Sunday, September 13, 2009

A real coconut

It is strange when our age Indians refer to their Parent's Generation as the hippy generation of 70s. Unless you are Protima bedi's daughter, your Parent's memory of that era would have been more likely that of trying to make a living in difficult times, emergency, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan or their regional equivalents.

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A month ago, during dinner at Santana Row, conversation with an acquaintance turned to share prices, the companies which we work for, rivals in our case and so on. A Phd working in the start-up of this decade mentioned how we have slipped into usual geek topics. Leaving aside the fact that table was filled with engineers half of them with master degrees and the other half had Phds(traditionally un kewl), I want to know what cool meant. were the girls in the show "The Hills", kewl? musing/questing for a boy friend constantly when most of the time there isnt one and if there is he is one hell of a psycho, using 'like' 1000 times in a conversation with cameras surrounding you and broadcasting your real life. that def. didnt look anything even remotely interesting.

I personally think being yourself is cool. But perceptions are different, quite a few people think doing certain things is cool. Those hills characters were definitely not cool. They were silly and insane. So now I just want to know what makes people cool in the popular perception sense.

7 comments:

  1. Hey does Coconut mean pazham? :--)

    I dont know if being oneself is cool. And doesnt it change with age? You cannot get away with being the same 'cool' person you were when you were in high school, 10 years later.

    If you find out what it is that makes a person cool, let me know too! :--)

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  2. SK: Coconut means white man/woman @ heart amd brown skin outside. "I dont know if being oneself is cool. " - opposite of that, immitating others/being pretentious would be so unkewl, ella?

    GW: the whole blog is a moo point, i would change the title to moopoint but someone has already claimed it and doesnt even look like they arent even mooing much.sigh.

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  3. Dunno if being yourself is cool, but it sure as hell is "hot" (at least I find it a turn on) and hence methinks "hot" is the new "cool"! :-) (Net net, you can't really go wrong with being yourself; and since "sustainable" is the buzzword of the times -- at least in California -- if "being yourself" ain't it, then what is?)

    p.s: Lemme guess...now you're about to do to your head what they do to a coconut outside our temples...well, don't! Here's the explanation for my nick: It's a nod to Coco Chanel, the French-woman founder of the famous fashion brand, "Chanel." (And they probably have an outlet at Santana Row.) Happy? :-)

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  4. no thengai breaking over this one, i guessed this alright:)

    may be the tangents are finally meeting:)

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  5. i personally think it has a lot to do with culture as well- the world we live in is getting to be too materialistic...not so much the case a a couple of decades ago, not where i hailed from anyway..but alas, that isn't true any more it seems...

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  6. what you say about our world is true, UL.

    But I still havent figured what these guys call cool.

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