Even before I have the vaguest idea that some day I might be living in Germany, I was historian by choice. The love for that began with a father at home who taught me the chronological order of the Mughal dynasty emperors, starting with Babur, culminating in Aurangzeb who razed the empire to the ground. Along with Indian history, WWII and the Allied and Axis powers always made for great dinner time conversation back in my childhood days. At the age of nine, I knew the significance of the war and who made up the two sides. While growing up, I devoured any book I could find on Hitler and Winston Churchill. As I grew older, and moved towards higher education and my career and the internet pervaded our lives, I drew up a list of the War films that I needed to see. Schlinder’s List and The Pianist still makes me cry. Life is Beautiful, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Enemy at the Gates, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, U-571, Pearl Harbour, The Bunker, Inglorious Bastards, Atonement, Valkyrie, The Way Back, King’s Speech, Shutter Island – the list of films were endless. The genre didn’t matter, anything remotely related to the period of 1938 – 1945 and I was hooked.And not to discount the hours spent on watching documentaries on Adolf Hitler, cumulatively I must have spent more than 1/10th of my life till now on material related to WWII.

Hence one can understand my anticipation and utter historical delight once I was offered the opportunity to work in Germany. And nature colluded with ration that I chose Munich as my base location. A week into my German “holiday”, and my first visit to anything remotely considered touristy in nature was Dachau, the very first concentration camp established by the Third Reich. For anyone who has never been to a concentration camp memorial site, the feeling cannot be described. Its a surreal one. A cataclysm of emotions, of reverence for those who suffered, of loathing, of awe, of indignation, of anger, of sorrow, of helplessness and so much more. All those images on screen, which I had relived through those hundred or so films that I had seen, were there before my eyes. I was walking the path, where thousands of Jews and political prisoners had marched, to morning and evening roll calls. I was wandering around their living quarters, where hundreds of these men had cramped into tiny wooden cots to sleep on half empty stomachs every night with thin potato sacks doubling up as blankets. I was traversing through their rooms which were the torture chambers used mercilessly by the SS officers to extract secrets or just have some fun. And I cried silently for all those people who had suffered so many many years ago, for no fault of theirs, but to be born a Jew.And right at the center of the camp is the plaque proclaiming “Never Again” in five different languages. I would like to believe that it is a heartfelt apology for all those horrific crimes committed during those 12 years at Dachau.

Some of the first prisoners arriving at the camp - picture taken off the museum wall

The watch towers - captured so eloquently in the war films

Dachau concentration camp was the first Nazi concentration camp which opened in Germany in 1933, located on the grounds of an abandoned factory near the medieval town of Dachau, on the outskirts of Munich. Its just a 20 minutes journey from Hauptbahnhof on the S2 line towards Petershausen and then a shuttle bus drops folks directly at the camp memorial site. It was the only camp which functioned for the entire 12 years of the Holocaust period. Today, the camp is open free of cost to all tourists, open from Tuesday to Sunday from 9 am to 5pm.

In the bright summer sunshine, it seemed as if the trees had forgotten the atrocities committed so many decades ago

The dream window to freedom?

I returned to Dachau with my friends one late summer afternoon. The surreal feeling returned. The rooms were just the way I had seen it in the cold harsh winter of January. The Never Again gleamed even brighter in the bright summer sunshine. The tourists flocked in huge numbers as usual. Nothing had changed, and never will. We cannot rewrite history, we cannot forget. All we can do is go back and visit places that remind us how lucky we are to live in a world free from genocide, a world where we have the freedom to choose our future, a world where we are not discriminated on the basis of our caste, creed or color. I live in the German land today, whose people would like us to remember them for their engineering, their Oktoberfest and beer, their fantastic cars and their strong economy which is continuously bailing out troubled European neighbors. Although I have never had the privilege to know the contemporary Germans’ feelings towards their inglorious past, furious readings on the internet and discussion forums have led me to believe that they know their history, will never forget it, and move on in their lives to create goodness for times immemorial all those years of atrocities which they regret.

My fantastic sojourn in Munich continues. I am looking forward to Oktoberfest, just a week away. And I see all that is good German around me. This city has been a lovely host to me and I hope to take back some valuable memories.

For those who choose to, their lives are pretty much governed by Facebook. I remember reading an article many days ago about a British lady who was fired from her job due to the increasing amount of her working time she had spent “Face-booking”. Characters in the American sitcom The Big Bang theory generously use the phrase “I’ll friend you Facebook” to their future in-laws! And regularly update their booty calls on Twitter! The global world is on our 17 inch laptop screens and iPhones and android phones. We follow our friends as they journey across Mongolia and NY City likewise. We comment on picture we like and ask for a dislike button. I wouldn’t be surprised if a dislike button appears as a offering in the near future. And if you are a regular on Facebook, one can notice the constant upgrades that Zuckerberg and team have been busy at.

For someone like me, whose pretty much left behind an active physical social life in India, Facebook and its virtual social life has taken over. There are Facebook rules and customs, that one gets familiar with, having spent just 2 active days on it. Wishing folks on birthdays, commenting on their pictures, liking their status updates – all these virtual actions determine our virtual friendship. And people with a large number of “friends”, actually makes me wonder how many of them come close to being true friends? Suppose you have 500+ friends on Facebook. How many of them have you met more than once in your lifetime? How many them have you spoken to more than 10 sentences? How many of them know the number of siblings you have? When you feel down and low, how many of them do you reach out to? For most, the number would be 10 or less. Then, pray, why do we have so many friends on our Facebook page? What purpose does Facebook serve in our lives? Have we ever paused to research that? Have we been so “virtualized” that  own physical friendships are in total disarray and we reach out to “like” button to prove our virtual friendships?

A lot of people, my fiancee for example, regard Facebook to be a total waste of time. I disagree. To a certain extent. The going is good, in my opinion, as long as we can balance the two – our virtual & physical friends. And then comes a time, when a virtual misunderstanding has grave ramifications on our true flesh and blood friends. It its at that precise moment that we need to draw the line. Does it mean, if someone “unfriends” me on Facebook, he/she doesn’t choose to be my friend? What if those someone who you considered close, do not comment on your photographs? Do you respond in the same way? Reciprocity seems to be the order of the day in our Facebook world. The question is, should we carry over our experiences in the virtual world to our real world as well? What if I meet a friend with whom I have “bad blood” on Facebook, but all was fine in the real world? What should be my code of conduct in the real world? Pretend nothing happened on Facebook? Or ignore his/her presence in the real world as well?

A realization has set in that there is a Facebook ethics and code of conduct – an unspoken one. One can even determine the parasites and the aloof crowd. Or the ones who just have an account since they have nothing better to do in life. Some people upload pictures every alternate day, a dinner with friends at a restaurant or some photographs taken at home for dinner with friends. Some even have pictures of their new gym clothes or shoes uploaded, and let me not even start on new gadgets!

Reverting back to the start of this post, Mark Zuckerberg, is a tech wonder boy. He’s redefined the way the common man defines friendship . I am not an expert at the business talk, hence will not elaborate on the billions that Facebook stands to make once they go public; anyone wanting to do the reading can follow the link : http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/01/03/is-facebook-really-worth-50-billion/

I am sharing some pictures of the Facebook HQ that I found on the internet. Looks like a cool place to work though!

Muisc@Work?

Coke@Facebook

But I stick to my guns that Google and the android enterprise is way more valuable as a service to me than Facebook! I yearn for the good old days where friends met over a cup of coffee and laughed over a joke or two. But then that is me; maybe someone out there, can still convince me on the value of having a “virtual” friend!

Having been asked to work from Germany for a year, I chose Munich, for no particular reason at all, other than the fact that this was the city with the maximum IBM India quorum. Hence, having some colleagues around me was the primary driver. Choice being made, external voices resonated that I couldn’t have chosen better. Bavaria land, of which Munich is the capital is the one of the richest economies by itself, within the Euro zone. The city has one of the highest standards of living and holds the headquarters of German conglomerates like Siemens AG, Allianz, BMW, Munich Re, Linde,and many more. It was a city with the unique feature of being both a business and cultural hub. And of course, it had it share of tragedies as well: the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games had captured the imagination of film makers and authors alike.

As a entry into Europe, I couldn’t have asked for something better. Having traveled far & wide across India , this was my first foray outside the boundaries of India and I was pretty excited. The memory of my flight landing n the midst of snow covered white fields, the almost silent crowds at the airport (a huge change from the noisy Indian airports), the tall blonde men and women in comparison to whom I may well have been a dwarf, the ride into the city in a taxi which played Mozart, were all images which would be frozen in my mind forever.

Its been more than 6 months I’ve been living in Munich, and its time to capture these last months on my diary. Its been a roller coaster ride. I found an apartment, just minutes from Hauptbahnhof, the Munich central station, in one of Munich recently fashionable area known as Maxvorstadt. The University was short walk away, whose grounds I used for my “not so regular” jogs. Having arrived in Munich at the peak of winter, I was surprised that extreme negative temperatures actually did not affect me much. I took to the snow like a fish to water. The first few weeks, I walked miles and miles, just to breathe in the smell of this city. I identified the way to office, the different modes of transportation in the vicinity of my apartment and I spent an inordinate amount of time browsing through the shelves in the grocery store, in an effort to understand the German language labels and the various category of meats that were widely available, especially having come from Kolkata, India where meat meant a choice of chicken, lamb and beef  and pork (last two options were available sparsely).

Having arrived at the peak of winter,  I was surprised by my ability to absorb the weather and move around freely. No amount of snowfall or chilly winds thwarted my efforts of long walks at really odd hours. A great aspect about this city, was the ultimate safety on the streets, and having coming from  India where I have grown up with my wits always attuned to picking up one wrong movement from a passer-by, meant that I found total freedom to move around, even returning home at 12 midnight often.

Its been a while that I have been here and the season is now changing towards a more warmer one. While I explore further and settle down, I hope to be able to pen down more thoughts. “Munchen mag Dich” – the city’s motto literally translating to “the city likes you”. And I have absolutely no doubt that these sentiments are going to be reciprocated in the next 12 months!

So when I visited London in June 2011 to meet my fiance in his adopted land for the first time, my expectation levels were at its peak. My enthusiasm was contagious; I couldn’t stop gabbling about the London Eye, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and the whole hog.

My first destination outside India was the city of Munich. And after having lived in Munich for 6 months, London was a rude shock. Munich is a doll house, pristine, disciplined, freakingly clean, orderly and with a almost zero crime rate and London was crowded, loud, noisy, gloomy and with construction ongoing in almost every major area in the city! My first impression of London were the incredible number of Asians that I saw. Indians and more Indians everywhere! Heathrow airport seemed like Indira Gandhi International airport. The British Raj era seemed to have created a reverse migration to the very land whose rulers had occupied us. I felt like home. And that is the very essence of London which charmed me.

I am usually a very tidy and disciplined person. Hence the first glimpses of London, the utter disregard for traffic lights (which is NEVER disregarded in Munich), the not to healthy Londoners (Muncheners are always jogging), the oldness of the buildings (Munich was completely rebuilt after WWII) and so many more such minute stuff totally flummoxed me. It just wasn’t what I had expected. Having lived in Munich for 6 months, my expectation was a carbon copy of the Western life that I had glimpsed here.

It took 48 hours for London to seep into my being. With Spikey in office, I started venturing out by myself. I have a travel card, and made solitary journeys across Ealing and neighboring areas. I even ventured out shopping to Oxford Street by myself. And whenever I could steal Spikey away, I saw the beautiful city and its landmarks.

And yes, London is breathtakingly beautiful. The city and its fantastic landscape from the London Eye, the huge crowds outside Madame Tussad’s, the lush green parks in Ealing and neighboring boroughs, the vibrancy of Oxford Street, the awesome crowds on Friday evening at Leiscester Square, the awe-inspiring Wimbledon courts,  the London Tube, the world’s oldest underground network, Westminster at night, Bath by day, the list is endless. And the one USP when compared to Munich – the English language. I was so ecstatic to be able to read the signs on the roads and the understand the announcements on the PA system on the underground! It was heaven.

There is one thing I have to mention here. The people of London. It was so amazing to have absolute strangers talking to me at tube stations, bus stops, Marks & Spencers, Debenhams, at Oxford Street. Nothing special, just a comments here and there about the weather, the cricket score, asking the directions to Primark; it was so like the feeling back home in India. Having spent a lifetime reading up on the atrocities of the British Raj, and having heard stories of apparent racism, I was so amazed to discover the love and friendliness of the Bristish people that today, I cannot imagine the atrocities that are happening across the UK today.

I have spent an entire day in front of the BBC, tracking the events in London, Birmingham, Nottingham, and the other cities. Spikey is in Notthingham, returning home to London tonight. He lives in Ealing, an upmarket West London leafy neighborhood.  A neighborhood, where I have strolled down the sidewalks several times, had an English breakfast at a joint which was attacked last night, bought several cups of Cafe Latter at a Starbucks nearby, waited for the bus in from of the garden where the cars were torched, a neighborhood where I have so many many cherished memories. A place where Spikey has called home for more than 5 years. Today that and many others, are up in flames.

Especially having seen the friendliness of the people on London, it makes me wonder why these young men are resorting to mindless violence. All people in the world have their share of issues and troubles. Violence never solves anything. Gandhi proved the way to the British where he was instrumental in getting us our freedom and human rights through non-violence and dialogue. The young Britishers need to go and learn the power of dialogue and give back the city I love, to its people, minus the looting, arson and mugging.

Anurag Basu has managed to build in a beautiful love story in the midst of cliches, like having the sidekick offer his unconditional friendship, the bad guys moving around in an entourage and initiating the son-in-law into the family by asking him to kill. In spite of these typical cliches, the film will sell in the days to come. It will be one of those films of which you will want the DVD in your  collection, to be able to revisit the love on screen.

Hrithik is beautiful. He is possibly the one actor in our home turf who can give the Matt Damons and Leonardo Di Caprios of Hollywood a run for their money. Let us not be surprised if someday he’s asked to share screen space with the Kate Winslet and romance her mood and spirit.

And Barbara? If a woman is struck speechless and spellbound by another lady in spite of not being gay, that speaks volume of her sheer beauty and mesmerizing smile! She wants to make you smile and feel nice about being a woman yourself.

The initial sizzling “looks” only chemistry uncannily reminds you of the Woody Allen movie Matchpoint where Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlet Johansson, both engaged to children of the family in a quest for a better life, speak their passion with their smoldering gazes. One night of romance jeopardizes their plans which leads to endless chase and mishaps and the final journey into Mexico. In the midst of this chaos, Basu manages to build in the amazing love between two individuals who don’t speak the same language. Their bodies and eyes do all the talking.

I wonder why Kangana Ranuat agreed to take on yet another role which allows her histrionics to be capitalized on. Although this time around she wasn’t given enough screen space to build up the crescendo.

Newcomer Nick Brown, casting the role of the affronted fiancee of Mori does manage to put on the anger and impatience in the chase for revenge and retribution. Kabir Bedi disappoints. He is just not given enough scope to other than put forth the image of the bad casino owner who doesn’t hesitate to kill disloyal employees.

The film is definitely one of the better love stories churned out by the Bollywood fraternity. The international version of the film should do good as well as it hard to fathom the international audience not being able to identify with our own Greek god!

Getting married and having a family is a noble cause. Its a noble cause for Ms. X, a personality so mirrored in the myriad women of India who have taken the final step to eternal (?) bliss. Someday I wish to do it as well. But is it the right time for me? All parents want their daughters and sons to settle down in life. My parents are no different. They believe that their responsibilities end once I’m on the matrimonial ship. I don’t begrudge them their opinion. But then, they are ordinary parents of an extra ordinary daughter!

My quest for the unknown has begun late, but its nowhere near its end. My journey outside the seas surrounding the coastline of this country is about to begin and I feel the excitement. I feel the power of the restlessness in me, the euphoria, the mirth and the utter glee with which I would sail into the ocean to a completely unknown future.

There is comfort in familiarity. It brings a sense of stability, a sense of security. Maybe it is for those who have journeyed to the ends of the earth who demand it, realizing that those journeys have fulfilled their purpose and brought them back to reality. I am yet to begin that journey. So maybe, this blog will see me, 12 months hence, putting forth a different state of mind. Maybe I will welcome that state of mind. But I refuse to give up that chance, and as I throw caution to the wind and set sail for an unknown destination I pray that my choices hold me in my stead and I do not have any regrets for this path I have chosen….

She is 12 years old and divorced. She is the only 3rd grader in the history of mankind who Hilary Clinton admires. She belongs to the entire gamut of repressed Islamic women who need to break free of the shackles and make a identity of their own. She is the sole breadwinner in her family who look up to her today, albeit a huge paradigm shift from the days when she walked out of a violent child marriage and was almost shunned by her family. She is an example of grit and determination and sheer courage in the face of odds.

So why is it that I have mentioned Nujood in my blog. Its simple; being an independent career woman, who has been given every opportunity in our free democratic land by her loving parents, I have lately been under a strange fetish to understand the other half, those who don’t have the freedom which I take for granted, those who don’t believe that we can make our own destiny, those who cannot have a say in who shares their marital bed, those who are repeatedly subjected to marital rape and whose society asks them to silently accept it as their fate. It was a really long time ago when I picked up the Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam by Asra Nomani. She was the friend of Daniel Pearl who saw it all though those terrible days and whose character was immortalized by Archie Punjabi in The Mighty Heart (who can forget the very pregnant Angelina Jolie!). Or it was even before that, when I was truly fascinated by the empresses and princesses of the Mughal dynasty during my history lesson in school, the Mehrunissas and Jahanaras of the Mughal dynasties. I don’t exactly remember when my fascination with their women folk started, but it’s still on.

I cannot explain in words, but today, the very first section I enter in a bookstore or a library is the Islamic section, and the book I inherently choose is that written by an Islamic woman. Jean Sasson (Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia), Shirin Ebadi (Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope ), Betty Mahmoody (Not without my Daughter), Ashraf Pahlavi (Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile), and so many more have become a part of my daily life. Possibly the only male author to join the ranks is Khalid Hosseini whose Thousand Splendid Suns was my first read, although his Kite Runner was an international bestseller (I saw the film and then read the book).

It has been a strange love affair with these women captured in the realms of their lives which I cannot fathom. There are women out there who have fought a stiff battle and paid the price with their lives and their loved ones. There are those who meekly accept their faith and pray that the next offspring from their womb is a boy. And then there are those who have transcended these harsh truths and moved onto another life, hoping to have been relieved of their earthly tragedies in their next life. The mere thought that there is another woman somewhere out there, maybe in my own country and belonging to my own religion, who doesn’t have the freedom of choice makes me wonder why was I chosen to be given that freedom. Was it my karma? Was it that my parents were chosen by a God who wanted me to understand and appreciate my freedom and fight a battle for those who do not understand it value, having never truly tasted freedom?

Maybe our world is myopic and is ready to believe that women like Nujood Ali from Islamic countries are the only oppressed one. Maybe its time to look beyond our them and delve into our own country and religion where another Nujood Ali may not have survived to tell her tale. Maybe, its time we looked beyond religion and more at the social implications of women without choice and the repercussions on our society. Maybe its time to have brought more Nujood Ali’s to the attention of Mrs. Hilary Clinton and the rest of the world.

The onus lies on us, the young, independent woman of today.

This post wasn’t planned. In the hullabaloo of the day’s work I had forgotten that today is International Woman’s Day. A well-timed sms from a dear married friend in Mumbai reminded me of the significance of this day! I hope I can come back next year with some meaningful contribution to the women who deserve the freedom that I take for granted. Wishing all my fantastic women friends out there – Happy Women’s Day babes!

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and while I mull over the exact significance of this day in my life, mush and romance is plastered all over the telly by channels which masquerade as business channels! Yes, you got it right – NDTV Profit was all gung-ho about the amount of business that this one day in the calendar year generates for the Indian economy. Despite complaints from religious groups that it is an affront to Indian tradition and culture, and further westernizing the Indian populous, Valentine’s Day has now become a widely recognized and celebrated day with Indian people.

Couples who plan to go on Valentine’s Day dates in some parts of India risk having their romance disrupted by religious radicals trying to prevent men and women meeting each other in public places.  Hindu organizations like the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv Sena have taken the onus on themselves to teach the Indian populous the dire straits of choosing this day to express their love. To the height of absurdity, Shiv Sena has even threatened to take pictures of couples caught expressing their love in cinemas, cafes, and shopping malls and give the pictures to their parents!

Despite such pure intent for the vandalism of love, does it deter the courage of the Indian junta to desert their valentine? To the extent of sounding sugar candy romantic, I shudder to think of this country  at the mercy of these self preaching groups; who do nothing but make our resolve stronger to believe in ourselves. The young couple in Mumbai and Kohlapur and their counterparts in Lucknow and Farukhabad will brave the cynics and venture out to meet and greet their partner in crime. I for one, will root for them and if a crime it may be defined as, then let us all commit it and be glad that we loved and lived while we had the chance.

Its been sometime since my last post. A lot has happened thence. In the last 6 months, the world has turned around for many. And its hit closer home. Its hit me. A dear friend has been laid off. Not that she didn’t know it it was coming. Nevertheless, no one wants to be unemployed. Another friend had to lay off people. You see, he’s a VP at a stock broking firm. He’s a family guy with an adorable daughter. He’s been building up his family wealth so as to give her a stable future. Alongside he’s been indirectly robbing the stable futures of at least 400 people in his team and his hands are tied. He needs pills to be able to sleep at night, unable to bear the anguish of their faces as they plead for their jobs, agreeing to work for even 25% of the original paychecks.

Whats happening around us is completely unpalatable to our young minds, as we witness the first recession of our professional lives. And to beat it, its the worst since the Great Depression, a recession so bad that even our fathers have not been privy to such a world economic collapse.

This aint the times of Loius Vuitton but rather, the time for Giffen goods!