kartik kannan's space on the web

LIFE THEN AND NOW


As the popular saying goes “memories are like waves on the sand ‘s of time” I have decided to do a REWIND of life and compare it with way it is today. These solely include my personal views on how I perceive life from my cornea . brickbats and bouquets on this are welcome.



Sometimes I look back and thank god that I was born in the winter of 1983 as I was able to live through 2 different era’s so to say, as I generally categorize life as pre 1994 and post 1994.Well the pre 94 days were seemingly the best days of my life ,where one could just wait and keep waiting and still see the clock amble it’s way 24 times in a day.People had time for every one and Sunday’s meant we would go visiting relatives ,exchange pleasantries and have a nice time on weekends.Those were the pristine days in which the mamiyaar mattuponnu (saas-bahu) war was fought with any guidance from dear ekta kapoor or Radhika(as in TN).The only so –called soap’s that ran without too much off a mass transfixation were junoon and before that were Ramayan and Mahabharat. Having a STAR TV connection and a PSTN telephone line those days ,were status symbols that one could flaunt around with. Entertainment for my family on Sundays were limited to watching Ramayana and derive the simple of pleasures of life by simply planning an outing with our neighbours by walk to the nearby besant nagar beach

Those days children found time to relax on a Sunday and listen to grandma’s stories and still time to play and enjoy with neighborhood children. One really wouldn’t complain if there was no telecast of a cricket match on good old DD,as people were more hooked on to ravi chaturvedi’s hindi commentary (which was faster than the then bullet train ) on a rickety radio set…or tune into Ameen sayani’s chaayageet on vividh bharathi


My view of Chennai started from the adyar signal at Gandhi nagar and stretched up to the besant nagar beach as my school was at one end of Gandhi nagar and my home in adyar.My work (as in homework,playing,chilling out with friends were mostly in my neighbourhood and the closeby besant nagar beach.Thiruvanmiyur then was the end of the world….and ECR was like going to the moon. It surprises me that whenever my mother used to take me to see her friends , it would be places like perungalathur,avadi,Triplicane etc etc , that I would consider really far off like a trip to the last planet Pluto.

I hated going out with my parents on weekends after a stage as my world on weekends was all about hitting 6 pieces of cricket stumps into the wet soil between the B and C block’s of my apartment and playing cricket with my friends.Those were the days when I played the B block vs C block matches with the enthusiasm and ferocity of an India Pakistan match. I would love to ape the actual cricketers in whatever they did and I set the example at my apartments.I remember for my 10th birthday in 1993, when my mother asked me what I wanted as a birthday present , I asked her to buy me a plain white shirt and paint on the front side INDIA and on the back my name KARTIK ,besides painting the Indian 1992 world cup t-shirt shades on my shoulders. I behaved like a big stud wearing that shirt ….and felt a great sense of living the life of a cricketer. The other crazy things I did were to paint my batting Pads in different colors ,apply my mother’s fair and lovely cream between my eyes and nose so as to resemble the zinc cream that players like Alan Donald and Craig McDermott wore ,so to say resembling a war paint and finally buy those “colored glasses” of the shades of golden, blue and silver ….similar to the sunglasses the players started to wear those days.

I was a guy who loved playing cricket and would not mind changing my style often. Given the mood that day I would with a stance aping some players like krish srikanth ,graham gooch-with the bat raised in the air above the stumps or bowl pace with different actions of bowlers thinking I was that bowler.I really enjoyed my childhood days living the life of a “cricketer” and at nights used to sit and chat with friends amidst the cool breeze from the elliots beach that soothened our tired bodies after play.

These days the post 94 days – all off a sudden , the pace of life has changed.Even though the quality and the ease of life has changed..with the introduction of IT and it’s allied cousin’s like electronics. People have become more lazy and with the enabling of such a vast expanse of technology , people seem to be living in a virtual world of bits and bytes than taking time out to the explore the world that surrounds them. Life has all of a sudden become a rat race where each moment one has to think of outwitting the other person and competition is thick in the air. People today have no time to sit back and enjoy life as they want to be constantly loaded with work as they feel out of place without work …especially in this IT industry where I work… (being on bench- the IT people’s jargon for not yet being assigned a project and having no work ).

People these days grow up with the mentality “time is money” and keep thinking ways of improving one’s life,setting targets for the way they want to be when they are 25,30,35…and so on.The simple pleasures of life are crushed by the aspirations of “more more more “ and people wish to earn more money than they can actually spend, resulting in lives spent more at the office…amidst the vast sea of tension.Take for example a student’s life where he studies these days only with aim of minting money.All the parent’s want each of their children to become mould’s of Sachin tendulkar’s ,amartya sen’s or aishwarya rai’s than being just themselves.The child is made to undergo tuitions at home after school and sent to some sports coaching academy….and is terribly loaded with peer pressure to perform. He works hard at his 10th board exams to go to the best combination of groups and finally his 12th standard exam’s to make sure he tops and gets a good college and after that works hard in college to get a good job , works even harder at his job to get that extra bucks of salary increment.Does he ever take a moment to sit back and see how fast life has gone on so mechanically . I believe parents these days should take of the Damocles sword hanging over the children and allow them to know and enjoy their environment and find out the natural abillties that they could help them professionally I certainly am not misconstruing one’s growth in life as infectious but what’s the use of earning money when one cant live the life to spend it.

Well I certainly make sure that money and prestige come no where in between me enjoying the simple pleasures of life which I do it my own way like enjoy the local trains in Chennai,the trams in Calcutta,eating groundnut’s from the crowded ranganathan street in Tnagar,being on bench ! ! ! than be busy downloading a tool ,ripping the latest MP3 or eating compilers for dinner.