You see what you want to see

Blogdosts,

Haha, that’s how Shobhaa De starts her blogs. For my case if the only dosts that I had were blogdosts, I would be a pretty loner in life. No agenda for this blog, but basically just getting back to the habit.

I had decided that there should be one post in every 2 weeks so effectively 26 posts a year but this is the first year I am missing that goal and that too by a large margin. November was hectic but I don’t think even with that in I could have made 26. It’s mainly my fault. But now with this post and the eagerly awaited annual Bollywood awards, 20 posts are assured.

I had been to India in November. It is strange how I viewed the country in a totally different light in every trip. Of course all of my trips always had a main motive (brother’s marriage, H1 stamping etc.) but there were also different angles to how I see the things around me. And I have come to the conclusion that we see what we want to see. Let me explain.

The first time when I came, I had heard from everybody how India has changed a lot. So I was looking for those signs of developments and I really felt that India has changed so much. Plus I had started looking for jobs that time and when I saw my friends in India already settled with stable jobs, things obviously looked rosy and nice in the country.

The second time I went, I had a job at hand, friends were getting married and I really didn’t care for how India has changed. So things looked very much the same. I was trying to tell people that my home-town (Barasat) was a village contrary to what the people of Barasat think. So I was looking around diagnosing what consists of a city look and what is a village look. In Bangalore, friends were getting married, brother had finally settled into his own flat. There was nothing really I was looking out for. But the thing that hit me was the price of things. Now that I had started earning again, I was comparing the prices and I was always shocked by how expensive Bangalore/India had become.

Now this time, I saw things in a different light. I was comparing lifestyles. And Bangalore to me looked like as if the city has only home returned NRIs. This ofcourse can’t be true and that’s when I realized, you always see what you wanted to see. Everywhere I go, I see only NRIs. I was so proud of the Madras shorts that I bought this summer, but every tom dick and harry there was wearing Madras shorts. It was not as if that was the current fashion in Bangalore, but it mostly marked the home returned NRIs. One of the shops I went to had Thanksgiving discounts. I was shocked. As for the lifestyle, I had a notion that people like to have way too much fun in India love hectic weekends full of movies, malls, parties etc. And that was a negative for me. So this time when I looked out for that, I was again pleasantly surprised. People/ my friends had actually calmed down. They did things slowly. Weekends were relaxing and everything was peaceful.

I guess it has got more to do with phases of life that makes you think how you view things. Generally a place essentially remains the same. Afterall comeon, the country is 5000 years old. Looking out for drastic changes every 2 years will just assert ones ignorance.