Feeling at home habit...

I have lost a number of blogs owing to my trust in this blogger technology. I spend time to put my thoughts together and as I type I can see through one corner of my eye that my typing is autosaved. To be fair, it has indeed been a good facility in the past when it saved most things unless some external aspect interfered with the machine causing a temporary failure of the facility. But now a days this has begun to happen more regularly.

So far I have done nothing to understand the cause, not sent any report to Google because I think my problem is minor compared to the massive work on their hands. Besides, things have not stayed in a prolonged state of disrepair with any of the Google thingies I use.

This morning too, I typed in something, a reasonably lengthy blog on how littering is a habit with us here in India. We simply do not understand the responsibility of having a clean environment. " Habit", I remember a shred now lost, " is the mind's unconscious reward for its desire, nay, need, to feel at home. 

I was stranded in Chennai with my wife, who was going to Canada with our two year old, when the BA flight was delayed by one full day! The BA put us up at the Park, (of course!) in easily one of the most comfortably furnished hotels in Chennai. I, who am not used to unreasonably comfortable interiors, found myself suffering in that 5 (or 7) star comfort zone. To add to my discomfiture I was dressed casually, very casually, since we were in a car that would drop my wife and son on the airport and bring me back home, a question of some 6 hours mostly spent in the car. I have always been a casual dresser, perhaps careless and even shoddy. Flip-flops have been my favorite footwear. I use them even now. But when I walked in through the Park's door, I shrunk in size! I wanted to be a plant in the lobby or a painting or even the fan for all I cared.

The hotel designed by some top notch high culture designer, I am sure, was not exactly catering to my needs. But then I was not exactly their regular client - I doubt if I ever will be - but that incident made me think how comfort really means "to feel at home". Whether you term it philistinism or sophistication, either from my point or theirs, would not help to usher in a bit of compatibility in that regard between the imposed and the imposer. In this case who the imposer is and who the imposed is a dicey judgement. Left to my recourse I would never have stepped within the gates of 'The Park'. I find 5 star-culture vulgar in my country. On the other hand the Parkies would in all probability consider me a loutish, uncultured oaf. More probably they may disdainfully not consider me at all! But if they do that, if they decide not to consider me at all, I shall feel all the more at home, for I feel quite at home being looked down on by folk from ivory towers. The farther they are from me the closer I feel at home! I like being on the ground.