August 5th, 2006: Tiffs and arguments... Spice of life or just the mold on it?

I'm writing this entry three days (two days and half a night) after the fact. As the title suggests, I didn't have a very good day at all...

As the late hours of Friday night (or should I say early morning hours of Saturday - between 3am to 6am) were spent on setting up and getting this blog started, I didn't get much sleep at ALL... I went to sleep that dawn at around 6am and slept all the way up to 1pm (this is Saturday the 5th of August, 2006 I'm talking about here).

And I'll reiterate what I've mentioned in my first post and that is that sleeping SO late really destroys the day you will wake to because there are so few hours left to do anything.

So, I got out of bed at around 1pm and went about the daily routine of bodily chores that we all must do. These chores frequently make me wonder at God's design.

Here, I digress for a minute...

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I'm a pretty religious (or in modern day terms - spiritual) person. I hold to many beliefs and in many ways I see them reaffirmed now and again. Later on in the day I was praying for a bit of help and I got it... but I'll come to that later. For now, I want to explain a bit about the beliefs that I have and where I got them from. FIRST a disclaimer:

I am a person who believes staunchly in my set of ethics and morals. My basic and fundamental rule is to do no harm (physically or emotionally) to any other person by action or inaction; including oneself as well. This is a pretty all–pervading rule. I mean that you should try to be aware of the consequences of your actions and intentions so that harm will not befall those you encounter wittingly or unwittingly. It also means that you will be aware of the actions and intentions of those you encounter and will thereby be protected from being hurt by those around you as well. But in order for it to work you’ve got to constantly be on alert because, admit it babies, this world is nothing but a slaughter house to one degree or another. All life on it is armed and dangerous (physically as well as emotionally) and it is a very delicate balance that sustains our existence in life.

“And the point is?” (you ask).

I don't exert my beliefs on others, nor do I allow others to force theirs on me - I listen and absorb whatever fits with my sense of ethics but don't preach what to be nor like being preached at.

If you find anything whatsoever offensive in whatever you might come across here, the offence was unintentional – please don't vent you angst at me. I’m open to hearing criticism, NOT senseless angst.

End of Disclaimer :o)

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Here’s a bit more about me, feel free to skip on at any point. I’m just blabbing this one time so that those who read my journal can understand how I look at life and where my opinions are coming from...

I'm a Hindu... my spiritual beliefs come from what was explained to me from when I was a child and onwards; by my parents, acquaintances and a few of the scriptures that I've read. The main text being the "Bhagavad Gita" (meaning – the Song of God) as translated by Srimad Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (a Spiritual Guru from the 70's. He’s the guy who started the "Hare Krishna" movement and founded the ISKCon organisation).

Also, I grew up in Canada and was surrounded by many people of other faiths and differing ethnicities. So whatever I read for myself was largely tempered by the understanding that no belief can be foolproof (there will always be different points of view and none can ever be considered to be the ultimate truth) and the only way in which everyone can live life peacefully is through sensitivity and a sense of balance with everyone else extant on the planet.

Hence, to sum it all up, here’s my rule of thumb: Do no harm to anyone including one's self. And try not to let harm befall anyone through unintentional actions (including yourself) by maintaining a constant level of awareness and vigilance.

Not an easy thing to follow.

In short, I live and let live and I pray my readers will respect that and do the same – I don’t want to sound pretentious but if I do, please don't freak out on me my dears :o)

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Coming back to the events of the day (Saturday the 5th of August, 2006)...

God's designs...

God's intentions...

God...

You know, to me, God refers to everything and nothing. From what I've gleaned of the teachings of the ancient spiritualists of India (Mahatmas and Mahagyanis – which translates roughly as Great Souls and Greatly Wise Ones) God is not an entity but a consciousness that is all pervading and infinite in nature. Infinitely BIG, infinitely SMALL, wide, tall, hot, cold... you name it and God is IT... except in infinite proportions.

From what I've understood through contemplating these concepts off and on throughout my life, the concept of Infinity is really a good way to start understanding and believing in the existence of God. I'm not an expert, as I've said in my disclaimer above, but scientists and great minds of the past and present believe that the concept of Infinity is a credible one.

Coming down to the nature of the universe; if we postulate that the energy that exists in the universe is infinite and mind is but a manifestation of patterns of energy – then God could possibly refer to a Super–Consciousness which is basically a mind (consciousness) of infinite proportions. Hence my continued faith (and faith is cause there’s more to my beliefs which I’ll not get into right now) in God and the possibility of “divine intervention”. I mean, if a mind is of infinite proportions and is infinitely capable of definite comprehension of infinite concepts of infinite nature, what would the capabilities of such an infinitely knowledgeable mind be? There’s a mind bender for you!

To all of you out questioning minds out there: if you like Stephen Hawking then you’ll get a real kick out of the concepts explored in the Bhagavad Gita. Read it not for it’s “religious prattle” (as some would say) but for the abstract concepts that are touched upon briefly within it. The are all MOST fascinating.

And finally, for those of you who are atheists out there – if you question the existence of God then try not thinking of God as religious figurehead but of a scientific phenomenon. Contemplate on the IMPLICATIONS of the concept of Infinity and you might start to think of God as a possibility and not an absurdity or delusion...

I’ve digressed again haven’t I???

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SO... moving on (and I promise not to get into lecture mode again... :o)

So I got up and wondered once again why God made us so high maintenance while doing my bodily need–to–do’s.

Then I had the first out of three consecutive tiffs with my dear hubby...

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One more digression to introduce myself a teeny bit more. My name is Prakash (pseudonym) and I’m a homosexual male of 27 years. I live with my partner (our relationship is three years old now – was initiated in the June of 2003) and his name is Utkarsh (yet another pseudonym). So when I say hubby, you’ll get what I mean.

We live with my parents (long story and for another blog) in the mid–western–suburbs of Mumbai (previously known as Bombay), India. I moved here from Canada in the November of 1999. Since then, life has been quite the roller coaster for me!

But that too is another story for another blog...

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I’ve been begging and saving up for a better internet connection for AGES and it is quite unfortunate that Mumbai (or India in general for that matter) has, on the whole, not yet come out of the age of dialup internet. Well, just day before yesterday we finally signed up for a broadband connection which was to be provided by the Tata Indicom franchisee in our area (which happen to be the same people who provide our cable TV connection).

You should know that I really want to get on with my own work. I’m a dancer and have not had much opportunity to do my own thing since moving down here to Mumbai, much to my consternation. I’ll be leaving to go back to Canada soon I hope. I’ve gone through an “x” number of arguments and discussions and debates, debacles and sessions of extreme cajoling to get Utkarsh to agree to move to Canada with me. The main reason for my wanting to go back is that work options for me here are extremely limited. On top of that, as much as I love the culture of India and its homeliness, I despise the way that the country is running.

Anyhow. We’ve just completed moving and getting this internet connection done was one of the few things left on my list of pending super–stressful chores. The sort of things I’ve been getting stressed over were things like “pack away the crystal ware” and “organise packers and movers” and “create space where all our huge store of paraphernelia-garnered-over-two-years-living-on-our-own-can-be-stored”.

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We had moved out of my parents house for two years and bought lots of stuff thinking that, until the move back to Canada we’d be living on our own in a separate apartment. We’d also figured when we moved out that we’d be on our own for at least five years or so – that’s why we bought a house full of furnishings.

Then the bomb blasts on the Western Railway in Mumbai happened on the 11^th of July. Utkarsh happened to get off of the train no more than four minutes before the bomb that was ticking on it (probably no more than 2–3 feet away from where he’d been sitting in fact) blew all those innocent passengers into tidbits of human meat smeared all over the tracks.

I know that this is a gory image but it the sort of image that played over and over in my head after learning that he’d been sitting somewhere near the bomb and by God’s blessing, just missed being ripped to shreds by a span of just four minutes.

I do wish to talk more about this but I’ll post it on another blog I’m planning. For now, let it suffice to say that it was this incident that caused me to beg him to move back into my parents house. It was a painful but necessary decision – we were sacrificing our freedom for the ability to avoid ever getting on the trains again. From where we’d been living, in Borivali West (the northern most suburbs of Mumbai), travelling everywhere by auto–rickshaw would have been prohibitively expensive and therefore was impossible. My parents apartment is more centrally located and therefore moving back here would make access to the rest of the city (which is very important as Utkarsh’s job responsibilities dictate that he travel to every corner of the city), would make accessing all corners of the city easy.

In case you’re wondering – the trains of Mumbai face a HUGE flow of traffic on a daily basis. I’m not certain that another series of bomb blasts will ever happen again. I pray that it cannot and will not happen; but praying that you will survive a fall does not mean that stepping of a cliff won’t kill you. I am sure that the trains are a prime target for terrorists and will always remain that way. The trains are the best way to devastate this city with the least expenditure of resources by such terrorist groups – one bomb can kill so many innocents because the trains are always just SO terrifyingly packed! Finally, though no one really pays attention, and most Indian born and brought people just cannot be aware of it; the trains have woefully little protection. Those of us who are from abroad or have at least used such public transport methods in “first world” countries know that there is a vast network of video surveillance in the trains there. There is nothing like that here and because of the amount of corruption in the Indian government, I doubt that resources will EVER be expended on such protection.

Sad but true – disheartening and VERY scary!

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Coming back to the rest of this almost never–ending story (it’s now 1:45am on Tuesday, August 8^th! I’m finding it difficult to keep my eyes open as I write now).

The internet connection is one of the last three major chores. I really want to finish all this up because I have exams for the diploma course I’ve started (the course is a three year course affiliated with SNDT Women’s University Mumbai and is for Kathak Dance... and is also the only thing stopping us from leaving like, tomorrow, I’m SO fed up with this country!). You have to understand, my sense of urgency was compelling me to get up and finish all this in a rush.

There are so many things that have to be completed over the next few days that my head is spinning. On Sunday morning we were going to head out with some friends and the Gay Bombay group for a monsoon trek to a fort outside of Mumbai. Coming up this Friday we are leaving for Bangalore to meet up with our close friends Nitesh and his wife Kaushalya. We’ve not met them in MONTHS since they moved from Mumbai to Bangalore because of Nitesh’s job.

So that afternoon when I woke up, with all these items from the past day twirling around my head, I asked Utkarsh if he was going to buy the router. He works from home and needs a dedicated connection to the internet and we’ve invested in a high speed (by Indian standards) unlimited connection so that I could also have my own bit of fun and hassle free connectivity. A router was a must cause that laptop of his runs with Lotus Notes and in order for him to connect to his server in Germany he needed a static IP.

The thing about Utkarsh is that he’ll smile confidently at you and promise away to glory about helping you out with those “run–around–like–a–headless–chicken” chores, and then totally not anything about it. To me, that is as good as lying.

I hate lies, I don’t lie cause it makes too much trouble for you and guess what – Utkarsh promises to do things and then doesn’t and then says he’s not lying.

That is one of the few differences between us that causes direct head–on–collisions between Utkarsh and I, too often for comfort.

This day was no different. He’d promised to go out and get the router and then dilly–dallied until I was forced to do something about it. At 3pm he told me that he needed to go and visit a place in Khar for a meeting(some 9–11kms from our house which in Mumbai takes at least an hour to traverse with smooth traffic conditions). I was like... “oh HOW convenient for that appointment to have appeared when you were supposed to come with me and pick out the router”.

I don’t speak hindi flawlessly and the locals pick up on that. I always beg him to accompany me when buying expensive things cause his indigenous accent secures him a fair market price. Yes, things ARE like that here in Mumbai; if you have an accent you can DEFINITELY expect to have the cost of non–tagged items jump by increments of 2 to 3 hundred Rupees on the whim of the dealer! Sigh... I miss Canada... things were NEVER so complicated there...

Well, it was raining bitches and jack rabbits when I left the house to buy the router. Utkarsh and my sister had left home an hour ahead of me and when I reached the computer dealer, I called him to find out that he was done and would be heading home. On hearing that I asked if he could meet me there and then travel home with me. The dealer was in the way if you took SV road from Khar (Khar is the name of a locality) and he said he would.

I stood waiting in line for my turn to talk to the shop owner, who luckily recognised me from my many trips there. I always go out of my way to visit his shop for small to large computing supplies cause I’ve found that his prices are always fair. Hence I didn’t fight with Utkarsh when he said I’d be going alone. I DID fight when he told me he’d taken another route and was on his way home instead when I phoned him. That pissed me off as usual – you know, saying you’re gonna do something and then simply not doing it.

Bad traffic right outside the residential complex... getting stuck at a junction just outside our complex’s gate... becoming frightened that coming out was a mistake because memories of the major flooding of the 26^th July, 2005 (last year)... that was how I made my way to the computer shop.

Travelling in Mumbai is NEVER a pleasant experience, even on the best of days. This was a bit of a nightmare until I got moving again and saw that the roads ahead were NOT going to be blocked off with water in the 2 hours it would take for me to wrap up this business.

When Utkarsh told me he’d taken the Juhu Road and was headed home I got upset. I was looking forward to his company on the way home and the security that if, IF, the roads were blocked then I’d not be alone.

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Going home was THANKFULLY a WHOLE lot shorter than reaching the computer store. Where it took me 45 minutes to travel down it took me only 10 to return. I tell you folks, travelling in Mumbai, during the monsoons especially, is a weird affair!!!

Got home and called the broadband people as I tried to configure the router on my own. Things got messy and I have a strong suspicion that they closed my connection from there so that I would be forced to pay the “one time installation charges” to their engineer – a WHOPPING Rs.1000 (equal to approx. USA $20).

Finally got the net connected after feeling like a twig tossed on violent seas. I feel like that pretty often, got acquainted with the feeling for the first time after coming to live in Mumbai and that feeling has become a repetitive repertoire these last seven years...

I dearly miss Canada!

Sigh...

I don’t know if you’ve read all that I’ve written above. I hope you did cause it has a LOT of info on who I am and how I think... I hope I didn’t bore you to death!

Future posts on this blog are gonna be just the goings on of the day with much less background information about me.

Till next I write... :o)