Old Age Homes - A Social Disgrace

              Whenever I watch the movie 'Lage Raho Munnabhai' , apart from the excellence of RajKumar Hirani to portray the power of Gandhi's values , the other thing that hits me hard is the concept of the '2nd Innings house' . The dialogue where the old man mentions that he brought up 4 children in a one room home now they do not have one room for their old father in 4 houses hurts me to where the Indian society is leading.

               I do understand the problems faced by young couples when the wife cannot gel with the in laws at home, but staying nuclear to avoid these is like running away from a problem rather than solving one. And in my personal opinion, only cowards run away from problems. Why have we become so selfish that we forget all that our parents have done for us and we send them either in old age homes or staying alone. If this is what we learned from the west, perhaps we just followed them in half measures.

               Whatever we are today is cause of them. The Indian society is very different from the west. Our parents do not leave us when we reach 18. They play an important part in our life to take us where we are and sponsoring our education is just a very tiny part of what they do for us. They spend their major part of the golden years saving for us or giving us what we want. Giving us the best they can afford. I have seen parents sacrifice necessities so that their children can get luxuries. And later when it is our time to repay them, all most of us think about is excuses to run away.

               I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I have seen my parents work hard to earn what we have today. As a kid when we visited our relatives, we traveled in public transport and buses. I remember me pestering my dad to take a auto to the station rather than waiting 20 minutes for the bus. I got angry on him, said him things I should not. He just kept telling me the bus will be here within 5 minutes. I did not realize then that the reason he took shit from me to save money was so that he could afford me a good education. Today when I think of those incidents my head hangs with shame. But I was a kid then. Today I am not. So today I realize that what my parents have done for me and so even the thought of leaving them to stay alone will never cross my mind. I wonder why those who do send their parents to Old age homes do not remember such things or incidents that might have happened to them.

           The girl who feels she could not get along with her in laws and pesters her husband to stay separate should think if the same would have been done to her parents by some other girl, how would she feel. The guy who does separate cause he needs peace at home is nothing but a coward who runs away from problems. It is time we stop being so self centered and selfish.

          I feel the concept of Old age homes is bullshit. There should be no such homes and no need of such places. All we have to do for this is stop being practical. It is not just the heart but also your head who will tell you to respect your parents and give them the best you can when they are old. And one should never forget that there will be a time when you will step in their shoes too.

Cheers!

Mutual 'LIKE'

            " What do you think of that girl?" , My friend asked. "She is good" was my standard answer. "I really like her yaar", he told this for the 20th time now. "Did you find out if she likes you too?" , I asked. "Not yet but she will some day"  was his optimistic reply. A few months later the girl had a bf or got married. Now I am sure this story is a part of our life. And when I mean our life, it means we may or may not be in one of the roles of the conversation but this definately happens all around us. Alas the world has no feeling of mutual 'Like'.

              So how many of you Facebook addicts after reading the Title thought I was talking about the 'Like' button on Facebook? You losers :-) . I was not talking about that mutual feeling which is rampant in the world. You like my profile pic and I will like yours. I was talking about true feelings. Though I will be talking about this Facebook profile pic in my upcoming posts ( yes, you guessed it Right, I am learning some marketing skills) but not in this one.

              I have always been surprised that why the feeling of Like do not work similar to the feeling of Dislike. Now I have stated in my previous post 'Hate:A feeling as strong as Love:' about this feeling. The feeling of dislike or hate is always mutual. You hate somebody and with time the person hates you back. It always happens. And I can say that by personal experience too cause I hate everybody and everybody hates me.:-) This statement also takes out the angle (if you did develop it) that I am ranting about it cause I got recently dumped.  And I think mutual dislike is fair enough but alas when it comes to love or like we forget fairness.

             It is important to have this feeling mutual. And no I am not talking about the people who like everybody. When I Like or Dislike somebody I give the person enough importance to harbor this feeling about him. So people who say they like everybody just means that they are self centered ego maniacs who do not care about anybody or find anybody important enough to show any kind of feeling towards that person. So stay away from such people unless if that person is Like Mother Teresa who loved all people.

             Coming back to the topic, how I wish this feeling was mutual. And I do not mean to say Love.You may not Love the person who loves you. I am talking about Like. If all people we liked, liked us back the world would have been a better place to stay.We could have avoided so many wars and lies. The whole world would have been happy with a proper distinction of Likes and Dislikes.

PS: All those people who are members of the site or comment, I like you all so please like back the post cause frankly I am not sure what I wrote, why I wrote what I wrote and if it makes the same sense for which I wrote, what I wrote being confused of why I wrote.

Cheers!

It's a Women's World

                   It was just a casual conversation with a colleague of mine during the coffee break that she decided to explain to me how the dating system works in USA. She said, "Kapil, it is really simple out here unlike in India. If you go somewhere and you like a girl, you have to walk up to her, strike a conversation, buy her a drink and give your phone number. If she is interested she will call you otherwise you keep trying." You know why this sentence stood out to me, cause it is at this time did I realize that the saying 'it's a man's world' is actually a myth. Actually it's a woman's world.

                   In one of my previous blogs 'The Weaker Sex', I did try to give you a lighter version of how it's actually the man who suffers in the fight of two females.Perhaps that is why the term 'weaker sex' kept getting gradually replaced by the new term 'fairer sex'. So I do not want to offend the feminists or sound like a sexist, but the fact is that it never was and never will be a man's world.

                   Women rule the world. It is a known fact that the cause of a fight between two drunk friends have always been a women. A female who may not even be aware of the mere existence of these two friends still manages to get them to blows with each other.Most of the times, it is always the girl who has to call it quits on the guy. The guy never does so. And the reason for that is simple and even stated in movies. When a girl leaves a guy, there are other guys and so called best friends ready to replace that guy. Just waiting for a chance like the dogs we are. The girl again gets options and choices but sadly it never happens the same way with a guy. He either gets drunk with his male buddies or cries for few days. But no girlfriends of his girlfriend will pounce on this now single guy.

                    From politics to boardrooms they rule men with just a smile. Now how many times have you seen this that when a male jumps the queue, he is been abused and pushed back again but if a female does so and says that she is in a hurry ( with a smile ofcourse) even the most hardened guy would let it go. And let me ask this, how many guys are forced to see the daily soap operas by Ekta Kapoor cause one women in the house wants to?

                    I have never heard of a men's day but they have a day for women. And then be it Valentine's day or any anniversary, it is always the women who gets the gifts.
 Most of the commercials on TV are made to attract the women. They know if the women agrees, the man has to. The marketing greats know where to hit to get the product sold. The lows were reached when they started asking men to buy a certain brand of underwear cause women like men in it. What?? Should I not buy something that's rather more comfortable?

                    Without offending the religious minds, i would like to state that most of the wars in Hindu mythology also occurred due to women. If Draupadi would not have insulted Duryodhan perhaps he would not have challenged for a war. If Ravan's sister would have kept her eyes away from Ram and not got her nose cut in the process, perhaps Ravan would never have met Sita, Kidnapped her and led to a war. So from centuries and as far as you could go till today, women have ruled the place. And whenever we are led to believe in the myth that it's a man's world , and some do, the super powerful super intelligent just uses her weapon of mass destruction.She just SMILES...

PS: This post is just a light attempt on humor and so I have not touched any serious topics against women or for women. Enjoy

Cheers!