Zephyr.....

On completion of my 8 years stay in India after returning from Muscat, I have this realization that there are certain things you need to grasp ASAP if you want to "survive" in contemporary India.

1) The "hari patti" effect : If at all this terminology sounds gibberish to you, then you surely haven't had the opportunity to visit the 'sarkari daftars' or municipal offices in India. Be it any kind of work you want to get done, right from getting a admission into a primary school to getting your tenders passed, you can't have it done without proper understanding of the "hari patti" effect. According to this concept by slipping in a few notes of Indian currency better known as "hari patti" into the hands of the concerned official in Barney Stinson style(for more details please watch HIMYM), you can minimize the time in which your work gets done and at times even get impossible tasks accomplished. Corruption has seeped through all levels of corporate as well as government hierarchies.

2) Booze to lose it : I know many people might not agree with me on this, but still some of my friends who have been through the worst can swear this is the best way to release the burden of ever piling frustration you go through in your hectic life. Be it grief of failure, tension of examinations or the melancholy of break-ups, nothing helps more than a bottle of booze.

3) Keeping up appearances : This is one thing I've learnt from the various
"pleasant" social gatherings I have attended. In order to maintain your so called "image" in your society, you are expected to follow a certain set of norms. For instance, attending wedding ceremonies of people whose names you've never heard in your life, greeting and talking merrily to people in social functions even if you bitch behind their back.

4) Life is a RAT race : One of the core problems with India, which is perhaps the reason for numerous other problems, is the ever growing population, currently the 2nd largest in the world with 1.2 billion. Along with this the fact that there are only two major fields in which majority of the population wants to pursue their education, namely engineering and medical, makes matters worse. Right from secondary school, children are pushed into the rat race for making it to the premier institutions of the country such as IITs, AIIMS, NITs, etc. As a consequence, large number of students, regardless of whether they have the caliber or the potential to sustain these fields, battle it out to the top. This goes to the extent that students spend two years of their higher secondary schooling preparing for entrance exams, many of them landing up in places such as Kota, where they are grilled rigorously and persistently with technical stuff to crack these exams. Reservation quotas does not make scene any less painful. There are seats reserved by the Indian government for the protection and improvement of the so called weaker sections of the society in all government aided institutes and companies.

5) Ctrl C + Ctrl V = Life made easy: In order to survive the ordeal of stacks of pending assignments and submissions, one has to be well acquainted with this formula. Even if you’ve got the brains of a genius, there are times when coping up with task up completing utter boring and tedious TAs, projects and reports, you have to get acquainted to this “art”.

6) Learn to ignore: There are times when you have to put both your ears to maximum utility, ie. listen from one ear and eject out from the other. This not only saves you the trouble and trauma of unwanted, irrelevant gossip but also helps you from wavering away from your goals due to uninvited and ruinous suggestions.

And last but not the least…

7)Be prepared: As the Scouts motto goes ”Be prepared”, you can consider yourself a scout trying to survive through your toughest times in this country. Be it floods, earthquakes, famines or other natural calamities, autorickshaw strikes, train delays, heavy traffic jams, you have to keep yourself mentally and physically prepared to deal with the same at any point in time.