Phew...

What a year...!!!

Excellence...

As is my wont, I had been contemplating about 'this, that and the other' and it suddenly hit me that, in every sphere of life,

Excellence is a journey, not a destination!

When in Rome...

I am probably one of the few desis in the US who religiously makes a trip to India every year. (Now that I have actually said it, I will probably not go this year. I am jinxed that way. Does that ever happen to you? Once you say / claim something, it ceases to happen..? Ok, I am the only weird one I guess! :) ). That being said, there are several others who make that trip once in a couple of years. Here's something about the American desi traveller that never fails to impress me:

We get out of work early on a Friday, drive at 70mph on the right hand side of the road to WalMart, get done with the perfunctory last minute 'India shopping' (I hate doing that by the way. Over the last 4 years, I have reduced my shopping time from 2 hours to 1 hour to 30 minutes to ZERO!), get back to our apartment complex and park our Honda Accords (Ok, I drive a zippier car, but this is about the regular desi! :P ) in a space clearly delineated by two white strips, crank up the heater (It sure does get a bit nippy in December), stuff our stuff into our fancy Samsonite bags, eat authentic Mexican food that you had the restaurant folks pack for you in a 'to go' box and call it a day. You get to the airport on a Saturday afternoon /evening, hold the door at the entrance for the Texan with a stetson and 24 hours later, you land in India.

And then, just like that, you switch gears!

You get out of your seat before the captain switches off the 'fasten seat belt' sign (I hate it when people do it.), scramble to get ahead in the immigration line, search for your bags in a frenzy on the baggage carousel while keeping an eye on the airline/airport baggage handlers (lest they kidnap your bag or pilfer that $9.95 cologne from it), and walk out into a sea of taxi drivers clamouring for passage, while keeping your fingers crossed that you will find your uncle amidst the chaos. Once the customary greetings / hugs are performed, you step into a 'swanky' Toyota Qualis and experience top speeds of 50 kmph (in the middle of the night) on uneven roads, get to your destination, unload, unpack, distribute gifts, have that fun cup of desi chai and snuggle up in a rug/blanket to avoid the cold and to get a good night's sleep, only to be awakened by the milkman mercilesly pounding on the doorbell.

A completely different culture, norms of living and lifestyle. The average American desi traveller makes the transition effortlessly, almost intuitively. One changes their expectations and behavior as soon as one goes across the Arabian Sea.

And then of course, the exact reverse sequence of events finally brings back DesiMan to his cubicle.

And then again, just like that, he switches gears!

Remarkable indeed. Hats off to you, NRI traveller! :)

Decisions Decisions...

Avid followers of my Google Talk status will notice that I have had the title of this piece as my status for the last few weeks.
Indeed, it is a point in time where I am faced with multiple options and paths and need to decide and embark upon one of them. Each path, filled with its own promises of success and risks of failure, with some knowns and several unknowns, with its own potential ups and downs...

If you flash back a decade or two (depending upon how old you are), you were in 7th grade, writing your final exams, waiting for the summer holidays and then waiting to move into eighth grade.

Of course, when school re-opened, you were excited about your new classrooms, eyed your new class teacher with enormous suspicion, made friends with the new kid from Delhi, loved putting brown paper covers on your textbooks (oh, and which lables do I pick?) and so on and so forth. But, I digress...

There was a familiar pattern to it. Sixth grade gave way to seventh, which gave way to the eight and such. Your path was fixed, there wasn't much room or need to improvise, explore, experiment or take risk. It was a pre-determined course on which you kept chugging along, albeit with some good times (When you won the first prize in that science quiz) and some bad ones (Ugh! That 30 out of 50 in 9th grade Math!). Of course, you had slightly different issues in life then (How do I get my parents to increase my allowance? What sport do I want to play today?)... :)

Flash forward to the present - As we progress into our twenties, get a college education and / or start working, the options for paths to take in life have obscenely multiplied. Each decision point bringing it's own sets of pros and cons into the equation, each decision having that much more of an impact on how your life will shape up 10 years from now, 20 years from now, each decision making you think that much more about what you truly want out of life.

As they say, with each passing year, while life gets that much more complicated, it also brings with it a new set of experiences that are that much more fun! Several readers of this post are perhaps on the cusp of several major decisions in their lives. Remember that the set of constraints you will have to deal with will again keep increasing with time. So, enjoy the present for what it is. Enjoy the challenge that each decision brings with it at this point in time. While it may be taxing at times and downright painful at others, let's not forget the whole 'life is about the journey and not the destination' spiel. Each decision is an adventure, a pact with yourself to make a foray into the unknown, to prove or disprove your own hypotheses, to make new discoveries!

Happy decision making dear readers! :)