Come on son, make a difference, you know you want to

We come out from the swanky coffee place, laughing and content; satisfied from the rich cake and the chocolaty muffin and the Ethiopian coffee and the hot chocolate in the gleaming porcelain cups. We’re heading towards our car, we sit inside and my mum remarks about the old man in front. I glance upwards, he’s outside the coffee place, wearing a sign with a big sketch of a hand. He’s holding a magnifying glass and a sign which says he’s a palmist. He approaches a young girl who brushes him off without even looking at him. But what I remember is his smile, his beatific, genial, almost heartbreaking smile. Like the child caught with his hand in his cookie jar or the old grandpa who looks fondly at you, knowing you’ll forgive him for being old and an embarrassment to you. He doesn’t look sad or unhappy or even angry, he smiles and moves on and searches for someone whose fortune he can tell. He accepts his fate, he knows his own future. It involves peddling fortunes to people for ten rupees on muggy evenings and knowing your own future doesn’t involve drinking coffee from Ethiopia in porcelain cups. And it broke my heart seeing him do that.

A man approaches our car at a stop, the usual pleas, the shuffling gait, the look of hopelessness in his eyes, the palms held together. He’s given a coin, he accepts it so gratefully, bows to us, bends down in a gesture of servility while the window rolls upward again, cocooning us in our air conditioned blast, sheltering us from their world. He straightens up again, shuffles to the next car, to beg and bow again. To submit himself to the mercies of the people in the air conditioned cars and bow to their mercy. To bow.

On the news, a small village somewhere in the great heartlands which don’t go into the “India Shining” pamphlets and brochures and the “Incredible India” posters. Mothers who can’t afford milk for their kids putting their hungry, undernourished offspring to sleep by giving them cheap local alcohol. The kids probably don’t know what milk tastes like. I can drink chocolate or banana milkshakes or high protein milk or soya milk, skimmed milk and non fat milk and milk from the purest virginal cows sprung from clouds deep in the Amazon.

To the uncles who ask me, no tell me, disapprovingly that there is no future in the field I’ve chosen, that the future lies in com-poo-ter and CA, I’d like to say well, maybe not the future you dream of. The future I dream of? To change even one person’s life, to know my life means something, that I can bring about change on any level possible. I don’t know if I can change the world on my own, but I’ll damn well try to. Me and my friends- we’ve had a cushioned, comfortable existence. We’re the lucky ones, the ones with a good education, food, clothes, the works. And I believe strongly that if with my education and my privileged (yes, I use that word here) upbringing, I don’t even try to make a difference, then everything I stand for, everything I know, everything I try to care about, is a sham. I need to feel my life will count for something more than a fat bank balance and a holiday home in the Alps. I need to know the world is capable of change. I need to know that there is hope, that even one man can make a change, be it ever so small. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or how or when, but I must try. For the people who have no one to stand for them, for the people to whom life offers no chances. For myself, ‘cos when I leave for the hereafter, I want someone, even one person to be able to say genuinely that hey, this guy’s life stood for something, that he made a difference. I’m selfish that way.

In that spirit, I was so excited to read about this guy, Vikram Akula, who runs SKS Microfinance and is on the TIME list of “100 People making a difference”. Read more about him here. These are the real heroes.

The City of Djinns...and Himesh

Hmmm. Delhi is stiflingly hot; the heat grabs at you when you step out, assaulting you, hanging over you like a thick curtain, which chokes you and makes you think longingly of winter climes and chilled beer. The streets are chaotic and spill over with reckless drivers, stately cows and everything except smooth traffic. I see people jiving to loud, Punjabi music in their cars while they whistle at the nearest “baby” and flex their non-existent muscles under their tight Tommy tee shirts. It’s dusty and chaotic and dirty and brims with the smells and sounds of a thousand things at once- overwhelming and confusing and oh, man, so fucking home. I love this place to bits.

It’s good to be back home. Sometimes I don’t realize how easy we had it here; just the other morning sitting comfortably at the tiny little table in the cozy kitchen my mum has done up so lovingly, I realized how comfortable home feels now. In the past year or so, I feel more at home than I ever did. Even the first 18 years of my life, when for heaven’s sake, I lived only in Delhi. The little home-inside-a-home my mum has managed to build in our joint family house (bet all of you understand now) feels more welcoming and friendly (not to mention tasteful) than the entire house did all my life. I come back and lose myself in just being home again- the food, sitting and laughing with my family, allowing myself not to be responsible for my own self (even if it is for a short time), lounging around just reading and listening to music, hanging out with my friends again…the simple pleasures of life. Then some days go by and it hits me again- that restlessness, that longing to get out there, to challenge myself constantly. It’s not that I get bored at home- far from it, I share a wonderful relationship with my family (nope, no I-hate-my-parents-they-were-such-bastards stories), have enough amazingly interesting characters here at home, and Delhi is a colorful city in its own right. It’s just the feeling of inertia, of doing nothing all day except reading or watching television which gets to me (I know…it’s a good thing right? Fine, I’m weird.) But yeah, after a while it bugs me now when I don’t have a task to accomplish or somewhere to go to or something to focus myself on- I guess that I just worry about now doing enough, not accomplishing enough. And it’s not that someone criticizes me about this- it’s just internal. I just feel really restless and worry about watching my life tick away while not following any of my grand plans- be it traveling or reading more or whatever. Anyways, I don’t think I have time this summer to worry about that; haha it’s pretty packed. So good.

I wish I could take out a fatwa. Who in the world convinced Himesh Reshammiya (or however that’s spelled) that he could sing? I’ve attended three marriage functions in the past week (don’t even ask me why anyone wants to get married in this weather) and every bloody DJ in Delhi, it seems is infatuated with that atrocity. He’s all over TV and on every radio station; kids are actually rehearsing dances to his songs. It’s staggering. Amod, I take it back, you can sing. That man has such an irritating nasally voice that it’s incredible anyone can understand what he tries to communicate. I swear, I think his songs are effective torture devices. And there he is, looking like a cow chewing cud, unshaven, while these slender, attractive women dance around him. I’m not a praying man, but God, please- a rocket launcher, and Himesh in my sights.