Refurbished India - Review of weeks 1 and 2

Lesson 1: Being away from your country is not the same as being away from your home.

Every individual's attachment to his motherland is unique. I have been away from my motherland-on and off- for the past 5 years and let me assure you that being away from your country is not the same as being away from your home. I have realized that these two emotional attachments are conspicuously different and distinct.

India has changed- rather it has been "refurbished". Two years ago, when I last stepped on my country's soil, things were in the process of being done, they still are and always will be. The streets of Mumbai seem like an operation that didn't go as planned and had to be taken back to the drawing board to refurbish.

Lesson 2: Welcome to Mumbai, India or may we say Welcome to Zoombai, India.

Its been a week since the wife and I landed in Mumbai and what a week it has been! The first pleasant surprise was to see how beautifully the Mumbai International Airport has been completed. The contemporary structure has been slowly and gradually replaced with a more modern architectural feel giving it a more "Colaba-ish" look. Bottom line- I loved it! I wasn't able to thoroughly enjoy the good work done by the builders only because even at six in the morning it felt like we are stepping inside an oven set at 125 degrees Fahrenheit for over an hour! And somehow my growing appetite for that tasty butter chicken was replaced by sympathy for the poor fowl. Its been a week and I still haven't eaten chicken at home.

Cars- lots and lots of cars. About 10 years ago, if you were to use your peripheral vision and scan your vicinity, you would maybe be able to locate and correctly identify about 1 or 2 cars with ease. Today, you don't even have to use your peripheral vision, because a single glance on any street at any time of the day will present at least 6 to 8 different types of cars with their Ritz-y styles and Icons, Wagon-ing around the concrete Forest(er) in a Zen-like Verse(a). Its like car companies have found the Nano-technology for making cars with i to the power of 10!

Lesson 3:You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you can certainly BLING him up!

Life in Mumbai is still the same. The people on the streets walking like kings on their morning walks, dogs lying around waiting for a treat from a friendly passerby, rickshaw-wala's driving their "rath" as if they are the only vehicles on the road, crows taking extremely low-altitude flights, etc. etc. However, what has changes is that these people walk with branded earphones in their ears with a "West Side" bag on their sides, rickshaw-wala's have proliferated like Agent Smith in Matrix Reloaded and malls have emerges on either sides of the road just like there was a boom of guys selling pirated DVDs at roadside about half a decade ago! Mumbaiites are turning into mall rats and everything is sold with a pinch of BLING!

On our first evening at home, Amod, Poulomi, the wife and I ventured into Koram Mall in Thane. Simpletons that we are (read the wife and moi), we ordered a Paani Puri and Sev Puri. The bill- a whopping Rs.80!! It took us a while to gulp down the paani puris because we were still recovering from that feeling called "being looted"! But like true Mumbaiite or Thaneite, if you would say, we recovered just as fast as we were traumatized. The lesson learnt- Ask before you buy, because the value of a 100-rupee note is no longer what it used to be 2 years ago!

Our mind and Pavlov's dog.

I am almost certain that anyone who is reading this is at least aware of the term classical conditioning. Let me recap the concept for you- Classical conditioning was a form of learning that was identified by Ivan Pavlov. It was a major discovery of its times (early 19th century) when he described how associative learning took place in a dog when an unconditioned stimulus (US) was combined with a conditioned stimulus (CS) to give a conditioned response (CR).

What!????

Simple:

1. Food (US) + Ringing Bell (neutral stim.) = Salivation (CR)

2. After a few trials, only Ringing Bell (CS) = Salivation (CR)

Fast forward 109 years later, I sitting in my neuroscience class listening to this whole concept of classical conditioning and I learned something new about it. Typically classical conditioning occurs when the stimulus is presented externally. What if this conditioning was occurring internally as well? Are we classically conditioning ourselves without realizing that we are our own Pavlov as well as his dog?

Apparently the answer is YES.

Most of our fears and our superstitions are the result of our mind's classical conditioning on itself. Its quite simple to illustrate, imagine this if you can- you are walking alone at night and you hear the howling of a dog followed immediately (and co-incidentally) by a cat crossing your path. For a split second you get scared, you start to get nervous and suddenly your protective instincts take over, because for years you have been exposed to baseless superstitions and associations that something horrible or uneventful occurs after such events. This is nothing more than your mind getting conditioned to totally unrelated stimuli - dog bark and cat cross!

Now, lets glean on this topic a little more. If we can step back and look at this event from outside the box, it would only be intuitive that we analyze this situation by breaking it down to its tiniest occurrence. When we do that, we realize that a dog's bark is nothing more than a dog's bark and a cat crossing your path is just that- a cat crossing your path! The point to take home from this is, every little fear we have or every fanciful whim we cradle, may be nothing more than our mind playing tricks on us. We as modern beings, tend to associate everything with everything- a tendency that is automatic and subconscious, because we strive to gather meaning out of things we do not understand. What we don't realize is that this struggle for comprehension might not really help us get stronger.

The funny thing is, this change in behavior does not have to be in association to any action- it can occur even if an unpleasant thought or an emotionally charged memory is triggered. That's how deep seated our conditioned responses are- a process that we gave rise to, but never really figured out how to control. So ask yourself before you start feeling bad about something that you had no control over- is this really "me" or is this my mind playing tricks on his dog!

The Pavlov Altoid Theory - For more of the funniest videos, click here

What I have learned from Donut.....

July 6th, 2009 was an eventful day- it was our first wedding anniversary. It was the day I got Donut as a gift to Purnima and it was also the day my life offered me a companion in the form of a cute little puppy. In a span of 10 months I have watched Donut grow from a tiny little puppy to a brave little dog! In these 10 months, I learned a lot from this awesome little friend of mine, an awful lot. Without using words, this bundle of fur gave me an insight into myself as well as a change of outlook towards things around me. So let me give it straight up and that too in bullet points!

• You can be satisfied with only a few things in life and be perfectly happy with them. Give those few of your "belongings" all the love and affection you can and they soon become family!
• Learn to grow things around you, it makes you responsible and it builds a virtue called Patience.
• You learn to put others needs before yourself.
• You understand your attitude towards destruction and you learn to change it- you begin with anger and frustration and then you eventually move onto control and composure in face of debris.
• Sometimes sitting out on the patio and staring outside counts as a perfectly well-utilized day.
• Its important to have a place where you wait to go all day and when you reach there you are happy beyond your god-alone-knows-what's-going-on-in-that brain's understanding!!
• You can't get along with everyone- some of them are just angry dogs who bite!!
• Unconditional love is something that comes from within, you just can't fake it.
• Food is anything that fills your stomach and makes you smack your lips- along with everything else that can be put in your mouth (just kidding)...
• Keeping your mind clear brings a great night's sleep. Seriously.