Weekend away from Madness....

OK, I have always thought of finally settling down in a small town when i am done with my corporate life, and with whatever limited knowledge I have about the cities, Lucknow and Patna, along with BHopal and Jaipur top the list. And this weekedn I was in Lucknow, I just felt that I really need to cut short the maddening corporate life that I am currently into, and well...settle down in one of these places. Well, to begin with, was in Lucknow on Thursday...and what a day it was, lazing around, with people, relatives and friends, who actually have time in their lives, they are also working, making money and carrying on with their lives, yet they have so much of peace and time in their lives, that I was jealous ;P Went "Gunj-ing" , had chaat and kulfi, and some amazing mango sessions, with taaje tode hue dussehri aam....and just to bring out the contrast in life, I was actually trying to attend to a official call while at Hazratgunj, while the rest of the people were enjoying shopping, and that was when I had actually applied for a chutti, and was on a vacation.....mera vacation aur unka working day...need i say more.... People talk to you as human beings, traffic is easy, and no one is in a hurry. People actually talk to you, "aap" is the order of the day than the "tu" we are all used to.....wtf am i doing with my life??? and as if to rub salt in my wounds, the next couple of days were at Siwan, a small town on UP-Bihar border, bang in the middle of the "purabiya" belt.....have some property there, and so have to go there every once in a while,used to actually go there and spend the entire vacations while in school there with my family---playing games in the huge house, and spending the veneings in AAm and Litchi bageechas, that's a place that belies every conventional logic we have, Delhi- AC is the order of the day, and here I was in Siwan, where there was no electricity for more than 4 hours in the 2 days that I was there, and there was no sweat, I could sit in the room inside the 100 year old house that we have, and there was cool breeze.the only time i needed bijli was to charge my cell:)....there are people who could tell you endless stories about your family, and you know the entire mohalla and a lot more people, when the person sitting in the municipal property tax department knows your family and the linkages within, I actually slept under the stars, on the roof of the house, gazing into the sky - into the millions of the stars, of all shapes and formations....staying in flats in delhi, ihad simply forgotten how stars look like, except for those late night ice creams at India Gate :) All this was at a level of city, but what stands out the most are the people, there are millionaires in Siwan, with shops and lands and businesses, and there are literal cliff hangers, people with chai shops who do not even earn say 50 bucks a day, and they are all happy, they know each other, and the families know each other, the chai wali from the chowk was actually sitting at our place, talking to my mother , who apparently is the "bahu of the town", the amazing thing was that she was happy and content with what she ws doing, unlike all of us thouroghbred MBA and engineers who think two hoots before jumping another job for a few thousand or few lakhs.....businesses open at 530 in morning only to close at 10 in the morning and then open again in evening- 5-8 , since it was too hot in the afternoon, and people wanted to just go back home...you could actually survive with 20 rupees for 3 square meals in the day, and yet again no one was in a hurry....I really wish there was a way that i could go back and do something in Siwan, something that ll keep me busy, and gets me money too, and I'll be more than happy to go there and settle down. One of my batchmates, NItesh , belongs to Ptna, has a job in Patna with a multinaitonal salary....and i feel there is no way anyone can beat it..... come to think of it, what keep these people happy.....is it the simplicity of thought?? or is it the lack of oneupmanship.....I may be a pauper living on literally nothing, but people were calm and would offer tea to anyone who comes to them.....why can all of us not be like them, what do they have or know that we don't??