Thappad in Philly

On the first day of the conference in Philadelphia, I saw my student lugging around two heavy suitcases. Curious, I tried lifting one, quickly regretting the possibility of a hernia. What are you carrying?-- I ask out of curiosity. He grins and says, ready-to-eat food/snacks. The voice in my head goes, "What a desi you are! Carrying your food all the way to Amrika!" As if reading my mind, he proudly says, "Professor, I am Gujarati. Even if Philadelphia runs out of food, I can survive for the next two weeks. And you can too!"

I pretended to ignore his generous offer. A few times after that, he asked me if I wanted upma or poha or bhakri or anything else. My snooty nose quickly declined. I was having sushi three meals a day, hoping that my sushi honeymoon would last forever. No, I did not want dhokla or papad. 

Papad, I didn't get, but I got a thappad (slap) from God quick enough. I woke up with a terrible headache one morning and could not immediately go outside to find food. My student rose up to the occasion and beamed confidently, do you want ginger or cardamom in your tea? Now I am not a morning tea drinker and I had no tea with me. I don't know if he was hallucinating. Who will get me ginger tea in the land of coffee?

In five minutes, he made me a cup of strong ginger tea and filled a plate with bhakri and other snacks. And like a hungry wolf, I gulped down my pride and all the food that came right off his suitcase, the one I had made fun of, including the ginger tea. It felt so good. My headache was gone in no time. I had only known him as a student so far, but now, I learnt what an industrious person he was too. He was visiting the US for the first time and as a vegetarian, he did not know what options he would have. Plus he is a student with not a lot of money, and has been very careful about what he eats for the last three years (he lost about 15 kilos and reversed all his health conditions). I know that he does not need my recommendation letter, he already has a job long before he finishes the PhD. But if he ever asks for one, I'd write him the strongest letter. Not too sure if he would write me a strong letter though.  

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To move or not?

After living in the US and Germany for twelve years, I moved to India about four years ago. Many wrongly think that I moved “back” to India, and I have “settled down” because my parents are getting old and they need me, and because moving back to the home country seems like the logical thing to do for many. I did not move to India because I am from India. I moved to India because this was the best job opportunity I had. After living elsewhere for better work opportunities, my best opportunity happened to be right where I grew up.

 

Oddly, I had no anxieties when moving to the US. I was 25-years old and very excited about living alone for the first time. I also had very little information about where I am going (both geographically and metaphorically). I did not know anyone from the US, wrongly thought that I was moving to the east coast (Washington, D.C., and the state of Washington, I could not tell them apart), and took a huge leap of faith. I had so little data and so few choices (I think I had four funded PhD offers) that I did not experience analysis paralysis.

 

This time, I got some very valuable advice from G, my first friend in the US. She said that to feel at home in India, I must give it at least three years and not quit before that. I see the value of this wisdom now. 

 

Many have asked me about my move, possibly because they are considering a move themselves, or looking for justifications not to move. I know many immigrants who constantly wonder what life would be like in India. There is no one right answer. No matter where you live, you will have your excitements and disappointments. But if you wish to make an informed move, I will strongly recommend listing all kinds of capital you think you have. You can only work with what you have and not what you wish you had. This is what I had: 

 

1. Family: My biggest capital was my family support. Moving to any country requires a lot of paperwork, more so in India. It was mind boggling and stressful. My parents, being insiders to the system, helped me figure out a lot of these things. When my parents could not help, my sister stepped in. Getting an Aadhar Card, setting up bank accounts, investing money, finding a financial consultant, buying a house, applying for a loan, paying off my mortgage, even where to buy furniture and office wear, they helped me with everything. They did most of the running around while I mostly signed documents. I could not have imagined this move later in life and without this level of family support. It always helps to have people who are insiders to the system. 

 

2. My personal background: It immensely helped that I moved to the country where I look and speak and dress like everyone. I did not have to work hard to fit in. I will never have to worry about visa, immigration, and stamping my passport. I can work anywhere and do anything (or nothing). No one will tell me that I have a different accent. No one will ask me when I am going back. Being fluent in English and Hindi, I can easily navigate most of India. The system may be chaotic, but I also know exactly how it works. I do not have to look for an Indian association or Indian group to find friends or wait till the weekend to celebrate any festival.  

 

3. My educational background: My US degrees and work experience are highly valued at my workplace and made me a competitive candidate.

 

4. My employer: The country I left and the country I came back to are very different. I was no longer visiting as a tourist annually. Daily life in India is hard. Anything you do takes a long time and standing in many long lines. My employer cushioned me from a lot of things. I did not need to figure out where to live, how to commute, and how to set up home. My employer took care of everything I needed during the first few months to settle in comfortably. My bags were held at the customs for a while, but my employer ensured that they were released soon. I had a cooking gas connection within no time. I cannot imagine this level of support in the other jobs I have had.

 

Most of my transition pains happened because initially, I expected things to work out in ways that it worked out in other countries. I cannot go to SBI and expect that I will have the Bank of America experience. I cannot stand in line keeping distance and expect that people after I will not jump lines or elbow my back. I cannot do an impromptu road trip and expect to find a (clean) restroom in the wilderness. I cannot expect to drive in peace, something I immensely enjoyed in the US. I cannot expect to fulfil my cravings for Chipotle (although Calcutta mutton biryani has more than compensated for it). I suffered so long as I brought my prior baggage and expected that things will work out the same way. Once I reset my expectations and stopped whining and complaining, adjusting was easy.

 

Daily life in India is hard in many ways. But it is also awesome in other ways. I took G’s three-year advice. I also decided that if things did not work here, I would move elsewhere. I am happy to report that it has been more than four years and I am still here. If you have a well-paying job, the quality of life in India could be much richer than life in the west. One could bypass most of the struggles one would experience anywhere.

 

A caveat: My experiences are but one data point, one lens of looking at the world. My experiences are also shaped by the capital I have. If you are considering a move to anywhere, here are the things you should think about:

 

1.      What kind of a position (job) am I moving to?

2.      Is it better or worse than what I have? In what ways?

3.      What kind of capital do I have?

4.      Would it be possible to go back if I needed to?

5.      Would it be possible to maintain my ties with where I am now?

6.      Do I see myself living here for at least five years?

7.      If things do not work out, do I have a Plan B?

 

Would I move again? Yes, if the opportunities are better than what I have now. However, the benefits I get here would be hard to match. I also have tenure. For the first time in fifteen years, I am not looking for, applying to, and interviewing for jobs every year. My employer is stable and wealthy. Retirement is decades away. The hurdles I experienced at first (for example, not having enough courses to teach) have all worked out. I get to see my family often (sometimes too often). It would be hard to overlook these and move elsewhere. 

 

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No good bones, only funny bones

Main aur meri tanhayi aksar yeh baatein karte hain…

 

The tanhayi in me is the voice in my head, a fiery, filter-less, chatty one. You’d think I am walking alone but I would be talking to that voice.

 

I wonder what is the big deal about a candle-lit dinner. You cannot even see your food, and what if you were eating fish with bones on Valentine’s Day? Maybe they have other sources of light too.  

 

I am seeing someone since the last two weeks. I did not anticipate it this early in life. A burly man with a paunch and the kind of laughter that makes you wonder if he ate a pair of Bose speakers for breakfast. I only knew of one Mody before I met him. I was destined to meet the second Mody the day I woke up and could not move my hips due to stiffness. The sleepy voice in my head wondered if I was already dead and this is rigor mortis setting in with my spirit talking to me.

 

A general physician had asked me to get an MRI before seeing Mody. Mody, a specialist, looked at the MRI reports, prescribed medicines, and asked me to see a physiotherapist who works next door (like literally the door next to his). I noticed that Mody’s name and his spouse’s name have four out of five letters in common. That’s an eighty percent match! Even sunshine and moonshine are not as close.  

 

I waited for a long time in the waiting room. I read about all the medical miracles he can do through the laminated cutouts of printed text he has put all over the walls. Many of them are written in grammatically wrong English. My inner vice scolds me for unconscious colonialism for noticing wrong English when English is neither of our native language. What a hypocrite I am!

 

I see Mody’s picture standing next to a tall, White doctor in scrubs. I see names of cities from Germany and the US printed on those laminated walls. I have no idea what he was doing in those places (getting trained, I suppose). I wonder if he would post a picture of himself standing next to a Black doctor.

 

Mody surely knows how to market himself.  

 

And when you have a lot of time to kill, you think of things that do not concern you.

 

And then the power goes off! It’s dark.

 

A power outage! I haven’t experienced one in a while. Suddenly I hear a lot of footsteps and shuffling around. A lot of hustle. People talking loudly in Gujarati, which, I can understand, not!

 

My eyes adjust to the darkness and I crane my neck from the waiting room to catch a glimpse of what is happening.

 

Mody is attending to his patients as the receptionist holds up the cell phone torch light. You’ve got to be kidding me!

 

I keep hoping that my turn never comes till power is back. And the woman loudly screams something that sounds like my name followed by, “Ben aaucho!” (sister, are you coming?)

 

I enter his room, half hoping that he will send me back. The woman is now holding two thin candles, looking like she is about to sing a haunted song from the 1950s by Lata Mangeshkar. Mody looks scary in the shadow. He asks me to touch my toes. He asks me to arch my back. He asks me to show a Bruce Lee kick in the air while facing away from him. He scribbles down the name of some medicines in illegible writing, prescribes more physiotherapy, and asks me to come back in a month.

 

On hearing that I work where I do, he tells me how impressed he is that I am a faculty at my age. I remind him that young people do not have orthopedic issues (although I want to remind him that being a faculty does not depend on age). He tells me the names of all my colleagues he has treated, possibly his way of making me comfortable through informal small talk. Patient confidentiality (and privacy) be darned! Those are subjective social constructs, some western society bee-ass anyway! I shudder thinking which colleague of mine will now learn about my creaking hips that are threatening to fall apart. Such a hypocrite I am, writing about my health and daily life on the blog but complaining about privacy.

 

G’s decade-old forecast that I may have my childbirth and hip replacement surgery on the same table still makes me shudder. I remember that line every time my hips creak. Mody tells me how intelligent both his sons are (also practicing medicine). He shares that he wanted his sons to study engineering but they did not listen. Good call, I say. Good riddance, I think!   

 

I ask him if he will show me the exercises. He says his physiotherapist will. Who knows, his paunch might have lashed out at me in the dark for asking him such a question.

 

I get up to leave. I tell him that this is my first candlelight consultation (I skip the Valentine’s Day reference). He laughs with an abandon that hurt my eardrums. As a child, I have studied for many an exam in candle light (especially during summers). I think that I have turned out to be fine, so this should be okay too.    

 

I walk up to the receptionist and show her my ID. I write down my name on a receipt book. I pay nothing. My employer and my insurance will sort it out and take care of the bills. I count my blessings. One of the many perks here include never paying for a doctor, medicines, blood work, tests, etc., if I see someone within a quite extensive healthcare network in India. They have my parents covered too. And here I am complaining about lack of patient confidentiality!

 

I walk back to the campus clinic and hand over the prescription. The receptionist makes a copy and notes my secretary’s number. Tomorrow, my secretary will collect the medicines and leave them at my office even before I am there. That was, in a nutshell, my Valentine’s Day this year. January was all about experiencing COVID-19 and February has been about getting orthopedic spas. What else will keep me busy this year, I wonder as I walk back home.   

 

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Virtual wars

I passed the daabwaala (the guy selling green coconuts) this evening to get a haircut. He was oblivious to the world, busy playing PUBG. I stopped and stared at him for a good 10 seconds. He had no idea!

You know how hair salons in India are (or maybe you don't). You go for a simple haircut. They take a fistful of your hair and assess it with the seriousness of a physician examining a patient. People and places change, but the narrative remains the same. I have extremely dry hair, I need to apply serum and a variety of other things, I need to do certain treatments, need to color my graying hair, blah blah blah. The way he was diagnosing me, it felt like I would be the next popular choice for the movie Bala. He looked at me through the mirror with a thoughtful expression, giving me a multitude of haircut options, asking if I wanted curls and spikes and what not!

I have seen this too many times. People with straight hair wanting curls and people with curls and waves getting their hair ninety degrees straight.

I was running out of patience. I told the guy, “Look! I am a 50-year-old teacher. My job requires that students take me seriously. I have not come here to get a "chokri-look" and I have about 40 minutes to spare. Hair health comes from good food and sleep, not from serum. I need a simple haircut. Remember, I need to look my age and not like some 20-year-old!

The guy was too stunned to say anything after that. He said I am the first person who asked him not to give a chokri-look. Then he talked about his home in Darjeeling, how he landed up here, that Shontu Pal was the previous guy who cut my hair and has now moved to the Kolkata branch, how their landlord has banned cooking meat and fish at home, how he craves for his native food, that he gets one month off every year, etc. He asked me if as a Bengali, I miss eating Bengali "non-veg" food. After all the small talk about dry hair, there was something we both connected over, not having access to our native food. I didn't have the heart to tell him that due to my privileges, I was less alienated from my food. That I did not have a landlord and I could order Bengali food from a restaurant whenever I wanted.

He forgot to take my "before" shot but took some "after" shots after getting on a stool. He was barely five feet tall. The great thing is that he showed me his Instagram page and asked if he has permission to post my "after" pics. Given that a lot of people have no idea about consent, it was a very nice gesture. The guy refused a tip.

I stopped at the daabwaala's on my way back. His head was still bowed subserviently to PUBG. I asked if he ever fears that his neck will fall off his shoulders. He laughed. I asked what if someone steals a few green coconuts while he is distracted? He looked up at the sky and said rather philosophically, "God is watching everyone. He will punish."

"God is watching you too, that you are distracted and not giving full attention to your work," I said rather unceremoniously.

He shrugged, scraped off the flesh from the coconut for me and went back to fighting virtual wars.

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Daably distracted

I went off for an evening stroll and enjoy daab (green coconut). Found a daabwaala (seller).

"I want a young coconut with moderate flesh," I said. I didn't want a ripe daab that has now become a coconut, nor did I want one with no flesh at all.

The guy barely looked up. On auto-pilot mode, he tapped and picked a coconut, cut it, and gave it to me. He had his earphones on, and his eyes were glued to his cellphone. He was smiling, lost in his own world.

I found it rather odd. I finished off the water and asked him to take out the flesh. He did so rather reluctantly, on auto-pilot mode. I finished it and asked for one more. I was pretty sure he looked mildly annoyed.

"What are you watching so intently?" I asked, curious.

"PUBG," he said. And I needed to hear no more. We have a PUBG-addict in our family too. My brother-in-law.

"Sabzi?" I asked knowingly. The dirty look he gave me, you should have seen his face.

I gave him a 500 rupee note. He showed me by hand gesture that he may not have change and he doesn't want to get distracted looking for change. I gave him a 100 rupee note. He barely managed to return me a twenty.

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Pune

I am reminded of the breakfast we had at Vohuman Café three weekends ago. Some of us had taken an early morning flight to Pune. We got really excited about the chicken sandwich they offered in Spice Jet, which is way better than the Chicken Junglee Sandwich in Indigo. Once we landed, we learnt that the hotel was full and could not accommodate an early check-in (wedding season and all). It was 8 am and we had about four hours to kill!

 

So my colleague and I went to Vohuman Café. The maska bun was laden with butter, the cheesy omelette was out of the world, and so was the Irani tea. After waking up at 3 am and catching a flight at 6 am, I needed this. I wish I had not been so impressed with my Spice Jet sandwich earlier.

After that, we walked the length and breadth and climbing the heights of Shaniwar Wada. We also went to Shreemant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati Mandir. The driver said that a first timer in Pune should not miss this, and it was not too far from my hotel in Koregaon Park either.

 

I did end up meeting a friend as well. I had last met her in 2006, at her wedding. Back in the day, getting parental permission to go to events post dusk used to be as difficult as getting a US visa. There would be thorough background checks, you had to answer hundreds of questions like kothaye jaabi? Keno jaabi? Na gele ki hobe? Koto bhalo bondhu? Kokhon firbi? Aar ke ke jaabe? Ki guarantee je timely firbi? There is no telling you what would happen if you were late. I think the curfew time for me was 10pm, which was more generous than what other friends had. Another friend and I had miraculously managed to get permission, so we slapped some makeup, borrowed a sari, took the afternoon metro with full makeup and people staring at us, and travelled all the way to Behala. We never got to meet the groom because we had strict parents who set stricter curfew times, and we were dependent on public transport which could take forever.

 

We never met after that. Fast forward life to 2022. Parental permissions are a thing of the past. I don’t even attend weddings anymore, all my friends who wanted to be married are married. I am in Pune and I am looking up the map for some odd-sounding place called Pimpri. I have no idea what it means, but I see that it will take a good hour to get there from my hotel. I must be there by 7:30 am. So, I message my friend, letting her know that I am in town and apologizing that I will not be able to meet. By some divine intervention, she tells me that she lives in Pimpri too, not too far from my work location.

 

So off I went there, literally gate crashing on a Sunday morning, finally meeting the groom from 2006 and the entire family. It was a gorgeous morning. I had my fill of adda, ginger tea, koraishuti'r kochuri aar alu'r dum, and we talked about good old times. We called up the other friend and gossiped some more! I even made her pack me some kochuri and alu’r dum for the rest of the day, so shameless I am. It turned out to be the best two hours I had spent in Pune!

 

And just like that, life continues to surprise. I love that my work takes me to different places, and I have reconnected with many school and college friends over the years. I loved Pune as a city too for many reasons and cannot wait for a re-reunion (or tri-union), hopefully with other friends as well!

 

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Miss-understandings

The delivery person calls my phone, telling me that he has a package for me at the campus main gate and will come over in two minutes to deliver it. I open my main door and wait outside on the porch. While doing so, I notice some dead insects and dried leaves on the porch. As I wait, I pick up a broom from inside and start sweeping the front entrance. The man shows up as I am sweeping. He hands me over the package and says, "Ask madam to go online and fill out the short survey." I nod my head. But wait, madam? Who is madam? Apparently, I got mistaken as the domestic help while sweeping my own home.

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I usually stay back in the office till late night, working as well as indulging in non-essential work sometimes such as watching movies. More than once, a security guard makes a round at around 2 am to make sure all offices are locked. He taps on my office door; I open the door and tell him that I will be working some more. He nods, looks at the name plate outside my office door and asks me my name. I point to the nameplate and tell him that is my name. Confused, he asks me which professor I work for. I tell him the name of the professor (my name again). He asks me what my name is. I repeat my name. Suddenly, realization dawns on him and he says, "Sorry sir, sorry sir, I thought that you are the research assistant!" (In Indian English, you say things twice or more for extra emphasis, yes yes, sorry sorry, ya ya, no no, aiyyo aiyyo). When I work late at night in my office, I frequently get mistaken to be a research assistant. And on realizing that I am the faculty, I magically become a sir.

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Sometimes, I keep a straight face and play along. Like when a cleaning staff had once asked me why I don't have children, I made a face and said, "Babu doesn't show interest!" Her expression was priceless. I find these episodes hilarious!

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And just like that, while enjoying my anonymity (many staff on campus still do not know who I am) and in between playing kaajer mashi (domestic help), the disinterested professor's childless wife and a nocturnal research assistant, I completed three years here recently!

 

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Some gossip a day keeps the doctor awake

There’s something very nostalgic about sisters staying up late at night, giggling and gossiping, that brings back memories of growing up. I think it’s a sister-sister thing; only sisters with sisters will get it. The last many nights have seen us indulging in decadent gossip, from the whereabouts of the paara’r jethima-pishimas to eccentric friends and relatives we are better off not knowing (in life) but knowing (on social media).

 

There’s little Maya trying to sleep, flanked by two gossip mongers incessantly chatting. Our chats are occasionally punctuated by a restless group of birds outside, or Maya’s shrill cries when her chomping spree has been prematurely interrupted because the overworked teat has unceremoniously slipped out of her mouth since her mom and aunt were giggling uncontrollably. This is usually followed by our mom’s sharp rebuke from the other room for being the careless Ma and mashi that we are, up and chatting in the middle of the night. “Tora ghumo ebaar! Bachcha jege jachche!” I sometimes wonder if she says these things out of decades of habit of disciplining us, or simply because she is experiencing FOMO.

 

Maya goes back to sleep peacefully once she has found her chomping device again, hanging like a half-monkey, half-kangaroo from her mom’s pouch, occasionally getting restless, turning on the other side to punch my chest with her little fist. She sidles up to her mom, a tiny human with simple, non-gossipy needs.

 

We go back to looking at social media profiles of people we consider as “odd.” Kamalika from Keshtopur who is Kami(nee) from Kansas now. I am looking at people and I have no idea who they are, what they do, or how did they come to occupy my attention. The nyaka boudi from Gurugram with baggy arms, Mampi and Tampi posing in front of the temples of Hampi, the new mom posting a dozen baby pics everyday with an emoji stuck on the baby’s face (why show when you don’t want to show?), the ex of the ex’s ex whose spouse is currently friends with some other ex (it’s a small world!), the crush from school who is a bald-headed, pot-bellied catch (me not) from New Jersey, Ranga mashima’r meye being married to Poltu kaku’r bou er bhaipo, and the more recent scary Halloween costumes of more Putanas from Durga pujo.

 

“Ei dekh Ei chobi ta. The caption says, ‘Dressed to kill!’”— my sister remarks.

 

I look at a woman I do not know, dressed in tight hunting clothes, her hair making her look like a cross between Sheeba and Kimi Katkar.

 

“Dressed to kill what? Mosquitoes?” I observed wryly.

 

We giggled in spasms. The baby got startled again. This time, she rightly turned around to kick my lower abdomen. I gasped audibly. The voice from the other room with the impending threat was back!

 

Ghumoshna tora. Oshobhyota kor. Bachcha ta keo ghumote dish na!! Kalke dekhchi toder!

 

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Starting 2022 with (COVID) positivity

2022 started with new experiences. I should have known something is terribly wrong when I started to crave watching Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. I sat through the over-the-top, misogynistic, problematic 3.5-hour movie, crying through every moment, even more than the very gaal-fola-Gobindor-Ma Jaya Bachchan did. I was feeling pretty down by then and decided to order biryani. I must be the only person in the world who got the news of being tested COVID positive and went back to eating biryani, now somewhat relieved that the sudden, inexplicable urge to watch a crappy movie might have had a medical reason.

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I’ve been thinking a lot ever since, lying in bed and asking, why me? I’m doubly vaccinated and always doubly masked up. I live the life of a recluse. I don’t party. I’ve said no to most people wanting to meet in person. All my friendships and relationships have been relegated to WhatsApp. I haven’t attended a wedding since 2012. I have never had domestic help. I haven’t traveled internationally. I mostly cook my food and order room service when in a hotel. I teach online. I never whine on social media about how I don’t have a social life anymore. Why me?
I got plenty of time to mull over these questions but found no answers. I spent the whole of January coughing and sleeping out of sheer weakness. That is what COVID does to you. Everyone who has survived it will have their own story to tell. My story involves a quarantine room I fell in love with, some brain fog, and a former US president.
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I am glad that I quarantined myself within an hour of showing symptoms, even before my RT-PCR could be scheduled the next day. I had taken a flight to Kolkata a week ago, just like I had done a few times in the past year, doubly masked and fully vaccinated. I had managed to evade COVID for almost two years since its outbreak. Yet, I shivered uncontrollably that evening, so much so that I had to wear a few sweaters and don double socks, getting on my haunches horizontally and hugging the bed. It also brought a sense of deep fear that pushed me to message a few close friends and let them know that I was very ill and I might be dying. I did not know what had afflicted me to bring about those chills and shivers (I still did not believe that it could be COVID), but if this is what dying looked like, I wondered if my financial savings would sink down the bank’s floor remaining unclaimed for life.
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It was my sister’s father-in-law, Malay Babu, who took most of the brunt of my illness. Within minutes, he had to vacate the bachelor pad where he lived, cooked, watched television, and enjoyed his life. It is a small, cozy room on the mezzanine floor I passed on the way to the rooftop. The doors were usually partially closed, so I never really got a good peek into the room. That would be my quarantine room at least till my test results were out. The sheets were quickly changed, fresh pillows were brought from downstairs, and Malay Babu barely got ten minutes to collect his essentials and move. I somehow limped up the stairs, holding on to the handrails, entered the room, and collapsed on the bed. I do not remember much from the rest of that night.
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I opened my eyes the next morning and looked around to get my first close look at the room. There was a fan atop my head and an air conditioner on the wall in front of me. There was a monitor. On the corner was a table with an assortment of medicines, a bottle of hair oil, and shaving paraphernalia. On the right wall were two windows, now closed. On the left wall were a series of pictures, some in black and white and some framed. First, there were Maya's ancestors staring back at me with stern eyes, I could tell the resemblance with little Maya. Maya is my eight-month-old niece. In one picture, Maya looked like an old man wearing dhuti and sitting on a chair. The resemblance of the forehead was striking. In another picture, Maya sat in a white sari, her head partially covered, with a striking resemblance of the cheek bones. Wait, was I hallucinating? How could both her great grandparents look like Maya unless they both looked like each other? My eyes drifted to the other pictures, a wall calendar (the tell-tale sign of a Bengali household), gods and goddesses, Thakur Ramkrishnadeb, Sarada Ma, and Swami Vivekananda. Then there was Sai Baba, Radha Krishna, and wait, a framed picture of George W. Bush smiling back at me. How did I forget about this picture?
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My sister got married many years ago. It was during the wedding that I met Malay Babu for the first time. He seemed like a traditional, nice person who spoke in Bangal and lauded me for doing a PhD (I was a PhD student at that time). He had also made an unusual request, asking me if I could bring him a picture of President Bush the next time. It would be one of the more unusual things someone had asked me to do. Obama was already the president then, I wonder if he knew it. I wondered what connection a gentleman from Kolkata who has only left the country for three trips to Bangladesh and has never boarded an airplane ever could have with President Bush. I told myself that it was none of my business. The next time I visited Kolkata, I gave him a rolled and laminated, 19” by 13” poster of President Bush, bought from Amazon for $10 (including $3.99 for shipping), that has gone out of stock since then. He was thrilled and thanked me many times. He never asked me for anything again. I heard that he took the poster to three shops in Rashbehari Avenue and all of them refused to frame it after looking at the poster. He finally found a shop where the person, after much coaxing and cajoling, framed the poster for him.
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And now, I was trapped in Malay Babu’s room, watching George Bush smile back at me from the very poster that I had bought many Januarys ago.
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I tested positive. I postponed my tickets. I called my parents and told them that I am not coming back to spend time with them for a while. There were tears. There was pep talk. There were dozens of medicines—cough syrups, nasal sprays, and multivitamins that replaced Malay Babu’s medicines. And there was a lot of brain fog. I was too weak to sit or walk or spend time on my phone, so I spent the next many days looking out of the window to see darkened algae stains on the walls of the adjoining homes on the right and President Bush smiling back at me on the left. I do not know if one was more interesting than the other.
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I fell in love with the room. It had a calm, restorative energy to it. I would doze off by 8:30 pm and wake up by 6 am, opening the windows and waiting for the first rays of the sun. With winter sunlight streaming in, this became the window to the world I was temporarily quarantined from. I suddenly had the gift of time and started taking note of the small things. An old woman, now blinded and possibly in her 90s, sang devotional songs praising Ram and Krishna every morning. I learnt that she has been abandoned in that house with a servant, her children having moved out long back and now waiting for her passing so that they can sell off the house to a promoter and build a high-rise apartment. On the other side, I heard loud voices of a child and a rather overbearing mother that left little to the imagination. “Why aren’t you eating breakfast? Why aren’t you doing your homework? How much water have you been drinking since morning? Have you emptied your bladder? Come, it’s time for a bath. It’s time for your drawing classes.” At night, the mother cooked and the child sat in the kitchen doing homework, the mother constantly nagging and asking him to frame sentences in English with perfect grammar. “Make a sentence with the word boy. What is the opposite of a boy? Make a sentence with the word girl.” One mistake in sentence construction, and the mother would be very upset. I wondered what all the fuss was about perfecting a language, a foreign language that too.
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I listened to many such conversations throughout the day, all while in bed, that I eventually discovered was raised on a platform using bricks and discarded blocks of wood to increase under-the-bed storage space. I sometimes wondered what would happen if the bed collapsed under my weight. The sunlight continued to give me hope every morning while President Bush kept smiling at me. Time had slowed down, and with nothing much to do, I thought a lot. I thought about my childhood and the winter of fourth grade when I had contracted chicken pox. We used to live in a really big house, and I was sent to the farthest room to quarantine. I lay there on a folding bed all day and watched the Telugu neighbors erect a grand pandal for a family wedding. They played loud music very early in the morning and with the absence of television or phone, that was my source of entertainment. Thirty years later, I still remember some of the songs of Kumar Sanu they played; those songs still remind me of chicken pox.
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My symptoms changed for the next few days. The chills were gone, but then came high fever. Then one day, there was sneezing. And coughing. The night when I threw up my dinner, I had an elevated heartbeat. My body had no clue how to respond to COVID. I went downstairs only a few times every day, for bathing and for using the restroom, my head reeling as I climbed up and down the stairs. My sister and her husband sanitized everything I touched with gusto. They gave me delicious home-cooked meals, peeled pomegranates, washed my dishes (so that I do not touch more things), and refilled my hot water flask, being at my beck and call 24/7. After living on my own for 16 years, I was glad that I was not left to recover on my own. On days when I felt a little better, I sat on a chair atop the stairs. From there, I watched little Maya play or watch “Gaiyya meri gaiyya” (Oh cow, my dear cow) on television.
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Malay Babu, the fantastic story teller that he is, regaled me with hundreds of stories from his life in Bangal bhasha. He enunciates Corona as Koruna (sympathy), and told me stories from the time when he served in the army, how he ran away from home once, how he drove jeeps during war, lifted weights, and ran miles every day to stay fit, how he went to Bangladesh to meet his extended family decades after his parents had moved to India, how he went bargaining for Ilish maach (fish) from Podda when the person selling fish told him that he has two begums (wives) and 18 children to take care at home, and how he got on a cruise ship near Barishal (might have been a large boat) with no money when a Muslim don who wore “jaali genji” (a vest designed like fishnet) rescued him. I relished all his stories from my vista point atop the stairs till I had no more energy left. Then I would go back to my room and stare at President Bush till I fell asleep. I am not sure if I was hallucinating, but I sometimes thought that he was moving his lips to talk to me.
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Eventually, my quarantine ended. I slowly started spending more time downstairs. Wearing a mask all the time became a habit. We celebrated the end of quarantine with biryani from Nusrat’s, just like the day when I had tested positive and spent the evening watching a crappy movie and eating mutton biryani. I booked my tickets. My parents visited. I packed my bags and put the sheets and pillow covers for washing. I hung my blankets in the sun. I picked up my things and took one last look at the room that had become my safe haven for the past two weeks. And I was awash with sadness. Sunlight was streaming through the windows just like it did every day. The mother was asking the child if he needed help separating the bones of the fish on his own. Maya’s ancestors started back at me. And on the far end, President Bush smiled back at me, wishing me health and waving me goodbye. 
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Managing the career

While checking in, the hotel receptionist asks me, “Ma’am, can I see your id?”

The concierge looks at my id, looks up information about my booking, looks at my id again, and asks me the most unusual question.

“Professor, can you give me tips to prepare for the CAT interview?”

The next morning, I wait for my taxi to get to the interview center. I call the driver and hear a sweet, pre-recorded voice speaking to me in Telugu. I understand nothing but understand enough to know that the line is busy and Driver Garu is speaking to someone else. He shows up eventually, wearing pottu, a circular dot on his forehead. I pay him and am about to leave when he says, “Madam, please give 5 rating before you get down.” He ensures I gave him five stars before I leave.

 At the center, I meet those who are organizing the interviews. My job was merely to see that everything looks good, and everything does look good. I didn’t have to do anything but watch.

The head of the center hurries to meet me. “Welcome madam. Welcome madam.” He assured me that everything is taken care of. Then, he lowers his voice a few decibels and asks me— Professor, may I ask my daughter to come meet you so that she can get tips on how to prepare for the CAT? She is in the tenth right now. She will need the time to prepare.

A helicopter parent! He asks me if I got my MBA from the same institution where I work. I tell him that I do not have an MBA. He never summoned his tenth grader after that, so I hope that this signaled to him that I am not worthy of giving career advice. What a relief!

The MBA obsession is everywhere!

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"The Elite Charade of Changing the World"

Congratulations, ma'am. Apple will donate a part of the funds to support HIV/AIDS programs in Africa.

Really? Where in Africa?

Umm.... Africa, you know!

I know Africa. It is a continent. It has many countries. Where exactly in Africa?

Ma'am, you must read this brochure.

She hands me a brochure and tries fading into the background quickly. A line in that brochure catches the eye. Something like, "This booklet is printed in China."

It reminds me of the book I am currently reading. “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas.

 

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Birthday tales

Birthdays and birthday conversations are interesting. I usually call my mother once I wake up on my birthday so that she can wish me. Usually, what follows is an in-depth account of the circumstances under which I was born. I have heard it so many times that I can repeat it verbatim now. How it always rains in Shrabon mash (my birthday month coinciding with the monsoons). How the day before I was born, my mother started complaining of minor discomfort (possibly she was about to go into labor). On hearing this, my grandfather immediately left for the fish market to buy the choicest Ilish maach (Hilsa fish). After a multi-course lunch of fish and patha’r mangsho (goat meat) and what not, my mother yawned and told my grandma, “I am going to take a nap now, please wake me up if I go into labor!” Apparently, she was so naïve that she thought that she might birth me in her sleep.

 

I have heard this story so many times now. And also the story about how my father went missing in action when I was born because he got Joy Bangla (conjunctivitis) and had to be quarantined. And there are other stories as well, mostly revolving around what they ate once they were home with me, and how the physician mistook my grandma for my mother because my grandma was holding me and the nurse started rubbing her arm with alcohol to give her a shot. Every morning of my birthday, I lip sync as my mother recounts the same stories while she continues to argue that my birthday should be celebrated as her birthday (the birth of a mother).

 

This year was special. I managed to include grandma too in our conference call. My mother and grandma recounted the same stories again. And the special part? They did some simple arithmetic and figured out that when grandma was my current age, she became a grandma. “আর  একে দেখো।  হাফ-প্যান্ট পরে বাচ্চা সেজে ঘুরে বেড়াচ্ছে।” – “And look at her? Prancing around in half-pants, dressed like a juvenile!” they observed.

 

How elated I was to learn that! 

 

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Progress report cards for old people

Annual report cards didn’t bother me in school. I did well in the subjects I liked, and the rest did not matter. As long as I was somewhere nicely hidden at the center instead of standing out due to good or bad reasons, I didn’t care.

Growing old, of late, has brought annual report cards of a different kind with newfound anxieties. My annual health report card didn’t look so good last year. It didn’t look terrible either, but I wanted to avoid being on the newspaper for suddenly dying under mysterious circumstances while, say, climbing up the stairs or sweeping and mopping the floor. If my mother could write one self-help book, it would be named, “Getting things done by nagging!” She nagged me into working on my numbers. She had high expectations of me waking up at 5 am every day and working out, which never happened. But I said goodbye to mutton, biryani, and mutton biryani (kinda!). The pandemic worked wonders too. I lost adipose with minimal effort, mostly by eating at home.

It was time for my annual report card. I found myself sweating as my mother frowned at the numbers from my bloodwork. I left it to her, I didn’t have the heart to look at the numbers myself. Looks like the undesirable higher numbers have gone down and the undesirable lower numbers have gone up. I still wonder how someone living in all-year-sunny India can have insufficient Vitamin D levels. But overall, the numbers look better than last year.

I celebrated the good numbers with mutton biryani from Arsalan and loved every grain of it!

 

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Debt-free!

I remember the day I signed the papers to my first home. It was a day after my thirty-eighth birthday. As I signed the documents, I felt no joy. I was awash with confusion and dread. I have seen (on social media) people proudly sharing pictures of their new homes, throwing housewarming parties, smiling into the camera, a dream-like depiction of life that social media paints. Yet, I felt nothing but discomfort, like a sharp pain in the chest that shoots up every time you take a deep breath, the kind of claustrophobia you feel every time you are in the dressing room trying on clothes two sizes smaller.

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As intuitive as it is in hindsight, it looks like I hadn’t done my math well. The dreamy pictures were mostly from people I knew in the US who pay way less interest rates on house mortgages than people in India do. At close to 8.75% compound interest, the numbers had really added up. I could see the dissonance between romanticizing the idea of owning something and the burden of owning it for real. Despite everything that people told me (this is a great investment, you will be getting tax breaks, etc.), I saw this as bondage. I had just started a new job, and with a mortgage to pay for the next two decades, I would not be able to take risks, change jobs or professions if I wanted to, or take a gap year to try something new without keeping my loan in mind.

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I had no problem in getting a loan. The reputation of my employer helped, and the wiry thin bank manager was happy to have fulfilled his own quarterly target of finding people who needed bank loans. The more he grinned and asked me if I wanted tea, the more irritated I felt. The only thing I could do now was, no, not live with the discomfort of wearing smaller clothes for the next twenty years, but to pay off the loan as soon as possible. And for that, I needed a plan.

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I was able to pay off that loan in 2020, finally, in about 14 months. It did not go well with the bank manager and he almost threw a tantrum, borderline misbehaving. His fake grin had vanished and this time, there was no offer for tea.

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There were a few things I learnt in this process of what I call, intentionally managing my money. The income was constant, so I did not have a lot of leeway there. However, the spending was something I intentionally controlled. I did not turn into a penny-pincher, I just got more intentional about where my money goes.

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For one, I had some savings already, but the interest it was getting me was way less than the interest I was paying on my loan. So I reshuffled some of my savings and put it towards my loan repayment. That was simple. I also spent a month minutely tracking down every expense I made. I already knew where most of my money goes, but putting it on paper made the process more visual (I can only act on things I see and not things that are in my head). I realized that fulfilling a goal became easier when it fed into other related or unrelated goals I had. I was already working on a few other things like getting tenure, losing weight, and reducing the noise in my life, the kind that had created dissonance for a while. All of these nicely fed into each other.

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For example, I love traveling, but I mindfully decided to only see places I would be visiting for work. This would cover a large proportion of my travel expenses, and conversely, I would be motivated to seek out work that required me to travel. And I did travel. From a conference in Canada to another one in the US, from a travel award that took me to Germany and work trips to Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, and Rajasthan, I traveled to my heart’s content. Since last year, I don’t remember paying for a single trip, not even my flights to visit my family.

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I also became more intentional about what I did with my leisure time. I did not have to visit every party I was invited to, especially if they were large and impersonal. I did not have to say yes every time someone wanted to dine out. I intentionally declined attending parties I did not feel like, especially the ones at night (I do not feel very hungry after 7 pm and most parties start at 8 pm). I said no to weddings, these were people I barely knew (I think even they were counting on me to bail out). COVID-19 helped immensely to reset my social life. All the parties and eating outside stopped. I re-learnt to cook and eat at home every day, something that worked wonders for my physical, mental, and financial health. With the newfound free time, I read, watched interesting videos, developed interesting courses, had interesting conversations, and thought of interesting research ideas.

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I also became more mindful of the resources already available to me. If I wanted to read a book, I’d ask the library to buy it for me. In the US, I regularly hung out at Starbucks, eating and drinking things high on calories. Every time I was at an airport, the smell of coffee lured me into lining up for my favorite iced mocha or Caramel Frappuccino with whipped cream. I barely drink coffee now, but if I am craving it, the faculty lounge has an impressive collection of tea and coffee. I have no paid subscriptions to entertainment channels like Netflix, I stick to YouTube. It is free, doesn’t have everything I want to watch (which keeps me intentional about what I watch) and I have found tons of amazing stuff on YouTube including videos on how to save money. A book, a cup of coffee and a movie here and there is not a lot; I can afford it all, but why do it if you don’t have to?

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I go to very few parties, those that are small and I know I will love. This gives me more time to do the things I like. I have never had domestic help, which is unusual in India. An average colleague of mine has a cook, a gardener, a driver, and a couple of people to do domestic chores. Instead of paying the domestic help to clean my home and then pay for a gym membership (which I do not enjoy going to), I clean my own home. From dusting to mopping to drying clothes, cutting vegetables, cooking and doing the dishes, it is a full-body workout. I also get to know my home better that way, things that I already have but have forgotten about. Even if I don’t feel like it someday or if my cleaning is not perfect, I don’t lose sleep over it. I don’t need a perfectly manicured garden or sparkling clean floors. My space is mine to manage whichever way I want to.

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I have incorporated dozens of such small changes in my life, tracking, and if needed, modifying my consumption patterns. This helped me to work efficiently, take care of my health, and save money. Work-wise, this has been one of my more productive years. I published several research papers and taught many new courses during the pandemic. Delayed gratification also left some room for magic when I wanted to buy some things but did not, and later got them either from a sale or free from Buy Nothing. Adding to the magic were some speaking assignments, a small award, and a stimulus check, unexpected things that brought in a little bit of extra pocket money and helped to pay off my loan sooner.

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Shifting mindsets (from “I do not have enough money” to “I have exactly what I need”) has taken me on newer journeys and helped me become debt-free quicker than I expected. Despite what others say about investments and tax breaks, there is no comfort of living in debt. Now I can continue with my job or change it, change cities, countries, professions, take a break, or do whatever I fancy (including doing nothing). I am likely going to do none, but I have the freedom to. As I reflect on the year that was 2020, going debt-free is one of the more significant events I will remember about it.

 

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