2010 comes to an end in a few days. Sitting here at 2010 and looking back at 2000 I am surprised at how much I have changed and how much the occurences around me have affected and changed me. they say your teens are the time your personality is shaped and what better decade to have spent your teens than the one which just went by. The last ten years have been as mad as ever. Very few decades in human history would rival.
A lot has changed. My id is now myname@gmail.com instead of grandmastersexy@yahoo.com(& civilizedtragiclover@hotmail.com).
Went from chaddi's to pants and from chappals to shoes. If you have observed me well enough you will be able to predict what I will be wearing the next day as good as Nostradamus. But thats all of me for now, I will take pleasure in discussing more of it later.
Throughout this decade we saw a real shift, a shift compared to a few other in history. Indians went from straight cut to bell bottoms to narrow cuts. Random kids who have never played soccer are now fans of Manchester United. Leeds United got relegated. Hansi Cronje died in a plane crash, Rooney and Terry had a bad rash. MJ passed away or probably vanished and is living in malta with some funny name and a beard. The twin towers came falling down, Amrika is still figuring out who Osama is, and now they have Obama to contend with. On the home front Modi's came out to become the biggest newsmakers of the decade. Some others tried to grad news but failed. These incidents really changed the way we think. Today we cannot no longer not take sides. We have become more conscious of the fact that our lives are lived futile in trying to earn a living honestly when the rest of the world which drives in a BMW doesn't.
The Media literally took over our lives and probably thats what prompted me to take up journalism. Like all other things in life, I left journalism half way. Leaving Suhaan thinking if India would ever have an era of credible journalism. But I feel its made our lives more bearable. We get to see some serious stuff on tv which we rather wouldn't be subject to. A hairy guy screaming on tv would definitely be fun for someone who thinks India is Shining.
Coming back to why I was talking about this decade? I really have really no clue. But I definitely know that this decade has been full of changes for me. Learnt a lot of things and done a lot of things. I wish I could have captured every detail of this decade to some day look back at it. I would have rather put up a edited video instead of this horrendous post. For now I promise to come up with a more focussed post next time. I promise I wont write it during office hours because this post is and example enough of how bad my writing skills have become because of this new life of mine.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
2005
Sometimes I feel I am a 50 year old stuck in a 25 yr olds body. I look around and I see ambitious young friends working harder than ever to create a mark for themselves. Trying to create an identity with their degrees and their jobs. Few days ago when I met a few friends after almost a decade they skipped all question to the big one “Where do you work? what do you do?” I really want to tell them the life I have lived till now.
Very few people have ever heard me talk about my life in 2005. I was 18 then and lost. Searching for the usual things; love, god and direction. Like one famous founder of apple I also joined the Hare Krishnas in the search for all these answers. Those 12 months luckily took me on a roller coaster ride of a lifetime. The journey started from Mumbai, barely having arrived from a long distance sailing trip I was on a train to New Delhi with a train ticket. With me were two very devoted ‘devotees’ of the lord. Our plan was simple sleep in between berths and make it somehow to Delhi. To make it worse we were wearing a attire which would make us look even more foolish. Dhotis and a multicolor t shirt on top. Dinner time was spent trying to sell the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ to people who would just stare at us and wonder what has the world come to. The trip from New Delhi to Rishikesh was uneventful and so was the stay.
Our plan from there was pretty simple, somehow make it to Gangotri and then travel along mother ganga ‘till stocks last’. This was my first experience of the Himalayas, its deep valleys and intimidating peaks. However cliche it would sound, I was in love with the heights and equally intimidated. I would spend most of my time in the preaching sessions looking up at the peaks. My first experience where I was made to feel small. Never had I felt small in front of a 60 storey building but the magnanimity of those mountains got the best of my ego. And ego that would be humbled all along this journey again and again and again.
Next stop was Benaras. One of the few places in this planet I can never describe in words. The complex relations between the thousands of variables in our culture was on showcase right there. I would find myself often on the opposite banks just staring at lights and soaking in the magic they call religion. One of the ghats I was told was built by my ancestors. I could not sleep the whole of that night. At 4am in the morning I was up determined and like a film hero I wanted to make that dip historic. Proclaiming to my friends that a Shinde had arrived with my pseudo royal blood. Back in 2005 they did not have a mechanism to remove dead bodies from the water before they reached the ghats. Well the man with the royal blood did the scare of his lifetime that morning. The water was as cold as the water had been in Rishikesh and Haridwar. The brave Shinde dipped his feet in and with two long steps was waist deep in the water. And now with the next dip it was time for Gaurav Shinde to reclaim Scindia Ghat. Submerged with adrenaline at its highest I came back up. To my horror I had also pulled up a hand of a dead body. My reactions were natural to that of a teen, but not at all living up to honor my bloodline. Not even the high mountains or waves as high as a two storey building had ever scared the living daylights out of me as that moment had. God had devised a wicked plan to humble my ego and he was doing a good job.
Luckily the two months were pretty uneventful. Visit to Mathura, Gaya, Puri were as wonderful as they could get. Cleaning the floors of the Jagannath temple in Puri was a part of our self inculcated austerity drive. I still refuse to accept that I had got carried away with the Hare Krishna ideology while trying to sweep floors, dancing through the streets and preaching to people who actually only were listening to me for the food that followed. It was an inner drive beyond reasoning. This year was as epic for my life as it could be and the last months deserve a post for each of those months spent in the search for isolation and freedom.
Very few people have ever heard me talk about my life in 2005. I was 18 then and lost. Searching for the usual things; love, god and direction. Like one famous founder of apple I also joined the Hare Krishnas in the search for all these answers. Those 12 months luckily took me on a roller coaster ride of a lifetime. The journey started from Mumbai, barely having arrived from a long distance sailing trip I was on a train to New Delhi with a train ticket. With me were two very devoted ‘devotees’ of the lord. Our plan was simple sleep in between berths and make it somehow to Delhi. To make it worse we were wearing a attire which would make us look even more foolish. Dhotis and a multicolor t shirt on top. Dinner time was spent trying to sell the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ to people who would just stare at us and wonder what has the world come to. The trip from New Delhi to Rishikesh was uneventful and so was the stay.
Our plan from there was pretty simple, somehow make it to Gangotri and then travel along mother ganga ‘till stocks last’. This was my first experience of the Himalayas, its deep valleys and intimidating peaks. However cliche it would sound, I was in love with the heights and equally intimidated. I would spend most of my time in the preaching sessions looking up at the peaks. My first experience where I was made to feel small. Never had I felt small in front of a 60 storey building but the magnanimity of those mountains got the best of my ego. And ego that would be humbled all along this journey again and again and again.
Next stop was Benaras. One of the few places in this planet I can never describe in words. The complex relations between the thousands of variables in our culture was on showcase right there. I would find myself often on the opposite banks just staring at lights and soaking in the magic they call religion. One of the ghats I was told was built by my ancestors. I could not sleep the whole of that night. At 4am in the morning I was up determined and like a film hero I wanted to make that dip historic. Proclaiming to my friends that a Shinde had arrived with my pseudo royal blood. Back in 2005 they did not have a mechanism to remove dead bodies from the water before they reached the ghats. Well the man with the royal blood did the scare of his lifetime that morning. The water was as cold as the water had been in Rishikesh and Haridwar. The brave Shinde dipped his feet in and with two long steps was waist deep in the water. And now with the next dip it was time for Gaurav Shinde to reclaim Scindia Ghat. Submerged with adrenaline at its highest I came back up. To my horror I had also pulled up a hand of a dead body. My reactions were natural to that of a teen, but not at all living up to honor my bloodline. Not even the high mountains or waves as high as a two storey building had ever scared the living daylights out of me as that moment had. God had devised a wicked plan to humble my ego and he was doing a good job.
Luckily the two months were pretty uneventful. Visit to Mathura, Gaya, Puri were as wonderful as they could get. Cleaning the floors of the Jagannath temple in Puri was a part of our self inculcated austerity drive. I still refuse to accept that I had got carried away with the Hare Krishna ideology while trying to sweep floors, dancing through the streets and preaching to people who actually only were listening to me for the food that followed. It was an inner drive beyond reasoning. This year was as epic for my life as it could be and the last months deserve a post for each of those months spent in the search for isolation and freedom.
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