the Thinker

I realised one thing when I returned home in January this year. When the trend is of sleek and trim television picture tubes, mobile phones and many other things; you cannot move around with extra flab on your body.

Therefore, my mother screamed at me when she saw me this time in Mumbai.

"How did you manage to gain so much weight? I want you to join a gym as soon as we reach Kolkata," she thundered.

I had no proper answer to her query and blamed my extra pounds on my long office hours, which required me to spend nearly 8-10 hours a day, sitting in front of the computer screen. So now, since the past two weeks, I have been attending a gym. One can imagine how tedious is it for an inherently lazy person like me to follow 25-26 exercises written in my chart.

The treadmill, cycle, stepper and all those exercising machines appeared to me like monsters of different sizes. Things started to ease up after 3-4 days, when I started listening to the ravings and ranting of the other members in the gym. I do not know whether all of you feel the same; but on a difficult schedule, things become easier with some kind of a diversion. Perhaps, that is why they put on music during most strenuous schedules.

I found my diversion in the mindless jabbering of my fellow gym-mates (not all of them though). There was this group of middle-aged housewives, who would all enter the gym together. Whereas the others would quickly change into their gym-suits in 5 minutes; these females would take over 15 minutes in the changing room. As one can guess, they spent 10 minutes chatting there.

Finally, they began their exercise regime. After every five minutes of leg lifting, one of them would enquire the others about what they cooked for lunch that day. The discussion would be followed by various recipes and lunch preparations, which do not consume much time. They would go on talking until our trainer would interrupt their conversation and put them back to their exercises.

Another day, one of these homemakers (the most talkative one) started her day at the gym by asking her other mates that why they had not ever invited her for dinner at their homes (I do not want to sound arrogant but she was sounding idiotic as well as funny).

"This one (she pointed towards one in her group) never cares to invite me to her house for dinner one day," she complained in a juvenile tone. I was not at all interested in knowing why was she not invited for dinner at any place. But the only thing was that she was on the cycle during this pointless conversation. I wonder whether she noticed or not, but I was waiting for her to finish cycling, it was the last machine I was to do.

Though cooking was their favorite topic of discussion, the focus would sometimes shift to other things like who is the most beautiful girl in their locality and which one is the most eligible for marriage. Being a quieter person by nature, I am quite amused at the enthusiasm with which these homemakers chatted.

Whenever I enter the gym, I am always in a hurry to finish all the exercises in my chart and exit that place as soon as possible. I sometimes wonder how these women choose to stay back so long at this place. Not that they are obsessed about their exercise regime, but it serves as an ideal chatting outlet for them.

The other day a new girl entered the gym. She is a north Indian, a Punjabi called Kali (in Hindi, it means a budding flower and it is pronounced as 'K-li'). She is quite a cheerful person, but the only thing that irked her was the way her name was pronounced by these women. Bengalis are anyways known for their extraordinary Hindi pronunciations. The 'babumoshai' tag is still attached to Bongs and these women further accentuated that.

The trainer saw Kali's exercise chart and said, "Koli, do this one first." The girl was at first amused at the way her name was pronounced but soon got tired and said,"Please, its Kali and not 'Koli'."

Instead of rectifying her error, the trainer replied,"Oh! Kali or Koli, its all the same."

The homemakers added,"Kali is pronounced like that only in Bengali."

The poor girl did not appear too satisfied at their response, but requested again that if possible, her name should be pronounced in the right way. The trainer took some pity on her and tried to follow the right way; but the girl's agony intensified when she started calling her 'Kaali.' Kali gave up all hopes.

Two weeks after I joined, I found some of these homemakers missing and some were complaining that the exercises are not trimming their tummies at all. Therefore, they are planning to quit the gym.

One of them said to our trainer,"What is this didi (sister)? I have been working out like anything over the past few months. But it is not making any difference. My tummy continues to remain of the same size as it was before. It is not that I chat too much. Its of no use, I think I will stop coming here."

"Humphhh...gotta to find another diversion soon," I thought.

I feel kind of ashamed to say this, but I managed to skip my blog-anniversary, which was yesterday. Time went past so swiftly, all of a sudden a realisation-God! I have been blogging since one year now. I remember how ignorant I was when first taught how to create a blog of one's own. Now, it is a part of my life. Hope I am not sounding too senti, but this is one platform where I can express and share ideas with all my fellowbloggers. Within this one year, my blog underwent a makeover only once. I guess it looks more vibrant now as many of you commented. I was always hesitant about keeping a personal dairy, because I have always been scared that if someone discovers it someday, my deepest secrets would come out in the open. I am still not very optimistic about that; but then, my blog serves as a partial diary. No need to mention, I still do not write my secrets here (I don't think many of us do); but it provides me a channel to vent out some thoughts about certain topics or issues that I tend to loom over. I believe that the only thing that bothers some of my blog friends is too much delay in putting up new posts. But as you know, 'I think, therefore I am.' The only thing is that I tend to think a bit more than others (hope I am not sounding pompous), so the delay. I made a very small modification to my blog this year. There is a pop-up window for comments. Ok, ok, I can hear those titters, hmm..there is nothing new about it. Most of you already have a pop-up window for comments. But I remember someone had suggested that I should have one (1.618, I guess it was you). So there you are-you have it now and it feels nice to gift something to my dear blog (however trivial it is) on its birthday, belated though! So three cheers for the Thinker-my one and only blog.

I wonder whether any of you guys consider this as an X-rated topic. However, this is something that has become an area of core interest for page3 news, psychologists, socialists and almost all of us. Meaning? This is 2006, and we are still in the grey about it. A few months back, I and one of my colleagues were returning home together from office. On the railway station, we noticed two guys. One of them had his hand around his friend's waist. They were walking in a manner, which made my friend giggle. Obviously, you people must have guessed the implications in this case. It was presumed that perhaps, the two guys were not 'straight.' I have no idea whether they were 'normal' or not. But it is apparent that we look at 'them' as alien species. Homosexuality is not a new phenomenon. It was seen and heard of during the ancient times; not only in Greek and Italian society, but also in the Indian society. There are references to homosexuality even in the Bible. The only thing is that, with the overpowering presence of media and newspapers today, this topic is one of the most talked about issues. But what does homosexuality mean in the first place? Many people consider it to be an abnormality and some think of it as a disease. One might be amused to know the kind the definitions that some people come up with, while discussing this issue. I remember one of my friends narrating to me, a hilarious episode that happened during an engineering fest. She represented her college in one of the debates in the fest, the topic was-whether homosexuality is unnatural or not. While listening to her, I realized how ludicrous people could be at times when they try to argue about an issue like this. My friend told me that many participants did not know what homosexuality is. One of them went on to discuss trees, flowers and other aspects of floral species. He was mainly stressing on the fact that plants are capable of asexual reproduction. He also spoke on how hermaphrodites reproduce (probably he thought he was speaking in favour of homosexuality). He went on speaking about vegetative reproduction, until he was told that he was discussing asexual reproduction and not homosexuality. Another participant, who was also speaking in favour of homosexuality, tried to apply laws of physics to exemplify his point. He said,"My friends, like poles attract...." After starting with this line, he went on to give long sermons on how people should treat homosexuals. Finally when he ended his speech, the first question shot up to him was-"Do like poles attract? Are you sure that is what you have learnt in Physics?" The speaker suddenly appeared embarrassed and started surfing nervously through his speech papers and muttered, "Oh..Did I say so?" People who were speaking against homosexuality were more aggressive in demonstrating their argument. One of them made bombastic and melodramatic statements, cursing homosexuals for their orientation. He utilized excessive doses of rhetoric to emphasize his point. He spoke,"People, homosexuality is a bane and a sin on the face of this earth. People indulging in these kinds of interactions are the most cursed and immoral beings living on this planet." "Do you know what is the basic difference between man and animals? Man was created erect and animals were not. Therefore, man uses his brain in most of the matters and animals do not. Since man knows the difference between himself and animals, therefore he understands what is right and what is wrong. We as humans, know that homosexuality is unnatural; therefore, one should condemn homosexual practices at all costs," he added. His excessive efforts paid off as a certain section of the crowd cheered him. However, there are a few points that many of us might have wanted to ask him. For example, how does an erect body structure lead to brains? Another important point-Was man actually created erect? Maybe he should have looked at Darwin's,'Origin of Species' before coming up with such arguments. Anyways, when it was pointed out to him that man has his origin in apes, (who were not erect as he said), he replied,"Yes, maybe he was not created erect, but being intellectual, man learnt how to be erect. Therefore, he is different from animals and knows homosexuality is not right." The query remains-"How does an erect physical structure lead to brains?" If one chooses to call homosexuality unnatural based on their 'superior scientific understanding', then at least they should sound rational. I hope that's not too much to expect from a batch of engineering students, who are by the way, a kind of 'hallmark' for scientific bend of minds in a country like India. One girl had an interesting theory to explain why she thought homosexuality is unnatural and she attributed it to certain chromosomal disorders. Since I am not a science student, I do not remember the exact reasons that she brought up, but the main crux of her speech was that when a woman conceives, it is the man whose chromosomes lead to determine the sex of the child (as all of us know). However, due to certain chromosomal disorders, it is possible that at times a child will have inclinations that belong to the opposite sex. For example, under such conditions, a male child might think more like a female and tend to behave like one as well. We call such men 'feminine men.' Since they have an attitude and behavioral traits of a woman, they tend to feel attraction for men. I never spoke about people who think of loving someone from one's gender is a 'disease'. A few months ago, I was surfing through the personal-problems column in some magazine. There, a young boy wanted advice. He said that he was a young student living in a boys hostel. He was normal in all aspects except for one thing. He was infatuated by his roommate. He felt his roommate had everything that he desired in his life partner. No girl ever felt so perfect as his roomie. However, he did not have the courage to admit his obsession to his crush, because of obvious reasons. He ended his question in the column by saying that he had never felt this way for another guy. Was this normal? I will not label such a case as a disease or an abnormality. Companionship might often strike us when we least expect it, in a gift-wrap completely different from the kind we expect. But the issue is way more complex. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by law in India. Is it justified?