A hazy shade of winter

There are few times of the year when everything around slows down, everything else briefly gets all silent and  you feel all the more closer to the place you live in. Its seems that the place belongs to you alone and you do not have to share it with all the passersby on the roads or the stream of cars making you wait at intersections. You feel a particular kinship with the solitary beauty of the place, standing aloof and vacant. Its weird because the same scene might very well be the sorry tale of a lonely soul left all alone in a deserted city.

Since I am again all by myself for the Thanksgiving break in Champaign, I try to tread carefully given the dichotomous situation I find myself in. Now the reason why I ended up all by myself for the break could range from- being lazy, not listening to friends, saving up a little to buy some gifts for friends and family.. etc..the list can get very long. So in everyone'e best interest lets just skip this part.

I sit by myself doing things that I like most, starting with going back to swimming after months.(Thankfully my body didn't hurt so much the next day!)
Reading a stolen newspaper for straight three hours..ahh what a feeling. I might have to do some explaining for the stolen piece. But in my defense the newspapers lie dumped on the ground near the mailbox and I have never seen anyone religiously picking up their copies. And secondly with all the proliferation of smart phones and internet, who in US wants to sit down and read some over 100 printed pages of weekend Wall Street Journal. And thirdly my public apology to whoever sorely missed their weekend newspaper because someone else picked it up and actually read it when they were out of campus for a glorious Thanksgiving break.
Honestly I sat down with a newspaper on a Sunday morning after almost one and a half years. Somehow in the course of settling to the new ways of life in US, the television and newsprint paper have totally gone out of my life(substituted by assignments of-course! ).
The television got a revival since August this year when one of my friends moved into an apartment with a Television set and my room mate started her weekly trips to Chicago to her husband's place. (Those two chance coincidences have spawned a lot of things, the television viewing being one of them.)
But the lowly old newspaper was missing from my life until today. It was a reunion so dear, i remembered all the lazy Sunday afternoons spent with a newspaper and my diary! Imagine my joy at finding an article on Oscar Wilde( her wife actually) but I wouldn't complain because it had a generous sprinkling of Wilde's pithy, witty, rye-humored quotes.
I smiled inwardly reading this quote:

"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life"

And you bet it went to my diary, though slightly modified, since I am not so aware of the married life as much  as the Facebook life of people. I wonder "when people will begin to get suspicious of anything that looks like a happy Facebook life!" I bet it will be the marketers who will get the wind first because they have the highest stakes in this marriage!

Just Overheard

Overhead this conversation on the bus this morning:

 "I remember it was 1998, I was in junior high school and it was the best year: The temperature in winters was a pleasant 70-80 F, Gas was 79 cents a gallon & the Illinois football team won the game which was the reason why a super strict teacher gave an additional one week for a submission"

What a year would it have been! However I have not verified any of the above facts and I didn't have my morning cup of coffee before i overhead this exchange. This conversation jogged my memory back to a side note which I wrote down from a budget editorial in India back in 2006-2007, I can vouch for the truth here:

"It was the best of time-GDP 8% growth

It was the worst of time-reforms have disappeared like the Cheshire cat, leaving only the grin

It was the age of wisdom-FM agrees that growth is the best antidote to poverty

It was the age of foolishness-we believe in antipoverty flagship programs of dubious efficiency and delivery

It was the epoch of belief-PM has raised the bar of growth to 10%

It was the epoch of incredulity-nothing in the budget to move the trajectory from 8-10%

We had everything before us..

We had nothing before us.."

Economically how do I remember the year of 2012. 

The year when USD INR exchange rate reached an all time high of 57.13 in June 2012, an average drop of 27%  against the US dollar over the course of a year. The year when round trip flight tickets(US-India) in Dec were above $2000 mark. The annual GDP growth rate was a dismal 5.3 in March 2012. To sum up in the words of a senior economist, India's economy is suffering from "policy incoherence, shifting global risk appetite and a comatose government"

Not the best of time for sure..

Yesterday was the presidential debate here in US, I did not follow it closely to make any intelligent comments about it or form any opinions. Lately I haven't really been following any economic-political stories. All that I seem to notice around me are the Apples and Google's of the world and their petty wars. Guess this is what happens when the newsprint papers gets replaced with smart phones and I only look at news feed courtesy Mashable on my Facebook page. No more Dickinson commentaries for me, no more argumentative friends around. May be after posting the blog I should read a real newspaper for a while.