Kiddan?

 Hahahaha. Before you judge me for the title, give me a moment to explain. As I left a week ago for the much glorified (erm, quite the otherwise actually) MBA internship experience, I had a clichéd-but-nevertheless-good “New Girl in the City” vibe on my mind. However, a later, this Punjabi word quite does the trick. It can vary from implying “how are you” to “why a particular thing happened”. Pretty fluid, you can say. 

Case in point, dear reader; fluidity is the vibe. One of my favorite ones anyway. 

 

In the last ten days, I have moved from Ahmedabad to Chandigarh, Chandigarh to Ludhiana, Ludhiana to Chandigarh, Chandigarh to Bangalore, and Bangalore to Kolkata. AND, it does not end there. I have checked almost every possible type of accommodation available in Kolkata. There were places I had a hard time breathing but had to smile and say I would come back in case I finalize. I have fought with Oyo attendants over water supply at 11 PM when I was so exhausted that my eye lids were battling to simply droop and close, and well, not open again for a really long time.  

A teacher of ours happened to mention in the class, “once you are an MBA, you won’t be able to look at things from a “normal” perspective. 

While travelling in buses in Punjab, I could not help but feel sad over some of the trends in such a culturally rich place. The content of the songs was predominantly focused on things like Snapchat. You would not believe at the sheer numbers of songs that just talk about it. The ones in which girls were the protagonists, their dreams of marrying a particular guy were all they talked about. Now, I don’t have a problem with all this per se (Actually, I do). But of the things we studied in Media Studies is, our minds end up turning into echo chambers if they are continually fed similar content over a prolonged period of time. The whole ecosystem gets inclined in a particular direction. So my problem is that say an 18 year old living in a village in the vicinity of say Chandigarh hears these songs about Snapchat, and “aashiqi” in Chandigarh University, and say his/her peer group is pretty much a part of the same ecosystem, he/she would more often than not be caught up in the same stuff. How in the world are we supposed to get this section of people who are capable and have so much of potential get moving to bigger things that can actually make a difference in the longer run?

 

Another thing I noticed, in-flight advertising does manage to grab your attention more than other modes. Because you don’t really have anything else to do, and hence you stare at the New India Insurance seat cover in front of you. 

From the cultural perspective (yes, we studies Culture & Communications as well!), it took me the movement to see the differences, and appreciate them. The Punjabi buys sitting beside me did not know how to talk in English, but were so considerate that when they opened the window shade and I moved my face to the other side, they right away shut it. Also, because we are by and large more open as individuals, we don’t hesitate that much in approaching people. I saw them helping out a lady with her luggage because she was accompanied by a child, without her asking for it. Like they just rushed and said please let us help you. This left an exhausted me smiling because it reminded me of the 21 year old myself who had requested people in Faridabad to help with her 25 kg bag at the metro station but was kind of turned down. And then while coming from home, she had just stepped on the Amritsar Shatabdi and there were multiple people who were like please let us do this. 

The first thing I noticed about Bangalore was that the people are not so open in their personas. At least this was my observation for the while I was there. They are sweet, yes. But they are not so open. In the last couple of years, I have traveled a LOT by cabs. And it’s one of my favorite things in life, talking to different cab drivers. In Punjab and Gujarat, well, there’s no limit to the chattiness. As I tried to get talking with my cab driver in Bangalore, erm, he was awkward. 

 I saw a new fruit that I had never seen till now, and obviously I wanted to try that (despite my friends talking about hygiene issues with it :P). It tasted like those green almonds my dad gets for me, like the whole pulp has not quite solidified. I tried talking to the bhaiya and with our every-so-different dialects, I could only make out that it’s called something on the lines of “naatimunglu” and grows on trees. 

Here in Kolkata, now that I have a place to stay, the helping staff are my favorite people again. Mostly, they talk in Bangla, and I talk in Hindi, and through our smiles and gestures, we are kind of able to communicate what we are trying to. I was expecting my internship location to be Bangalore, and when it out of the blue came out to be Kolkata, I said to a friend of mine, “lassi ho gayi”. To this he said, “no re, roshogulla ho gaya”. Well, yeah. 

Someone said to me, “This is not your academic month. You are in Kolkata for once. Live through.”

I want these two months to be a blur, but a colorful one.

P.S. Loved those trees with soft pink flowers all over Bangalore.