is what is shown in Bollywood movies. To me, college was a place where people defied their grumpy Principal to play Holi with girls in white shirts and booty shorts, à la Mohabbatein , where girls like Kajol played basketball, twirling (or pivoting, if you think she really knew how to play) in their short skirts with boys who had a neck chain that said COOL, college students partied in 5 Star discotheques and then jetted off to Goa on a whim in the middle of the night. Where Ms. Chandnis sashayed into the college grounds with her Pink saree’s pallu flapping in the wind and caressing the cheeks of whoever walked behind her. Where a quirky group of mixed gender friends played pranks on each other and wore Gap and Tommy Hilfiger clothes.

Imagine what I had felt when I first rode in my first day of college discovered that my Mechanical Engineering batch of 200 had whopping 6 girls, the canteen was an open-air arena where people slurped Bisibele Bath with their bare hands, and my group of all guy friends, who had their heads shaved and shirt collars buttoned up due to hostel ragging, promptly left the college to smoke a "Choti Gold Flake" as soon as classes ended.

Growing Up

A few days ago, my niece called and asked when did we start feeling like an Adult because even near 25 she does not feel like an Adult at all. Both my wife and I laughed at that and thought hard. To be honest about her question, it depends on the day. Some days I wake up at 8 for a 8:30 meeting and I can’t believe I am still doing this at nearly 40. Some days I have to make major life decisions without any guidance, give advice to people in their 30s, do my taxes, move countries, buy things worth Lakhs of Rupees and suggest a billion-dollar company how to run their business.

The cause of my niece’s disappointment was that she thought she would be set in life by the time she was 25, with a stable job and a house and everything. Didn’t we all? When I was 15, I imagined my life at 30 as a wealthy, successful Hugo Boss suit wearing person who twirled his Cognacs in a fancy glass and had intellectual conversations about the economy and how Pritish Nandy is a phony. When I was actually nearing 30, I was buying Vorion 12000 beer from roadside bars and was chuckling at a Truck sign which read “Bhaisahab sambhal ke, thoda lamba hai”

Growing up is not nearly as good as the thing they make it up to. Yeah, technically you can have as much Ice-cream as you want to or stay up as long as you like or buy those gigantic speakers that rumble the whole building. But what they don’t tell you is that you would be fat and will be guilty about eating that ice-cream the whole week or you can stay up as late as you like but then you will have to call in sick at work the next day and you will have a massive headache or the Aunty below your apartment building is going to complain even if you run in your house, leave along switch on the Bass Booster on your big ass speakers.

Most importantly, nobody told me that my back is going to ache for the rest of my life.