I pride myself on the freedom of expression of opinion that India gives. If I am unhappy about something, I can freely write to a newspaper or magazine criticizing the people involved, blog about it, or go with a bunch of people and hold banners and march down the roads. I am happy that our newspapers brim with diversity of opinions and news. I am glad I can shoot a movie the way I want without pretty much getting a lot of it censored. I can shoot a movie about the political party I want to support and play it on TV. With a very few exceptions, I feel the government is quite doing well in granting me the freedom of expressing myself. But at what cost?

It is my fourth year in Singapore, and from the beginning of my stay here, I have been vaguely amused by the media and law here. My feelings have only become more appropriate now, in my final year, as I learn media law and read the hundreds of statutes that define seditious content, the word ‘obscene’ and party political films. As ever, I guffaw at what I consider a sad state of affairs when it comes to freedom of expression. There is only one noteworthy national newspaper, which likes the ruling government. Laws make sure the opposition is not anything to take note of. State television channels are a farce, as the government seems to have an invisible hand running it. People here do not really have many avenues to openly express what they feel, and in fact, not many even have anything to say. Three guys who blogged about an issue with ‘racist’ remarks were punished appropriately. Singapore is cautious, treading each step of its way with utmost concern, giving the government an absolute hand at handling people’s opinion, so that no situation arises that threatens the nation’s harmony and co-existence of the various races.

So on the one hand, we have India, that grants all its freedom, and is going far, yes, but still has way, way long to go in terms of development. On the other, we have developed Singapore, which has pretty much everything you need to lead a comfortable life – minus the privilege India grants. Even though I vehemently support the importance of having freedom of expression in my class, a doubt keeps creeping into my mind – is it worth it? India has achieved a great many things by granting this right, no doubt, but have we achieved what this right is for – development, peace? Have we taken for granted the right to speak up that seems to be running in our blood for centuries, been happy and smug about it, getting us pretty much nowhere in terms of the glorious vision of India as a developed nation?

Some answers please… a discussion could be enlightening!

Choice. How one simple word has enough potential to make you stop and think hard about something.
I stood there, torn between the two things drawing me to their sides. Is there really a choice? 'You always have a choice,' the words came to me. Said by some wise soul.
Soul. I had some soul-searching to do. Which would suit me? Both beckoned earnestly. I was at the boundary, given the tough job of choosing. My insides groaned. So did I.
My eyes wandered all over my immediate surroundings, looking for clues, cues, hints, to help me. That only made it worse, and I had to force myself to focus on my only two choices. Choose. Choice is a privilege, I knew. Not here. It killed me.
I closed my eyes. God, give me the power to decide. Give me the wisdom to choose the better option. Whichever would give meaning to my life, immediately. Is that asking for too much?
Someone slapped my back. I opened my eyes. 'Choose one, fast!' I heard.
Dairy Milk. Toblerone.
I'd rather be without a choice.

P.S.: Konjam kadi element popped up :P School's begun, and final year is no piece of cake. You have to do a final year project, study, apply for jobs, wonder how first years are getting hippier (:D) and worst of all, act like a responsible person. Losing my license to be myself at an alarming rate. What's to come?
And oh, did I tell you Chennaigal's family is back in Chennai, and Chennai is good ol' home again, and hopefully for a looong time to come? :)

Ever heard of an uneventful life going by at the speed of lightening? Heed mine. Doing hardly anything all day, but finding the days to head back to Singapore ticking off like that! (I clicked my finger to demonstrate - just so you know.)
Two (and a 1/2) books, two unfinished-hanging-at-the-point-of-action long short stories, random online final year project meetings, and recently accompanying mom on her craft class trips and dirtying my hand with ceramic and fevicol, all just describe these two weeks. Ahmedabad is thankfully back to its sweltering, stickily hot self - it's better than its dreary, always-raining form! And hot means ice creams! :D (which I have had only twice, sadly :( no time - I just described the paradox!)
And now there's Worldspace at home - it's a blessing, man! Shruti, the carnatic music channel is quite good, until the violin accompanists get so awful that the violin seems to be screeching into your ears and to quote a F.R.I.E.N.D.S-ism 'Makes me want to put my finger into my eye, through to my brain, and twirl it around!' Ok, that's taking it to an extreme, but I just want to change the channel, and that happens depending on my mom's mood :P. KL radio is decent too, playing either really-good songs, or awful-to-hear ones. Farishta plays old hindi songs, and is good at times too. Jhankaar, the new-Bollywood-Indipop channel, simply sucks. There are some good English stations too, like Voyager, UPOP, Orbit Rock and Top 40 (which I think plays the week's top 40 - just that, over and over again!) But considering that of ten songs they play, it's a surprise if I know 4, and also that the music will probably get on my mom's nerves, they're hardly played. But good, nevertheless.
We get two newspapers here, Indian Express and Times of India and both are pathetic. Indian Express is ridden with typos, and these buggers can't seem to differentiate between its and it's. Give me a break - it irritates me to see this error in some blogs, and on bloody newspapers, man, it's the last straw. And this, my friends, is the newspaper that has 'Journalism of Courage'!! Nothing but sensationalism, I say. But TOI beats I.Express on sensationalism hands down. Placement of news is awful, and less said about the way news is written, the better. Looks like these buggers don't know anything called the 'Pyramid of News Values' or they forgot their bloody Journalism 101 class stuff when they joined this awful newspaper. Even the quality of the physical paper is so bad that I don't even want to touch them when I flip through them. Ugh! I miss The Hindu badly.
I'm in the mood for more cursing - the wonderful people ruling our country and their petty politics, stripping a most deserving man of his post. Can any of the candidates plan India for 2020? Or have students thronging to meet the President? Answer questions intelligently? Walk over to the dias of a journalistic debate and bounce off questions and answers? Or visit my university and give a meaningful talk? We'll miss you, Dr Kalam. It was an honour to have you on our campus and personally, to take pictures of you from an arm's length away and write a news story on you.
What more.. it's been rather fun going with my mom to these craft classes and watching all the women talk away to glory in chatteringly-nonsensical hindi. There were even college-going and young girls who for some reason seemed to be preparing themselves to get married and stay at home to do all this - so I felt a little absurd to be in such company, but yeah since I won't be all that, I decided it doesn't matter :P
That's about it - I'm supposed to be doing research for my final year project, but I can't find relevant studies and so I have gotten bored. Guilt is tugging me to open the other window showing the results of my search on 'Social Presence Theory' .. yeah, I'll get there..

Archana shivered with delight. There, in her hand, was a little, outrageously expensive glass of Tequila. Her very first. She grinned with uncontrolled excitement.

‘It doesn’t look much different from water,’ she thought, ‘or maybe lime juice?’ She seriously wondered why it was this expensive. But she pushed those thoughts away. It was her 19^th birthday, and she would try this, no matter what.

She stared at the glass. Visions of men blabbering away in drunken glory loomed into view. Of men stumbling, unable to walk, as she had seen in movies. Of her classmates puking, like she had seen once in the hostel. And finally, of her parents, especially her mother’s horrified expression if only she came to know. But of course, she wouldn’t.

All the guys in the table had got what they wanted, and they all looked around. Kar looked at her, rubbing his hands in glee, and then picked up his glass, and said ‘To Archana’s health!’

‘Yo!’ screamed some.

‘Cheers,’ screamed others.

Archana smiled and put her glass down.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t do this?’ she asked herself.

‘Naah, go on,’ she told herself again.

She gingerly looked at the glass again.

‘To me,’ she told herself silently.

It was then she noticed the tiny thing in the glass. Something like the capillary tube in the chemistry lab. She picked it up and casually threw it out.

She then lifted the glass and saw how much of Tequila it held. Very, very less.

She put the glass to her mouth and gulped in one go.

She coughed and spat it out. Her friends looked at her.

‘Dear, dear, go slow!’ said Kar. The other guys bellowed with laughter.Archana, visibly shaken, managed a weak smile.

She looked at the glass again. It was almost empty. And she didn’t even know how it tasted!

Only a few drops left.

She opened her mouth again and shook the last few drops into her mouth, like she had just drunk something she absolutely relished.

She then licked her lips. No, not because it was tasty. It just didn’t really taste like anything to her. Almost tasteless, maybe slightly flavoured. Nothing special. But it burned her throat. Or maybe her mind was just making it up? Well, she really didn’t know why millions of people in the world went crazy over such a thing, tasteless, burning.

She stared blankly around as the guys finished up theirs. Buggers, most of them were ordering for more and more.

Suddenly, a fear gripped her. What if she were to puke too? And blabber incoherent things? Let out deep secrets? She shuddered, and announced ‘Let’s go, guys.’

The guys jeered. As expected. But they agreed. The nice guys, who wouldn’t want to offend her. In reality, nice guys who secretly feared Archana might just suddenly burst into tears in a fit of drunken crying if they didn’t leave immediately.

They got up, and Vik crashed to the ground. The other guys cheered as he staggered to his feet and got up.

Archana’s fears hit their peak (again). She started to walk, wanting to get to her room and to bed at the earliest.

‘Kar,’ she mumbled weakly, ‘what if I faint on the way?’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll take you to your room,’ he replied. The ever-steady Kar. ‘He isn’t even high,’ Archana thought, ‘and he had six drinks!’ And tripped.

Two guys rushed and pulled her up. Kar and Ray held her two arms and walked.

Archana, though ashamed, just limped on.

After what seemed an eternity, the guys opened her hostel room, and dropped her on the bed and left, throwing her purse on the chair. Archana curled up in bed, and pulled her covers over herself.

‘Get up, Aa-arch, you’re in the way!’ said some voice.

Archana looked up, dazed. It was Christie, the Mexican girl living in the next room. Archana was sleeping in the corridor, and three other people were watching her from two doors away.

She didn’t bother to ask how she got there. She quickly got up and rushed into her room.

All for a teeny, tiny glass of some tasteless, burning drink. Not worth it, she thought.

She went to the canteen after a shower. The guys were there.

‘Arch, all right?’ asked Kar cheerily.

‘Of course,’ Archana replied, not a bit of the embarrassment she had faced some time back apparent in her face or tone.

‘Well, now that you’re into it too, we were just thinking,’ he said, taking a bottle out of a DFS Galleria bag. Absolut. It looked like a bottle filled with clear, sparkling water.

He handed over the bottle to her. She opened it gingerly and sniffed.

She sneezed and threw the lid over. Kar got tensed and grabbed the bottle from her.

‘I, err, got to go,’ she said and awkwardly rushed out.

No more, she promised herself, and sneezed again. No more.

.. when I have to write a goodbye post to the last year!!
So, here comes to a close, all-important year 3, the year I began my 20 somethings, the year where I truly started earning and spent a whole semester paying for my expenses myself (and darn proud of it too!), when I realised I can be quite meticulous and detail-oriented too, and well, so on and so forth.
This year's seen a fair mix of good and worst times, times when I went to the brink of losing my prized possession - my optimism, but still managed to hang on a thread, which finally paid off! Getting an internship after two rejections from my dream jobs and then an interview with a Public Relations company (a field I totally disliked!) which finally took me in, took quite a toll on me. But looks like it was all for good - not only did i have an amazing time with my internship company, I got to know one of the agencies that didn't take me in was erm, torturing its poor interns. I scathed through, scarred, but guess I've emerged a little more resistant! I had great fun working with WS, despite the long hours, pissing-off requests from clients (that nearly convinced Public Relations is not for me!), slogging, slogging and even more slogging. The team, despite its sometimes-seemingly-inconsiderate requests (which I later got to sympathize with), was just delightful to work with. The icing on the cake was the MD of the company telling the whole office yesterday, during the Interns' farewell lunch, that he got to know talking to our client that this guy was pleased with my work, and knew me! (Ok,ok, it's quite a big deal for a client to know a lowly PR intern, just so you know!) Didn't someone say everything happens for a reason? :)
This was the year when my social circle in my univ expanded considerably, and with all the internship money coming in this sem, I went out quite a bit. The trip to Malaysia tops the list, and not to forget the food cooking sessions (mostly disasters?) and food-ordering-gumbala-eating sessions which were great fun! It was during this year I took a few important resolutions, after what seemed some tough times with people, almost leading to cynicism - lower your bloody expectations of everything! It not just makes life so much more easier to handle, it keeps you so much more happier, because you don't get disappointed! It's been working quite well, I say! Another one was to not complain - erm, ok, reduce it a bit, to be realistic! :D (Just so you don't go, 'After six months of posts which only moan, complain and bitch, she finally realized' :P )
Hmm, well, whatever; I've definitely become very easygoing on a lot of things, and my temper's hardly around compared to what it was before I came to Singapore - three cheers to that! I was also thrilled when my team mates said they loved my 'happy' outlook to everything - so hey, I am quite chirpy, yeah? :D
Anyway, here I am, 8 hours 15 mins away from my flight to heaven - HOME!!! Home per say is still quite a number of days away, but it's just 5 days before I can meet my mum and have the die-for rasam. Missed India too much this year. Going home once a year, totally is awful, so I'm never going to do it again! Adios, Singapore. Chennai, here I come! Madras-in raani pola vaaren!

At a time when I’m already swamped with work, a colleague comes and says, ‘Can I ask you a favour?’

Not another of these, I groan. Within, of course.

I pull my earphones off my ears and smile. ‘Sure, what can I do?’

I periodically nod, and diligently take notes to make sure I don’t forget anything.

Why me, and why today, I wonder. I had been quite jobless the last 3 days at work. Today, I had planned to work on my university research project. And I’m piled with work.

Why not the new intern, I wonder. I had started doing all this work within days of starting the internship, and she’s already been here quite a while. And poor thing, is quite jobless as well. Why not her?

And I put my earphones back on, and ‘Alaipayuthey kanna’ plays.

‘Idhu thagumo, idhu muraiyo, idhu dharmam thaano,’ the song goes.

I burst out laughing, much to the surprise of the others in my cubicle.

As I started out on the new work, juggling it with the old, I know, I’ll survive as long as I manage to laugh for the silliest things on planet earth.

11 more working days.

words and music still keep you together!
In a whirlwind of a month, which saw happy, delightful, depressing, painful times, some things - very few things - didn't change!
An amazing trip to an island beach in Malaysia, the beach, the swing (oh, how much I miss the damn thing!!) hard and lovely moments at work, books, my dormant novel slowly coming to life in bits and pieces, surprises - great and nasty ones, bursts of enthusiasm, rage, brooding, angry resolutions, excessive need to be by myself, not to forget the 3 days of limping after the snorkeling (mis)adventure in Malaysia when I stubbornly refused to allow my weakness to overpower me - whoa, was all April was about.
I'm delighted to announce that in another month and 2 days, yours truly will leave this freakin' place to come to India for a good month and a half - and will land in Chennai! However short the stay in Chennai might be, I can't wait to go, soak in the warmth of the city, its people, its crowd, its dirty streets, and most importantly, the life, the life's spice. 25 more working days, they'll pass. They'll pass. It's time for me to meet sane people and get sane again! Counting the days, counting 'em...