The Distances Still Remain

An oft-overused term is “the role of the internet in the ever shrinking world”. People go on and on about the internet making distance just another physical dimension. Access to data on your fingertips and all that bull-crap.

For the last year I have been away from home. Do I miss what’s happening back there? And when I say that, I do not mean my home in particular but even just India in general. When I need to know about the latest reservation policy or celebrity scandal, I get on to Times of India Website, for cricket there has always been Cricinfo and if there’s a video worth watching, it’s definitely on YouTube.

However is it adequate to make me feel at home? Where is the hustle and bustle a billion people muster up when going to work each day? The scurrying of the mums, the yelling of the dads and the crying of the kids going to school every morning? Where’s the democracy unique to our country that allows dogs, cows, buffaloes, tempos, cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians the equal right to share the same roadspace? Where’s the yell from children in the neighbourhood or the bursting of crackers every rare time India manages to win a cricket match? Where’s the smell of curry wafting through the kitchen as you sit around in the living room? Heck, though I hate to admit this, I even miss Himesh’s latest songs blasting through the tempos on roads. Taare Zameen Par is all that it is to me, three words. Even if I do download it and watch it, will I ever be able to keep abreast of all that a populace of a billion people and a few billion cattle can conjure up every day when the “Breaking News” section on every channel come up with the most ridiculous happenings. A DIG turning to Radha, Prince being rescued from a well, Ganeshji drinking milk are just all I can recollect at the moment.

The other day I saw a blog by one of my mates about some show named “Rock On”. Dunno anything about it, yet from the way he writes, it’s a much watched series back home.

10,000 kms away from home surrounded by an ocean named after the very country I come from seems a fair distance away by all accounts. There is no way the smells and tastes can be replicated on the internet and the sights are only what you are shown through the limited viewspace of a TV/Monitor screen. Home does beckon. And I eagerly wait for when I can get back, even though, a month of it is all I may get. But then going by what happens in India everyday, it may be all I can handle at the moment.