Bye Bye Love for Money?

Bina is 29, mother of a three-month baby boy, and working as a Tech Lead in a top-notch IT company. Her hubby migrated to the United Kingdom shortly after marriage. While she was battling through her pregnancy shuttling between work and home wishing fervently that hubby dear was around to fulfill her cravings, her hubby was busy working long hours and setting up a home for his wife and son to join him.

Sushma is 32, mother of two kids—one just starting Montessori while the other is just learning to toddle. She and her hubby have plans to find jobs abroad preferably in the UK. Finally Sushma’s prayers were heard and her company sent her on a six-month deputation to the UK.

Situations sound familiar? Increasingly people in their mid 20s and early 30s are emigrating from India in search of lucrative jobs to be able to afford a better lifestyle. While bidding adieu to the family, relatives, and friends, they start their careers in foreign lands among strangers who don’t speak their language (or in their accents) and try building a social life from scratch. Scrimping money by living in the suburbs, commuting by public transport, slaving long hours at office hoping for a quick promotion, cooking their own food eaten with pickles and chutney powder packed from home, doing your own cleaning and laundry, life is anything but a bed of roses. Most even cut down on long-distance calls by using Google Talk or Skypes or similar software to hear from their loved ones. Trip to India is decided by the gravity of the situation: Dada’s (un)expected kicking of the bucket or cousin’s shaadi.

Back at home, with increased jobs and astronomical pay packages in the IT industry and increased demand for car and home loans, young employees are able to book 3-BHK luxury apartments, drive a mid-size cars (or have a chauffeur), have maids/cooks/babysitters and still remain close to family and friends.

Everyone is busy chasing a dream. There is no more Keeping up with the Joneses to do but overtaking or beating the Jones to show that you have more pelf. So where did our priorities change from being able to look after our folks in their old age to abandoning them in pursuit of more moolah? When did love leave the world leaving behind cut-throat competition, mutual distrust, backstabbing, and immeasurable selfishness and greed? Even Alexander the Great, who had conquered most of the world by the time he turned 30, only had one request to make on his death bed, which was to lay bare his arms out of the coffin for others to see (and realize) that even he, who had conquered the world was taking nothing with him while leaving the world.

When will we realize this truth and start living? Can money buy back the youth and family and friends and the quality time spent with them? Can money buy back the time when your dad wished to see your face once before closing his eyes, or when your mom wanted to share the joy of booting the computer without anyone’s help, or your siblings’ latest crushes or gripes over bosses, or fulfilling your wife’s cravings during her pregnancy and being there to hold her hands during her delivery to smile and comfort her that everything was going to be just fine because you are with her? Or will all those moments just be a moment of the past, which will be clicked or taped to be sent to you via e-mail?

Is love worth sacrificing for money? Mother Teresa once remarked, "There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread". You have the choice; Choose wisely with your heart!

Chicklit Marathon

Of late I have been reading a lot of chicklit, which includes:

• Hotel du Lac: Booker-prize winner for Anita Brookner. The synopsis as usual deceived me into believing that this was a wittily written romantic comedy.
  
• Lajja:Shame: This book won Ms Taslima Nasrin a dreaded fatwa more than accolades (she did win a few of them too). The book is more like a document chronicling the events in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. I personally detested the book as it was biased and spiteful written with a one-track mind.
  
• Difficult Daughters: This supposed love-story set in the pre-Independence era between Virmati and her married Professor falls flat of one’s expectations. Manju Kapur, a Delhi Professor, apparently took five years to complete this book.
  
• Mr and Mrs Smith: Now who can forget the flick that bought two of God’s best creations together? I tried watching this flick twice but fell asleep both times. So when I found this book in my online library, I thought “What the heck! Why not?” Trust me, I wasn’t at all one bit disappointed by the escapades and accounts of the two assassins married to each other but blissfully unaware of the identity of the spouse.
  
• Life isn’t all ha ha he he: Saving the best for last. This book by Meera Syal was later made into a movie starring herself, Laila Rouss, and Ayesha Dharkar, but again the movie was a bit too boring for me to watch. But the book is hilarious. Giving the accounts of three Punjabi friends born and bred in the UK, the book is hilarious and poignant. A must-read!

Good Old DD days

Remember the good old DD days, when thanks to all the dull programs they aired, we earned more time to stay outside our homes instead of sulking in front of the idiot box?

Those were the halcyon days of the black and white TVs and one Doordarshan channel, which after decades gave way to a color TV and a DD-Metro channel. Sundays were fun with Ramayan and Mahabharat and Fairy Tales. Other programs that I remember vividly include Ashish, Vikram aur Betaal, Karamchand, Khile ki Rahasya, Aisa Bhi Hota Hai, Honi-Unhoni, Oshin, Giant Robot, He-Man, Spiderman . . .

How we used to flock together to watch Chitrahaar and Chitramanjari and cuss when the half hour was up! I also remember watching all regional films (even Marathi films) aired on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Thursdays were especially my favorite, as they fostered me to become the sitcom buff that I have become now, playing a wonderful sitcom called Blossom (I still remember her and her best friend, Six, who would talk nineteen-to-the-dozen and her handsome brother, Joey) followed by Boy Meets World (I was lucky to catch this again on Disney Channel a few months back).

We did not get any cartoon channels then, perhaps that explains why god makes you meet so many of the characters in your work life!

Fast forward 20 years, I own a 21-inch color TV with S-band so you can have 100 channels and your cable guy plays only 50 of them claiming the rest are pay channels. And despite all the channels that exist, you are left channel-surfing looking for one decent program to watch.

Star Movies can be renamed Jurassic or Star Wars Movies; AXN – Ripley’s or Guinness channel; Zee and Sony can be renamed to Indian Idol and Boogey Woogey; Travel & Living to Tattoos and Cooking channel; Star Plus to Saas-Bahu channel; History to Hitler Channel; and so on. The only decent channel NatGeo has started airing the same old documentaries and are also showing Amazing Videos. And I am tired of watching the animals prey and mate on Animal Kingdom and Discovery!

So finally after an hour of surfing, I end up watching reruns after reruns of Friends on Star World, reruns of Full House on Zee Café, and then when I find nothing better I find myself watching (and really enjoying) Hannah Montanna on Disney or Just for Laughs or Mr. Beans on Pogo. Perhaps I have reached the second childhood. Back to where I started from?!