"It's not you, it's me."

The cultural shock a conventional South Indian boy receives, when he makes the journey up north in India is something which has to be experienced to be believed. In my case, it was, for the want of a better word, exhausting. Exhausting in the sense that the journey of past three years has made me change the rules and regulations I had cultivated in myself over the 21 years before that.

I've begun to accept the erstwhile unacceptable.

• the temperature outside can be 4 degrees or 49 degrees. Deal with it.
• drinking alcohol isn't a crime.
• drinking alcohol every weekend isn't a crime.
• drinking alcohol during the week, just cos the weekend is still far away isn't a crime.
• you can have a masala dosa for 20 rupees from the roadside, or walk a 100m and have it for 200 inside the mall.
• waking up before 12pm on weekends is a crime, unless you want to catch the "cheaper by 50 bucks" show of that movie you want to watch.
• traffic signals are meant to be more of a guideline than rule.
• a monkey can come inside your apartment, eat the flour, open the fridge, drink some cold water and leave. (I've video proof for this)
• women drivers are allowed to drive on any side of the road, at any speed as they feel.
• If you are unlucky enough, the Rs.150 Tommy Hilfiger tshirt you brought from Karol Bagh, can become so famous that Pallika bazaar starts mass producing the same design in Lee Cooper.
• it's okay for girls to show skin - legs, knees, cleavages and all.
• it's actually practical to wear skin tight clothes in the summer.
• it's only natural to look at the said skin and/or skin tight bodices.

I've say to that the things I have said above is not unheard of in the south, but from where I come from, from the kind of values my family has tried to cultivate in me, alcohol, breaking of rules and provocative dressing is a big no-no. (Luckily, I haven't been given any guideline on what to do about the last point.) What I'm basically saying is that someone else coming from the south might be at ease with all of these, but I've been schooled in a different me.

Again, the underlying concept that I wanted to convey to you can be presented in the clichéd break up line "It's not you, it's me." 

I think that if instead of the national capital and the millennium city, if I had been designated to a more Indian-ized town/city, then I wouldn't have this much of a shock. But well, the shock has come and gone, and I'm still here.

I would like to believe that I've matured over the past 3 years. The friends, the situations and the public has changed me, hopefully for the better. If you don't believe me, let me give you some instances.

Once in college, one of my friends asked me to lend him my bike so that he can go and buy some "stuff" for the party he was hosting that night. I said "No, nothing of that sort is gonna come near my bike." And in the last 3 years, I've been the chauffeur for many a drunk/high individual.

Before, I would switch off my bike's engine at a red light. Now, when I'm running late for office, I have to think twice about whether to cut the light or not.

Again, in college, I noticed that some guys were passing lewd remarks about a classmate cos of the dress she was wearing. I gave her a mouthful of advice at the first chance I got (no effect from the advice though). In the past 3 years here, I've accepted that lewd remarks and provocative dressing are something that's part of life.

The experiences at workplace has been sobering. Hard work and commitment is not the path to success it seems. May be it is, but there seems to a lot of short-cuts to reach success and I'm not familiar with any.

As you can see, the naive, young, almost-stupid-enough-to-believe-anything boy, who came to Gurgaon on 29th June, 2010 is not the guy currently spamming your brain. He was the innocent and dependable guy you would see in the movies. Now, he is confused about what he is. I think I'm somewhere between the comical sidekick and the dark alter-ego.

I would like to believe that the innocent guy is still in their somewhere, but I'm not so sure anymore....

P.S. I would like dedicate this insane rant of mine to Mr. Mahavir Singh Rawat. He pinged me in the morning at office asking why I hadn't blogged in the past 6 months. The words of encouragement from him is what made me sit here and write this rant out. So now you know whom to beat up.. ;) :P