Age, gender and India

This is something about which I feel very strongly. Having a set of principles in life is crap, it's a concept of a lower mind, and is stupid. I always have used my brain to decide what I should do in a particular situation, and that means that if I disagree to something today, I could be doing it tomorrow.

But today I need to add an exception. A principle that I should follow for the rest of my life - the society is full of assholes, never give a s**t to what anybody says, elder or younger. Do what your brain tells you to do. Fuck principles, fuck moral values, fuck ethics. Do what you want to do. Just don't overdo it.

An incident that took place today, in a blueline bus. I was sitting on the left side of the bus, but not on a female-reserved seat. All of those seats were already occupied by females. An aunty (that's what I'll call her), in her 40s, boarded the bus and stood beside my seat, throwing an agitated glance towards me every 5 seconds.


/* The following conversation is in Hindi. Sorry if you don't know Hindi, but translating it to English would've killed the effect. */


Aunty : "Beta, zara seat mujhe de doge?"

ME : "(Looking to my left, pointing towards a blank space above the window) Ahem"

Aunty : "Zara seat khaali kardo beta."

ME : "Ye ladies seat nahi hai."

Aunty : "Koi baat nahi beta, phir bhi de do."

ME : "Kyun?"

Aunty : "Beta main buzurg hoon. Thak gayi hoon."

ME : "Main bhi thaka hua hoon. Aap aage jaake vriddh nagrik seat khaali karwa lo."

Hearing this, a girl sitting behind me, empties her seat for the lady. Aunty sits down hurriedly. Apparently she had a friend who was buying tickets in this while. Now she comes and stands beside her friend.

Aunty : "(To her friend) Aaj kal ke bachche dekho, badtameez ho gaye hain. Abhi kal parson ki hi baat hai, main aise hi kisi aur bus mein ja rahi thi. Wahaan bhi aisa ek ladka tha, maine usse seat maangi to usne kaha ki ye ladies seat nahi hai. Agar badon ki izzat nahi kar sakte to zindagi mein aur kya karenge?"

ME : "(Turning around) To matlab ye aadat hai aapki? Har jagah jaake bachchon se bheekh maangna? Apni taangon pe khada nahi hoya jaata?"

Aunty : "Aapse kisne baat ki?"

ME : "Agar sirf inse baat karni hoti to itna chilla ke nahi bolti. Ye jo aap ka miss aunty naatak hai na, bahut dekha hai. Pehle to app kehte ho ki hum mardon se peeche nahi. Phir apne liye hazaron kanoon banwati ho - dahej ke, shaadi ke. Buses mein apne liye seat reseve karwati ho. Jab khud ko itna kamzor dikhaogi to kaise haalat theek hogi aapki desh mein? Har choti si baat pe rone lag jaate ho aur phir bolte ho humpe atyachaar hota hai. Sanskaaron ko to aapne weapon bana rakha hai, jab apna kaam nikalwana ho, to apni majboori dikha ke bheekh le lete ho. Aur phir kehte ho ki main badtameez hoon?"

Till then, every single person is staring at me in the bus. The two aunty's start whispering something. I get up hastily and say,

"Aapse mera baithna hazam to hoga nahi, aao, aap hi baitho."

I turn around, and get off the bus at the next stop, cheeks red, and a hot forehead. Then I realise that I made a mistake.

By getting off. I should've sat there and listened to what she said next, and told her what a f**kin bitch she was. This is the typical Indian woman. Will never accept that she is weak, but will use all kinds of shrewd techniques to get what she wants.


What I learnt from here is that if you care what people around you think about you, and try not to hurt anybody, you may live peacefully, with a million friends, people caring about you, but you've never done what you wanted. You've spent your life caring for what other people think. You've got a great image, cool! Now what will you do with it? Stuff it up your ass? Go ahead!

Enough of diplomacy, screw sanskaar. I'm gonna live life the way I want to.

Hash

I wanted to make it clear with this blog post what my blog's name actually means. Most people think (who have told me that they do) that my blog's name has been derived from the narcotic Hash, or Hashish, and they are right to some extent in their thinking, considering how I live and my 'Fuck The World' attitude. But Hash here, in my blog title symbolises how screwed up my life is, a mess, a jumble, a hodgepodge that is impossible to sort out. Death.

And the list of people who think that I'm a junkie includes Google! I'm thankful that Google images doesn't have a pic of me snorting cocaine!

Shimla - Part II

Part I is here.

The next day, we wake up early (9:00 a.m.), and decide to explore the gym upstairs. Not a very big gym, but a hall which had one corner as a gym, other with a home theater system, a pool table, a snooker table and some bean bags. I've never been to a gym before, but considering that this one was free of cost, I decided to get some exercise. 20 minutes of cycling, and 2 miles of jogging on a treadmill completely drained me.

After washing up, we leave the Hotel on foot, to explore the nearby places of interest - Lower Bazaar, Jakhu Temple, The Ancient Church, and Lakkad Bazaar.

Lower Bazaar is the sorta 'main' hanging out place in Shimla, always packed with tourists and locals, and the main shopping hub of Shimla too. While my sister and mom insisted on staying in the Lower Bazaar for shopping, my Dad and I started towards a 2.5 Km trek to the famous Jakhu Temple.

The trek was very, very long and tiring. Plus, to add to the misery were loads of monkeys on the way. We had to rest about 12 times on the way up, and the climb took us about 40 minutes.

                        

When finally, to our relief, a temple was in sight, it turned out to be some irrelevant and old temple on the way.



Jakhu Temple was still 200 metres away. A 5 minute tread, and we reach Jakhu Temple, to be welcomed by ..



and this...



Not a very interesting place, but the trekking was the fun part. There were monkeys outside the temple, trying to steal shoes, cameras, bags, phones, virtually anything they could snatch from a person. I could barely take this snap -



There was an exclusive place built for the tourists to feed the monkeys, it was called 'Vanar Rajya'. A photo over there showed a guy feeding hundreds of monkeys in that place, many of them sitting on his head, shoulders, lap. Quite interesting, but the 'ready-to-attack' monkeys didn't seem to be interested in food right now.




Back from Jakhu Temple, there was the ancient church of Shimla, another famous tourist attraction. It looks divine at night..



and marvellous in daytime...



The rest of the day was quite uneventful, some shopping and bad dinner.

Shimla - Part I

We reach Shimla at 6:30 p.m. in the evening, and are welcomed at Hotel Silverine, which is supposed to be a really prestigious hotel (the chief minister was at the hotel the day before we arrived), but isn't really that good.

We decide not to go to any tourist place, so we rest till 8:00 p.m. and go to mall (called lower bazaar) and have some good Chinese food at a small, hidden, but amazingly wonderful restaurant called Aunty's Chinese Food. Hot and Sour Vegetable Soup and Noodles with gravy, fabulous. A place I would certainly visit again if I ever went back to Shimla again.

     

The next day it's relaxing time, we get up late, watch some TV, have fun around the Hotel. The interesting part was that the Hotel had a whole entertainment centre on the terrace. We had a home-theater system with new DVD movies to watch, snooker, pool, and a small gym too.

Then we left for Kufri and Mashobra at about 12 p.m. Kufri is supposed to be famous for some random places such as an amusement park on the top of a peak, a tourist park, a zoo, and some random temples, none of which we we're able to see. To go to the top of the peak, you need to start on a horse about 3 Km below, and the path is full of mud and filth. We chose not to go to the peak. After whiling about in the tourist park for a while (which wasn't actually fit for being called a park, it's about 200 metre square in area and has been infested by restaueants and shops), we left for Mashobra. In Mashobra, we visited a Fruit Research Institute, which is known for the apple cultivation over there. They have managed to produce about 200 different varities of apples, and using grafting, they have managed to grow different varities of apples on the same tree. We, unfortunately we're visiting the place out of season, so all we saw was barren trees with a few leaves left. Most of what we learnt about the apple cultivation over there was inside a museum they had, which had photos and samples of fruit trees, and information about the horticulture.





There was also a place called Naldhera, which was about 20 KM away from Mashobra, and all it had was a hot water spring, where you can bathe and cleanse yourself of all the bad deeds you've done. We decided it wasn't worth the travel and decided to go back. It also had a golf course and a picnic ground built by the Himachal Pradesh Government. The thing is how the locals/guides make money by showing you places like a famous college and call it a tourist attraction. We had a guide too, who wanted to take us to more places, but we refused.

Kasauli

We leave the house at about 8:30 a.m. in the morning, 1 and a 1/2 hours late from what we had planned. I ease out in the car, looking outside for a constant 4 hours, everybody in the car is quiet. I try to sleep but with little or no success.

On the way to Kasauli, we face first light showers, then a downpour, followed by a hailstorm. Temperature suddenly drops to about 15 degrees.

We reach Kasauli at about 5 in the evening, and get to stay at a guesthouse at the Military Base Camp in Kasauli. Nice place, but we have our limits, and are asked to stay out of a few places.



The guesthouse is more like a garage than a staying place, but considering the beautiful surroundings, and the free and healthy food we got from the Mess, it's a good bargain. Actually free ;).



After an hour's sleep, we decide to check out the local market. Unfortunately it has almost closed down due to the heavy rains and low temperature. This was followed by a very light, healthy and hygenic dinner at the Officer's Mess.

The next day, we go to the only known tourist spot in Kasauli, 'Manki Point'. Now, I know it should have been 'Monkey Point', but all the boards and maps spelt it as Manki. This is the peak of Kasauli, and has an old temple on the peak. Folklore has it that Hanuman placed his foot on this peak while he was going to get the 'Sanjivani' thing for Laxman. There is about 500 metres of a rocky path that has to ascended. To add to the difficulty, you have tons of monkeys in the way, ready to snatch away things from your hands. A monkey ran away with my dad's medicine, which was in his hand. A local advises us to keep stones in our hands to drive the monkeys away.

After the 500 metre climb, the only thing that gives you satisfaction is the 'top of the world' view you get from there. You have a helipad near the temple too, which was not surprising, considering that the surrounding area was covered by the Air Force.



We come back to the guesthouse, and leave for Shimla at 2:30 p.m. Had lunch at 'Giani Da Dhaba', a famous place as suggested by Sneezy Melon, but turned out to be really dumb. All I got from there was an upset stomach. I hate you, Sneezy.