Kaleidoscope

This is a collection of unrelated incidents that happened in last few days, that interested or impressed me enough to take note.

Love thy neighbor ?
A friend of mine has been researching abroad for a number of years now. In the course of these academic pursuits, he has come in direct and indirect contact with a few Pakistani nationals. The deep reservation with which these neighbors hold Indians, struck my friend. It is rather strange how the strained relations between the two countries have affected the people - despite having a common origin, despite being the next-door neighbors, the people of two countries have very little understanding about each-other's culture and environment. In another continent, though they can understand the language the other speaks, which the english-speaking people cannot, they hold each other at an uncomfortable distance.

Confluence of cultures
This friend had a Persian lab-mate at some point of time. Now Persian is also the origin of Urdu, which by now, is quite integrated in the hindi language we speak in our day-to-day conversations. So, when the Persian researcher spoke at his home in his native tongue, my friend could catch quite a few words. Of course, he kept mum :-) (not wanting to embarass the other guy).
On the other hand, Kashmiri is entirely different, though I always expected it to have traces of Urdu - when a Kashmiri friend speaks his language, I cannot understand a word.
The native village of this friend is in Haryana, close to Rajasthan border. Rajasthani is frequently spoken in his village, and he understands it well despite staying in different parts of the country for most of his years. But he was surprised to hear that Rajasthani has a script as well (which incidentally is similar, but not same, as hindi devanagari script). Haryanvi is also similar to Hindi, but quite different from Rajashthani, but it has no written script. If someone is surprised to hear about the difference in languages spoken in these two neighboring states, picture this - in Rajasthan itself, there are many dialects - the language that is spoken in Bharatpur is quite different from what is used in Jaisalmer. It is truly amazing the number of languages and dialects that are spoken in our country! There is an age-old saying in hindi about our culturall diversity - 'Kos kos par badle paani, chaar kos par baani' (After every mile, the taste of the ground water changes; every four miles, the spoken dialect changes).

Visual impressions
My brother is usually careless about wearing sufficient warm clothing in the winter weather. When he saw me wearing a woollen cap, in the coldest of the weather, he expressed his agreement that woollen caps give nice, comfortable feeling. I had another one at home, so I gave it to him and he took it cheerfully. For a few days he happily roamed around in the cap. But one day when he came over, the first thing he did was to throw down the cap on the table, saying - 'I dont want your stupid cap. Keep it with yourself'. I was stunned for a moment; then he clarified - 'Whenever I come wearing this cap, the security guard of your apartment makes me sign the visitors' register'. The guards had asked him to sign his name twice, when he was wearing that cap. He had never been asked on numerous previous occasions, when he entered with car keys in one hand and mobile in other, and laptop bag on his shoulder. We had a good laugh over this episode when we imagined how would he have appeared to the guard - a not-so-elegant cap, his face hardly visible underneath, a black bag - and agreed that he definitely would have looked a pretty shady character in the night :-D
So, it is by appearance that the guards determine the dubious characters. Interesting!

Mobile revolution
Yesterday night, over dinner, my brother shared yet another story. He is a big patron of a road-side tea stall near his office. One day, the vendor asked him to suggest a mobile model for him. My brother agreed, but the geek that he is, asked his requirements. The vendor said, 'it should definitely have a color screen, and also a camera'. [This is something - road-side tea-stall-wallah with a camera phone!]. My brother told him it would cost about 4-5 K, and asked what else he needed. The vendor thought for few minutes and said it should also have a FM radio. My brother said, it would be about 7-8K. The vendor said, 'That is OK. But this time when I go to my native place, I want to have a good mobile phone'.

What does it show - Economic growth, Technology revolution, Peer pressure, Daring to Dream ??

Just for fun
In the restaurant where we were having our dinner, there was a couple, apparently recently engaged. They were waiting for some friends, whom the guy wanted to introduce to his fiancee. A little while later two guys walked in, and by way of greeting, one of them asked, 'how does the pair of us look?' He had long hair; and the other one was bald!