Pani Puri!

A boring friday morning, tending towards afternoon actually and I am settled in a conference room with my new team. Im trying my best to look as busy as I can meddling around on my Desktop and hoping nobody realises that what I am really doing is thinking about my previous office and all the friends I left behind there. The new team is a good mix of new people hired from all over literally so we have people from andhra, chennai, delhi, haryana, rajasthan and of course, maharashtra(yours truly). Suddenly a stray sentence from the technical people's group catches my attention. the lady goes "hum toh nahi bolte yahaan ki pani puri wahaan se acchi nahin hain.. Kitne gande ho". To which the Andhra guy goes "but the pani puri from andhra is brilliant. There are all flavours of water there. Here there is only one". And it makes me think about the golgappas of delhi, pani puri of mumbai and probably the south and the puchhkas of Kolkata. These are the three variants I have tried and though the essence remains the same the flavours vary drastically across the country with Kolkata making a sour, spicy liquid, Delhi with its sweet 'imli' and suji(semolina) puri variation and Mumbai of course with the ragda and the mint/pudina chutney or sometimes pulses but definitely not boiled potatoes as with the other two places. And then I remember how passionate each region's people are about their version of this simple dish. And its fun to see the love for their own cuisine and culture. But at the same time one wonders how is this mixture of so many different people, each thinking they are better than the other surviving as a country? Why not just accept differences and enjoy the change than be caught up in a senseless "what my ancestors have been doing is the only right thing to do and I will not evolve" attitude? This thought always leaves me confused about my fellow countrymen( is countrywomen valid?). Lets just hope that at the end of it we are a more stable team than the easily disoluble pani puri.

What's in a name?

Well I was going through a friends blog actually and it revolved around a magazine run in their organsisation named horizon. And it got me thinking, whats the obsession Indians have with names? Do they really think naming something after a specific god, flower, tree, place is gonna guarantee the character/shop/book/restaurant will just automatically imbibe the qualities of that thing? I have come across so many magazines titled horizon or the indian version of it(Kshitij, which incidentally is the origin of my name too and makes me feel like Im on cloud 9) that I think its become cliche now. Where has the originality gone? Why not come up with something more in sync with your organisation or school than the normal done and expected thing. Its almost as if people are so desperate to belong and so blinded by faith and religion that they will do anything just to court success(or what they think will bring them success). Its not about the name or extending this the rings you wear but what you do and how you act because for every Sachin Tendulkar, there are a million other Sachins who are absolutely hopeless at the game and for every Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, there are a million other Mohammads who are peaceful human beings. Also note the ultimate irony, Mohammad was also the name of the prophet who gave millions of followers a new religion and belief. So whats the point, be creative, be rational thinking human beings, be DIFFERENT!!!