Dichotomy

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"In France you can live as you like but you have to think as others do; in Germany you have to live as others do but you can think as you like"

.............Somerset Maugham


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Hmm!

What about My India?

Here you can live as you like and think as you like...indeed you may not think at all...the summum bonum here is supposed to be the Moksha where you pull all thoughts root and branch and throw them in the dustbin, to be replaced by the Bliss of Pure Existence.

Trying...

India is not a melting pot like America...it is an Irish stew where each piece retains its individuality and yet the dish is tasty and wholesome:



 


  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1698/irish-stew


Let us take our Soniajee. She was born and raised as a Roman Catholic, married into a family with Parsi roots, yet wears in public a sari without pulling the ghoonghat, most of the time:


 http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1883644_1883653_1884557,00.html


The PM of our Eastern neighbor too is always seen wearing a sari in public with the head-veil most of the time:


 





 http://www.topnews.in/law/people/sheikh-hasina



And now, listen to our Sunanda-da:
 

"A newspaper picture of Mrs Gandhi talking to a victim of the Assam riots intrigued me. The victim, presumably a Bengali-speaking Muslim or Assamese, wore a salwar-kameez with a dupatta across her chest. In contrast, Mrs Gandhi had draped herself in a sari. You might say she is never seen in anything else. But here's the rub. The Italian-born leader of India's Congress Party had decorously pulled the sari-end over her head right up to the front. The bare head of the Assamese/Bengali girl glistened in the picture."


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When I was a kid of 3, two of my aunties were living with us and it was their pleasure to give me my bath on alternate days. One of them always started from the top and went down soaping, while the other did it the other way round...without exception. 

Then, the first one combed my hair from back to front before parting it while the other did the other way round. I wondered why.

Towards the end of my stay at IIT KGP I had two neighbors both with Maruti Cars. One of them parked his car head first into his garage and then reversed it when he needed to take it out. The other one first reversed it and parked it so he could start it head first in style.

And in the Lab Exam, half the students first filled up their scripts with aim, apparatus, circuit, observation chart, precautions and stuff for an hour or more and THEN started the wiring; while the other half jumped into the wiring first to see if it works ok and then start writing...no one ever cheated while I was there watching them like a hawk ;-)

And so on and so forth in life.

I guess story-writers and bloggers too are divided into two groups:

1. They get the title first and weave a story around it.

2. The others write the story first and then look for a title.

Talking of titles and stories I had this disgusting experience:

Towards the end of 2009, Shyamal, who is a regular contributor to the Now & Again Column of The Statesman sent a blog of mine to its Editor who published it without any change at all. Then another. Then came the blog with the poetic title I chose:

"Rain Drops and Pearls"


http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/10/rain-drops-and-pearls.html


And it came out in print with the title:

"Repaid with Interest"

with the last couple of paras clipped away totally.

Repaid with Interest, my foot!

And that was the end of our brief romance...by then the Statesman readers were also fed up with me and my stories and we parted without acrimony.

This reminds me of a young Indian Physicist who left TIFR without a Ph D, went to the US, and did fabulous work missing the Nobel Prize at least thrice...his fault was that he planted the saplings and raised the trees while others walked away with their fruit...when he was not watching.

Thirty years later, he was invited back to give a talk in TIFR and he is said to have started:

"TIFR and I decided to part ways thirty years back...and both of us seem to have done rather well since then"


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