Chewing Gum

I have always believed that chewing gum helps increase concentration, and before I started writing it, I Googled it and found that it does help the mind in some way. Anyway, this post is about how I find how it helps me clear my mind of all the things I don't wanna think about.

So, two days ago, I was in Mumbai for the make-shift weekend that the company offered us, and the friend with whom I was supposed to be visiting the city had an appointment with his dentist. Hence, I had about two hours by myself in Mumbai, and I found myself at Charni Road. One look around and I found a Cafe Coffee Day (CCD, hereinafter). Two hours there would be tough, but it was worth a try, especially with some eye-candy sitting inside. This post, thence, has its origin in the effectiveness of chewing-gum (or chewing a chewing-gum, or chewing chewing-gum, or just chewing gum or whatever, I guess you get the point) in giving your mind an idle-feel.

I spotted it as soon as I entered CCD, and thought it was a risk worth taking.(A risk because they say an idle mind is a devil's workshop.) After some pondering over, I decided to give it a go and bought a 5s pack of Wrigley's Double Mint, and put one into my mouth. I took another look around and found some old issues of Outlook Magazine kept on some tables and picked up two of them to read and help pass time. They turned out to be election-related and election-dedicated issues, which I read through during the hour and a half that I was there. About 15 election based articles later, I was once-again disgusted with the Indian media. There were biased views expressed in each article and it wasn't difficult to find the author's "favourite" political party quite clearly in as early as the first paragraphs. What surprised me was that there were some who praised the parties that were evidently not among their preferred ones, and the sardonicism was still discernible, even though some were able to conceal it better within highly verbose texts intended to divert the innocent-reader. But chewing-gum (or chewing a chewing-gum, or chewing chewing-gum or chewing gum...) helps you see through that. And I found myself wondering if writing an article which is supposed to express unbiased views and which carries a footnote describing you as an "independent researcher and journalist" is a mask good enough to clandestinely pass off whatever you feel yourself to the unsuspecting reader. Shouldn't these kind of articles be edited and re-edited to take all the traces of favouritism out? Should it not be a responsibility of the media to give the readers, who turn to the media as a source of unbiased opinion and as an educative means, the unbiased opinion they look for?

That state of disgust drove me out of the CCD, and thinking of what to do, I glanced over to the side where the beach is supposed to be, and to my surprise, found the sand more golden and "Sit down upon"-able than I thought it would be and headed off there. The dirtiness of the sea water though, concurred with my expectations and made my 'liberated' mind start thinking of the awesome tourism potential that Mumbai has and which, sadly, hasn't yet been well exploited. I stood and stared at the coast for about 15 minutes thinking about what everyone of us has surely thought about till now, the Had-I-been-in-the-shoes-of-this-particular-minister-,-I-would-have kinda stuff, with the particular minister in my case being the tourism minister of Maharashtra. Thenceforth, my mind wandered on to the take-for-granted approach that we have towards our national heritage and our tourism related hotspots. I mean, how many times have you seen people having a pack of Kurkure or Lays and throwing it wherever they want? Or people inscribing their own names and those of their lovers in a crookedly shaped heart on the walls of these monuments? Or people taking the golden opportunity that a nearby flowing river offers them to bathe and to wash their clothes there itself? Why do people start complaining about India on coming back from a foreign tour instead of realizing the problems plaguing the nation and working towards their amelioration?

And disgust was one of the two causes that I left that beach. The other one, though, doesn't have to be mentioned here. A short trip to a Levis store later, I saw an outlet of Gelato Italiano, something that I can't resist. So, in I went and had a scoop of Gelato Kulfi. Inside the store, I had an experience that made me smile. A small girl of about 7 was recounting an incident to two people who seemed to be her father and her uncle. Not surprisingly, she was using the British language, instead of our national one to do so. Hypocritical though it may seem, I have trouble explaining to myself why people use English for their day-to-day conversations when they can very well use Hindi (or their mother-tongues)? I mean, I understand that English is the universal language and I wholly concede that it is absolutely essential in the modern world, but one can certainly maintain a distinction as to when to use English and when to prefer the language that is a direct descendant of the purest of the pure languages-Sanskrit. What I fail to understand is why parents are unwilling to speak to their child(ren) in Hindi and hence, carry on all conversation at home in the British tongue. Why do we look down upon someone using Hindi when we are at a public place? And why do we have to find moments where MPs use Hindi as the swearing-in language and rejoice at them, rather than scorn at others who are from states that have Hindi as the first language yet take their oaths in English?

The only thing that kept me there was the amazing ice-cream. And I stayed and listened. And her uncle got a phone call in the meantime and she had to repeat the story to him. So, she started all over- and this time in Hindi!! And it's a praiseworthy thing that she used as good Hindi as she was speaking in English (even exchanging phrases like "Oh my God!" with "Arey Baba!"). I stood there for some more time, and as luck would have it, found out soon that her father was a teacher, and then I realized that if these were the teachers looking after the youth of the nation (of which even I am a part, though it may seem otherwise from the serious nature of this post), then maybe there's some hope. Let us hope these teachers also educate the youth about unbiased opining, especially when sure their opinions will influence others, and about respecting our heritage and keeping the country clean. Let India become a great nation once again!

And then I had to spit out the chewing gum because it started tasting bland and I realized that I had passed three hours instead of the requisite two, and that my friend was still at the dentist's. And it can easily be said that I had a good time over the entire weekend, this time catching a movie that is definitely one of the best comedies I have seen in a while - Hangover. Even though I am still hung over from the 5 chewing gums that I had over the past 2 days, that was a great way to chew 20 hours away.

PS: I thought of naming this as "Random Rumblings of an Idle Mind", but then I thought this would be better.