Catch-60

She was whining for some time now, starting to give me a headache. I did not want to engage in a rather monotonous monologue that sounded to me like the first world problem of married people, but I couldn't just disengage and leave. So I nodded as she whined about the emotional disconnect she has felt for a while, and how she has been contemplating leaving him. It took me great effort to stifle a yawn. I had my own problems in life to deal with and wondered how long this whining would last.

At this point, I sensed a hint of empowerment in her voice.

“I’ll leave him if he does not start communicating with me. It's his loss. He will be the one left alone. I will have no problem finding someone.”

It felt a little odd to me after she iterated in a few different ways that she would not have trouble finding someone. Leaving your husband is one thing, power to you for following your heart, but where is this finding someone coming from? I know enough about the grown-up world to know that finding someone you like who likes you back isn’t always easy.

“Are you already seeing someone?” I asked.

“No, I am not,” she said.

“Then who is this someone you keep referring to? How can you find someone so soon?” I ask, in a moment of naivete.

At this point, the 60-year old wearing a sleeveless, body hugging top thrusts her boobs in a rather provocative way that came out more comic than provocative and says, her voice laced with passion, “Because I have a nice body. And I have a great personality. Because I am quite a catch.”

It might have been inappropriate to burst out laughing, but I am human. Even when I was half her age, I never had the conviction, the confidence to say out loud that I am quite a catch. Like they say, attitude is all that matters in life (no idea who said it though).

sunshine

Te(e)thering onto old memories

I have been in bed for the last 30 minutes, reading, and too lazy to get up and brush my teeth. I know I will at some point. But inertia afflicts me right now, big time. And while I try to build enough momentum to break this inertia, a memory from Nebraska resurfaces. I do not have too many remarkable memories of Nebraska, but this one, for the weirdest of reasons, I remember.

Who is the first person you see in the morning on a daily basis? I am not talking about your reflection in the mirror, but a real person. A partner? Parents? A pet? A colleague perhaps? For me, it used to be the man whose name I never got to know. He had white, back-brushed hair and he used to man the parking garage where I parked my car before heading to work. He used to smile and wave at me religiously as I scanned my parking permit to enter the garage Monday through Friday. And while he smiled his gummy smile, his dentures used to sit in a bowl by the table on the side. Every month, I stopped by to pay for parking, and he put on his dentures before writing me a receipt. Sometimes, he forgot, and those dentures sat there on the table, giggling at me as he wrote my receipt. It used to freak me out. This memory alone is enough to yank me off my bed and make me go brush my teeth.

sunshine

Viewing the world differently

We are very close with a certain family. Whenever I ring their doorbell, auntie shouts from inside, asking who it is. It leaves me a little confused, since she could look through the eye hole.

"It's me!," I shout back, instantly realizing how useless my answer is. Who exactly is this me? My parents have given me such a weird pet name that I am reluctant to shout out my name and let the entire community know. So I keep mum until auntie opens the door and tells me the story.

A petty thief got in the building, and on not being able to find anything better, stole their eye hole. So now, their door was left without anything to peep from. Uncle bought a new eye hole. Their daughter decided to take matters in her hand, and ended up gluing the new eye hole, but in the opposite direction. Auntie is still unable to see anything through it. So now, their son mocks his sister and decides to take things in his hand. He gets even stronger glue, takes the eye hole out, looks at it this way and that way with one eye closed like a detective would, and ends up gluing the eye hole exactly the same way again- the correct side reversed. Now the glue is so strong that it will not even come out. I actually saw it for myself. When I ring the door bell now, I can peep from outside and clearly see their living room while auntie comes up to the door to open it from inside. Auntie still has no idea who is standing outside.

The irony of this situation is not lost on me. For this could have only happened in a household with two engineer-siblings.

sunshine

A random day of my life in Kolkata

Somewhere between pre- and post-2014, my perception of Kolkata changed. Pre-2014, I would visit Kolkata from the USA where I drove a car and was used to a certain individualistic lifestyle. Naturally, ma and I used to spend most of our time arguing over what mode of transportation to take, sullying the joys of going out together. I refused to take the slow-moving rickety buses, the dangerously-driven autos, or even the metro. My ma does not believe in taking cabs, classifying all cab-drivers as kidnappers, and we would often stand at the bus stop arguing about this. She later grew wiser, so instead of arguing, she would suspiciously nod and agree that we should indeed take the cab, admitting that buses these days are not reliable anymore. However, as soon as we reached the main road, she would hop on a slowly oncoming bus, shrugging and telling me that no cabs were in sight. She would be standing on the footrest motioning to me by vigorously flailing her hands, "Chole aaye, chole aaye, taxi paabi na." or "Hop on, you won't find a cab." The thing is, she didn't even wait for 5 minutes for a cab to show up. I see her innocent face and I know that I have been tricked. So now I can either stand my ground in which case ma leaves in a bus and I stay where I am, or give in and take the bus. At this point, the conductor joins her too in screaming and asking me to board the bus, "Chole asun didi chole asun." I give up, take the bus, and see a broad grin of victory on ma's face. "Shona meye amar, ma'er katha shunte hoy." "Good girl, you must listen to mommy." I promise never to travel with her again.

Post-2014, I am older and wiser, somewhat. I now live in Germany and do not drive anymore. I haven't even renewed my driver's license. I take the public transportation all the time. I know that it is convenient, environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and the right thing to do. So as I board my flight to Kolkata, I tell myself that I am only taking the public transportation. No more cabs for me. If I want to see interesting people, I must take the metro. My ma has never been prouder.

So one evening, I decide to meet a friend in the opposite end of the city. Kolkata metro is fast, convenient, and connects the city north to south. But taking the metro involves walking for ten minutes to the main road, taking an auto to the station, walking under the bridge and hope that no flying missiles from moving trains of the nature of used cloth diapers or flying excreta land on me, and then taking the metro. The humidity is killing me, my clothes uncomfortably sticking to me. I haven't even bothered to put on makeup. I was wearing a light rain jacket in June even last week when I was in Germany. And now, my sluggish sweat glands are working overtime. I take the metro and luckily find a seat in the reserved "Ladies" seat. I get busy trying to read a third-grade bestseller highly vouched for by my sister that was written by a celebrity-wife who clearly did not know what to do with her time. I am trying to focus on page 2, giving it a fair shot before judging my sister. I have a long way to go. The train stops at the next station, and I see a woman walking fast out of the corner of my eye. "Chepe bosun, chepe bosun," she instructs everyone sternly. I am hearing this phrase after such a long time. It means please squeeze in a bit to make space for me, and is said twice for added emphasis.

The thing is, obesity has significantly risen in the last decade or so with the Americanization of Kolkata. The booming "shopping mall culture" is a long rant for another day. While I am old-school and more used to being invited home and fed home-cooked food, people these days prefer hanging out at malls, walking aimlessly and looking at overpriced stores, taking selfies and partaking in Subways and McDonald's. Imagine flying all the way to Kolkata to watch people overdose on American junk food with gusto while I crave for two tiny shingaras, kochuris, and some jilipis. And I continue to embarrass myself in more ways than one. Recently, when someone asked, “Acropilos jaabi? Have you been to Acropolis?" (a recently opened mall in the southern fringes of the city that I had no idea about), I proudly beamed, "Gechi to. I was there last month, that is where I lost my passport." Before this Kolkata trip, I only knew of one Acropolis, the original one in Greece.

Back to my metro rant. While eight voluptuous women easily fit in a ladies seat 10 years ago, wriggling babies and hanging bags and all, the same space can now seat seven women, and a mosquito or two. The others look at each other clueless, feigning an act of wiggling themselves to fake an act of making space for the lady. But there is hardly any space left to make. Our warrior lady is getting impatient. So she screams louder, not even bothering to mask the underlying threat in her voice with courtesy. The other women feel perturbed now. However, I decide to play cool, and instead of looking up, continue pretending to read this horrible book where the writer talks about some first-world problem of her driver not showing up on time and she having to take an auto rickshaw. There is some action going on right next to me with some elbowing, rubbing sweaty arms, and muttering expletives. The warrior lady has made some space for herself finally, all of 2 inches that can barely have her touching her bum to the seat. As if on cue, the driver slams the brakes, breaking her inertia and making her real angry. So she walks over to me, and in that little space we had for 2 mosquitoes, she seats herself. What it means is that she is half-sitting on my left thigh now. And if that is not enough, her right hand, all bare and damp in her sleeveless blouse, comes and rubs mine. I immediately forget my book and with electrifying speed, try to shrink myself to half my width, almost wincing at my physical proximity with another sweating individual (with a fiery temper). As if traveling in a stuffy, sweaty metro was not enough, I now have a woman on my lap threatening me with her "Chepe boshun bolchi kintu!" while the metro sways at speed and makes me conjure traumatic images of getting a lap dance. I am repulsed beyond imagination. I try to think of my choices, or whatever remains of them. My book is long forgotten. I look at the woman on my lap, half-sitting on me and refusing to budge. I contemplate telling her, “Chepe boshte parbo na” (I cannot squeeze in, sorry and thank you). However, I don't think I have the courage to do this. Meekly, I obey her and jiggle myself some more, and when that does not work, go stand and offer her my seat. 

After 30 minutes of standing in the crowd, my nose precariously pointed at several armpits jutting from sleeveless blouses women love to wear, I get off the train in one piece, my lap still bearing the traumatic memory of the pseudo lap-dance it had recently received. Thanks to learning yoga for one semester in grad school, I had managed to stop breathing for most of my ride. I still have an auto rickshaw to take before I can reach my destination. I am smelling of 50 shades of sweat, and I do not even know which shade is mine. I try to squeeze myself in the right extreme of the backseat of an auto. However, my ordeal is far from over. A family of man, woman, and child come running, push me aside, and grab the entire last seat of the auto before I realize what is happening. The mustachioed man with a baby face is the first one to get in. Wow! There was a time when chivalrous men used to offer the back seat to women while flanking the driver. People have taken gender equity really seriously these days. So carefully arranging my half-flowing clothes, I seat myself by the auto driver, confident about smelling something new now- perhaps hair oil. In the next twenty minutes, the auto driver becomes a reincarnation of Keanu Reeves from Matrix, squeezing his vehicle in the lanes in between speeding buses and cars, zooming through approaching traffic in T-sections, making me sit even tighter to him, much to my dismay. Given a choice between falling of an auto rickshaw on the road or sitting uncomfortably close to stranger and smelling his hair oil, I prefer the hair oil.

I get off at my destination and try to enter the mall. However, I am stopped by two female security guards who deem it proper to pat my boobs with the metal detector before letting me in. From getting a lap dance to giving one to the auto driver to having my assets patted, my friends will never know the huge price I have just paid to commute from point A to point B. Ever since, I feign a heart attack whenever someone asks me to meet them at a mall during peak traffic. If that does not work, I just tell myself that 5 Euros (my bus fare in Germany everyday) is close to 377.87 Indian rupees. So once in a while, when I am not craving for any sort of adventures on the road, I just take the cab.

sunshine

People are talking

Funny first-things people said on hearing about my new job:

1. What? They only pay 9-month salary every year? What kind of a job is this? (Ma)

2. No vacations during Durga Puja? Why not? (Grandma)

3. Thank God my chauffeur will be back in the country. (Close friend and my road trip buddy who hates to drive)

4. You owe me $75-80. I prayed and donated money at every temple in Seattle this past year. My mom did the same in the Chennai temples. (Religious close friend)

5. So you will be working under a professor now?

Me: No, I am the professor. (Friend who does not get it)

6. I collected kitchen utensils for you for a year, hoping that this would bring you back to us. (Hoarder friend; I have no idea what am I going to do with a huge box of utensils now, I didn't even ask for any)

7. I'm so excited you will be back.

Me: You didn't even ask me what job it is.

Oh sorry. Didn't strike me. I'm just so happy you will be back. (Close friend)

8. Good you got a permanent job. Now you can work less and just relax. (Friend who does not get it and cannot differentiate between "tenure-track" and "tenured". Permanent job? Relax?)

9. Just relax in Kolkata for 3 months every year from now and enjoy the mango season. (Ma)

10. The first day I saw you in class 13 years ago wearing dark eyeliner and a green kurta, I knew that you are very smart. (Old and close friend and classmate from Calcutta with amazing memory)

11. Is there a Sephora store nearby? (Sister)

12. Is it a one-year position? (Gentleman with a mysterious sense of humor)

13. Just imagined you wearing a sari, going up to the board and writing with chalk while your students giggle behind you (Childhood friend with a Main-Hoon-Na sense of humor; we used to giggle together back in the days)

14. I'll show you a lovely, 3,000 square feet house. You totally deserve a nice place now. (Local realtor who doesn't get it and is getting no business from me)

15. I'll show up at your place with a tiffin carrier full of idlis, sambar, koottu, and kuzhambu every weekend. (Close friend who will not be entertained henceforth)

16. Now you will not have trouble finding a guy and getting married. You can comfortably settle down. (Concerned person who just doesn't get it)

17. I am coming now. With your dad. For 6 months. No one can stop me anymore. (Ma, who sounded like she is going to reach the US even before I do).

18. You will not be my school principal! (7-year old Baby Kalyani. Since she doesn't understand professor, I told her that I will be her school principal, and the first thing I will do is make it compulsory for all her teachers to learn Bharat Natyam, Bhangra, and Carnatic music)

And the list grows ...............

sunshine

Mystery Chemistry

One of the things you will instantly notice about grandma is the energy, and the desire to live. When I went to meet her recently, she was nicely decked up in a white and pink sari and wore nail polish because I was visiting (grandma loves nail polish). She cooked some great lunch, and took a lot of pleasure in feeding me. And she told me a story that left me amused, rolling on the floor laughing, and appreciating her even more. She is a great storyteller, and is full of stories. 

Grandma was very sick a few months ago. Her systems were failing, and things did not look good. Once she recovered, she fully went on a diet, lost some 30 kilos, and got stronger and fitter. All her readings became normal. She was bedridden for a while but these days, she wakes up very early, climbs down the stairs from the fifth floor, and goes to the nearby lake to walk. This story is her account of what happened there one day, written in first person.

Grandma: Everyday I go walking, I meet so many people my age out for a walk. One day, I saw a gentleman out of the corner of my eyes. Tall, good looking, wearing nice intellectual glasses and smart walking shoes. I wondered who he is. As if reading my thoughts, he intercepted me and smiled. "Do you come here every day? I have seen you often", he asked. I nodded and smiled. "Do you have trouble with your knees?" he asked again. We struck up a conversation, and he said that he has sustained knee injuries too. Then, he asked if he can show me some knee exercises that has worked wonders for him. He did that, and after smiling and nodding, he took his own trail to walk some more. When he was done, he intercepted me again, bid me adieu, and said, "Bhalo thakben didibhai" (Take care, elder sister).

Grandma said this and burst out rolling on the floor laughing. And so did we.

sunshine

Funny things said and heard

Five funny things said and heard during this trip:

M: Are you hiking in Seattle this time?

sunshine: Just from my room on the 2nd floor to the kitchen on the 1st floor at night, and back. This is when I stay up late and work and get very hungry. And you?

M: I am climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on my 50th birthday.

Respect!

At the store, while trying out a poncho that totally hid my hands, I looked at the mirror and remarked to myself a little loudly, "Boy, I so look like Sanjeev Kumar in Sholay."

"What did you say?", screamed a familiar voice in a shrill pitch from the other aisle. It was G’s voice, "Sanjeev Kapoor is making Cholay? Where?"

Being hard of hearing is one of those things I still haven't thought would afflict me or my friends someday. It's all in the package of getting older. And it's definitely coming soon.

One evening, G complimented me on my writing. 

"You write very well. I thoroughly enjoy reading what you write. It's totally not like Jhumpa Lahiri material. It's not poetic and not like a novel. There is no language intricacy. You know, novels are written in a certain way. The story builds up. The reader anticipates about what will happen next. Your writings are so simple, about such basic events. There is nothing to anticipate. Anyone would understand it."

Me: Umm... So what part of your long speech was a compliment? 

G's "compliment" reminded me of what my mom said once. "You write so well, you should author a book. In fact, you write so well that half of the time, I do not even understand what you are writing."

Once in a while, I get into these face-palm moments where I try to say something totally smart-ass, and things backfire, leaving me with no choice but to laugh at my stupidity. 

I meet a friend in Seattle after 6 long years, and go out for dinner with him. We are having a lovely time, catching up after so many years. He asks me more about my work, and so do I.

"So where do you work now?", I ask, genuinely interested.

"Skype", he says.

"Great! Great to meet someone in Seattle who doesn't work for Microsoft!", I say, all confidently. 

His expression was priceless. And so was mine. 

Heard the weirdest mother-daughter conversation:

"Remember, Lord Vishnu is watching you. If you don't drink milk and don't practice music daily, he will go and complain to the tooth fairy."

Who knew Lord Vishnu and the tooth fairy all knew each other?

sunshine

Making Waves

A physicist and I are having an animated intellectual discussion about the recently discovered G waves. Mostly the physicist is talking, and I am listening.

Physicist: What do you think would be the social impact of G waves?

sunshine: I can explain the social impact of G-strings using String Theory. G-strings are creating waves in the society. Those are called G waves.

Physicist: It is below my physics-dignity to talk to you anymore.

That is how much I understand about the discovery of G waves. Also, nobody appreciates humor these days.

sunshine

Signs of an NRI (and RI) Socialite

Disclaimer: The author shuns responsibility for any feelings of hurt this “Honesty 12.0 on a scale of 10” post may cause. All characters that have inspired this post are certainly not fictitious, although not all of them are known to the author personally. Any resemblance to anyone living or throwing Hangover-themed parties on their fiftieth birthday is purely so not coincidental. The author has documented her observations based on years of harrowing experience of living in the US and failing miserably to blend in with the nouveau riche NRI crowd. The entertainment their over-documented, cookie-cutter celebrity lives have provided the author so much inspiration that the author has renounced any contact whatsoever with the NRI community in Europe. Love them, hate them, unfollow them, but you cannot delete them. Although primarily meant for the NRI, the average Resident Indian (RI) has also started to show such symptoms, thanks to globalization. Here are some sure shot signs of an NRI/RI-socialite, documented without any prejudice or judgment (written in first person for special effects).

1. The more pregnant we are, the filmier our lives get. By the time it gets to the pregnancy photo shoot, replete with Surf-Excel-washed flowing white clothes, pink/blue props (how innovative!), sugary-gooey loving expressions, and close up shots of sixteen different positions of the man kissing the baby bump (that is more of a hillock by now) and making heart signs with jointed fingers, you will be wallowing in self-pity, looking at your own not-so-colorful life and frantically Googling, “How to look amazing despite greying hair, hormonal earthquakes, and PMS”.

2. For someone who attends five weekend parties on an average, you will never see us wearing the same designer clothes or accessories twice. The 90-day return policies of the stores certainly help.

3. We call our close friends "girlfriend", "babe", and "bestie" on Facebook. And a bitch behind their Faceback.

Corollary: Behind every happy groupfie taken with or without a stick is a bunch of dysfunctional friendship stories gone awry due to petty jealousy.

4. The man we are standing next to, and most of the time intimately, or even being lifted up in their arms, is not our husband. In fact most of the time, the husband is the photographer, or a distant spectator.

5. We might originally hail from Kochi, Ernakulum, or Muzaffarnagar. But our children have the names of Roman Gods and Greek Goddesses. A far cry from the Hemlata, Indumati, Agniveena, or even the Nisha, Pooja, and Neha.

Nama Sutra: The art of giving our children never-heard-before names. Take a mixer. Pour plenty of Hindi alphabets you learnt in the first grade. Blend well, until they mix thoroughly. Pick up two or three alphabets at random, and combine them in any random order, creating names like Napa, Resa, Saga, Roti, Kapda. Remember, if the name makes people go scratching their heads because they have never heard it before, it is Roman and Greek enough.

6. You have never seen us without makeup. Even our family has never seen us without makeup. Go check out the makeup groups where we dedicatedly post too-close-for-comfort close-ups of our faces, giving detailed step-by-step accounts of the makeup products we used in different quadrants of our face. Talking of effort, your entire effort of writing that goddamn dissertation that you mistakenly thought would pull you out of your pitiful existence would be put to shame.

7. Our predictable display of affection for other friends is very entertaining. Most of the time, we Like and comment on the same set of people’s updates. We root for brand names, not (writing) products. The comments typically look like this:

We: “Love your dress. Your nail polish. Your shoes. Your sense of style. Your blah blah blah.”

Them: “Thank you. You inspire me. XOXOXOXO.”

We: “You inspire me too. Muaaah.” 

Did you know that the number of Likes and comments are a direct function of a person’s popularity, and hence, should not be underestimated? We sometimes ask people offline how our Facebook picture is, and nudge them to Like or leave a comment, or paste their personal email/chat messages on our cake-cutting birthday pictures. We often ask people to "show some love”, because it is not love if it does not show.

8. Akhaade-Mein-Pehelwaan, or AMP alert: We will diligently tell you about every effort we made to get a finely chiseled and sculpted body, making you look at your six pack of (fl)abs and want to die out of shame.

"My breakfast was 50 push ups, 50 pull ups, 50 deadlifts, and 50 Surya Namaskars. For main course, did yoga and Zumba. For dessert, held a buffalo for five minutes to build bicep strength. Loved getting hot and sweaty. Now, time for chocolate pastries." (Hashtag: Loveyourbody, hardcorehotness). To which, rain comments like, "Love your dedication. What an inspiration!"

N.B.: We never ate that chocolate pastry. That was just to distract you, and make you crave for desserts.

9. Our moms and dads are also on Facebook, and usually comment on our funnily scandalous pictures with Alok-Nathish-sanskaari comments like, "God bless you beta.", or, “You are our baby doll.” (Parents, do you know what a baby doll really means?). In case of pictures from trips to exotic islands, our parents mostly write Tagore quotes in pure Bangla in the comments section that no one else understands.

10. We usually comment on other friends' pictures, writing things like, "hawwt momma", and "yummy momma" (although they are neither our mom, nor hot; far from it). Imagine your average Mashima from Midnapore, calling your Mom “Garam Ma” or “Swadisht Ma”. Yeah, I know. When said in English, even the most inappropriate of terms sound sassy and cool.

11. For your birthdays, you visit the local deity and the restaurant to celebrate with friends and family. If the birthday is the 50th one, you hide in your basement. When we turn 50, we fly to Vegas with a bunch of friends, ride limousines, drink champagne, gamble, throw themed costume parties, and wear identical tee-shirts with identical slogans to show solidarity.

12. Chin up. Hands on hips. Turn body to a 45 degree slant. These are not confidence-boosting mantras, but posing tricks that can effectively take care of the double chin, the hanging biceps, and the sagging tummy, respectively. And talking about pictures, if there aren’t any close up pictures of every food item, including the chips and the soda, the party was as good as having never happened at all.

13. Date nights occur more frequently than trips to the grocery store, post office, or bank in our household.  

14. One of the epic lines in my favorite movie When Harry Met Sally is when Harry tells Sally, “It is so nice when you can sit with someone and not have to talk.” That’s why every vital conversation with the partner, from when we will be home to how much we love one another, and even wishing each other Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary is made on Facebook.

15. Significant, coolness-enhancing, once-in-a-lifetime events like road trips need special, live updates. Crossed a field. Saw a tree. Stopped by the gas station and took a selfie. Ate roti and achaar while watching the sunset. You get the picture.

16. If a new child arrives without preamble, a maternity photo shoot, an elaborate baby shower, periodic documentation of every emotional crest and trough mapped on the pregnancy curve, or live updates from the hospital, the new child is probably a puppy, kitty, or a new car.

Lastly, you see our pictures from five years ago, and we look like totally normal people.

sunshine

Signs of a bestselling author in the making

My mom says the most hilarious things with earnestness. This is what she told me one day-

“Do you know how creative you are? Oh my God!”

And I said, “Really? It took you like 33 years to figure out that I am creative?”

To which she said, “You should totally write a book. You'd be a bestselling author. You write so well, I love reading your posts on FB. In fact half the time, I do not even understand what you are writing!”

Well, I am pretty sure that she wasn't being sarcastic. So I wonder if being a bestselling author really means people not understanding half the stuff you write about.

sunshine

Your Old Faithful Travel Guide

I am generally known to be a level-headed, not-usually-hyper, rational person. But sometimes, only sometimes, I do things that befit this description. I do stupid things that befit my age, and maturity. I realize that I just wrote the concluding paragraph without even starting the post.

I was on my way to Seattle during the winter holidays. I was flying on Christmas eve, hoping to reach Seattle just in time for Christmas. When I was checking in at the airport and the machine at the kiosk asked me if I would like to board the next flight in return for a $200 travel voucher, I should have taken the hint and said yes. I did not. I was in a hurry to reach my most favorite place in the world. Which I did not.

There were weather related issues, and by the time I reached Denver, I had missed my connecting flight to Seattle. I could neither reach Seattle on Christmas eve, nor could get the $200 travel voucher. I spent the night at a hotel in Denver, and had to be up by 4 am to take the 5:20 am shuttle to be on time for the 6:00 am flight to Seattle. In the fear that I would oversleep and miss my flight, I mostly did not sleep at all. By the time the alarm went off, I had already showered, packed again, and was ready for the airport.

A few years ago, this lifestyle and not sleeping at night suited me fine. But I can see that I am reaching that age where I need my full 8 hours of sleep at night, need my bed, and cannot do red eye flights anymore. It spoils my entire next day, when all I do is sleep. So I boarded the flight to Seattle, texting my friend that I need some Ghoom 3 (Dhoom 3 had released that weekend, and ghoom is Bengali means sleep). Sometime during the flight, probably after I had my complimentary apple juice without ice (I always have that in flight), I put down my head on the serving tray and dozed off. I slept on and off, being very uncomfortable in that cramped space, and somehow managed to have a dream that I was visiting Yellowstone National Park.

Suddenly, I woke up with a jolt and looked outside the window. To my amazement, I saw that we were flying over the Yellowstone National Park. It was quite possible, since the route from Denver to Seattle goes through that area. Now how did I know that this is Yellowstone National Park? Because I saw the Old Faithful geyser erupting below. I have been to that national park once, 4 years ago, and loved it. How lucky one can be if one gets to see the bird’s-eye-view of such a world famous place, for free. I have traveled over Arizona, hoping to see the Grand Canyon from the airplane, but nothing I saw looked like the majestic Grand Canyon. And here, I could see the Old Faithful geyser right below my nose.

Ecstatic, and still a little groggy from sleep, I took out my camera quickly, changed lenses, and took some pictures. Barely able to contain my excitement, I told this to the neighboring two girls sitting by me. “Hey look, we are flying over the Old faithful geyser in Yellowstone”, I beamed. To my confusion, they looked initially surprised, and even tried craning their neck to see the view, but lost interest in the few seconds. I mean, how could one not be excited about the view? Maybe they have been there enough number of times to not be excited anymore? Maybe they had never been there, and did not know what they were missing? “Crazy people”, I said in my head, and looked outside, taking a few more pictures of the geyser that was slowing fading to my right now. But something about their reaction bothered me. Something in general bothered me. Why was the area around the geyser flat? I tried to remember what it looked like 4 years ago. I am pretty sure that I had seen many tall and rugged mountains during that trip. Something just did not seem right.

I kept wondering for the next fifteen-twenty minutes, when I saw the Cascade chain of mountains appear. Ten minutes later, I had landed in Seattle.

Given how quickly Seattle arrived after I saw the Old Faithful geyser, and given how flat it was around the geyser, the only rational explanation I can think of is this. Brace yourself, for I may be right, and it will shock you. We were flying above the Pullman area of eastern Washington, and what I mistook to be the world famous geyser, was a tall factory chimney which was billowing white smoke. We were hundreds of miles away from Yellowstone, both geographically, and figuratively. That explains why we landed so fast. That explained the first confused, and then irritated look those women gave me (as if they were saying to themselves, are we idiots?). And that explains how age is catching up with me, and how a groggy, half asleep state of mind makes my imagination go crazy. This is so embarrassing that sharing it in the anonymity of this blog makes me feel only marginally less stupid. I cannot imagine sharing this with my friends, who know me for my passion for travel.

For the rest of the plane trip, which was not a lot thankfully, I did not make eye contact with my fellow passengers. And you know what? Someone out there is laughing really hard with her friends, recounting how a sleepy woman mistook a factory chimney to be the Old Faithful geyser.

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Scatterbrain

We Bengalis are infamous in bringing up all the potty topics at the dining table. Ask anyone how conversations at the table usually involuntarily lead to the potty habits till someone puts a conscious stop to it. So we were on the thanksgiving dining table at my friends place in Philly. She had invited a couple more people including a certain doctor. The whole chicken roast was amazingly done with salmon stuffed inside its belly, which is already reason enough for any vegetarian to gross out. I had never eaten a whole chicken before, and amidst greedily gobbling it up, the biologist in me took over while I examined the body parts of the chicken with intrigue.

I sucked on to a juicy bone while I remarked about how during our undergraduate studies, bone identification was a major portion of our practical training. Thus we were taught how to identify the different bones of the pigeon, rat, frog, and even snake. Trying to appear cool amidst a bunch of engineers and theoretical physicists, I remarked how one could identify certain bones by locating certain holes in certain regions of the bone. My engineer friends looked fascinated.

I was sucking on to another piece of flesh when my physicist friend had faint remembrances of her biology lessons she took the last time in high school, more than a decade ago. Nostalgic about smelly bio labs and indecipherable terms like troglodytes, she suddenly got very excited about an obscure term she remembered back from school a long lifetime ago.

“Foramen magnum. Wasn’t that the word we studied? Do you remember where it is located?”

To which, I cast her smug glance. Of course every biologist knew where the foramen magnum was.

My right hand and my mouth half filled with food, I gestured and patted the back of my head. I was expecting adulating glances, given my profound knowledge in biology. To stress my point, I said in a Korean accent, partly due to all the food in my mouth, “Brain”.

I thought people were impressed. They were. There was just one seemingly insignificant voice from the far corner of the table that remarked with all seriousness, “Not the brain. It is the skull”.

Of course it is a sacrilege to confuse the brain with the skull for a doctor.

Now you know why I have a thing for doctors.

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Humor Me

Someone asked me the other day about the kind of emotion I associate best with. I gave it quite some thought, and realized that humor is what suits me the best. Genre of humor- elements of wit, sarcasm, puns, satire, banter, irony, and wisecracks are what I like the best. Be it in my readings or in my writings, I love to get multiple meanings out of a word or phrase. I love to observe people and situations and look for humor even in the most challenging situations. There is this person inside me that loves to kibitz non-stop, with playful banters hurled at me and the people around me. Among the stuff I read, I love those that bring out a cruel, yet realistic portrayal of the nature of the humankind or that of society and circumstances. Even during dealing with personal crises, I have realized that finding the humor in the situation takes the load off it. Be it dealing with heartbreaks or dealing with abusive relationships, be it difficult employers or non-accommodating neighbors, there is only so much humor you can find in every situation gone wrong, every bus missed when in hurry, every professing-undying-love man gone astray, every movie ill-directed, every science project gone haywire, every nosy neighbor asking you about your love life, every moment spent in uncertainty, and every rejection faced in life. Like they say, it’s easier to be serious, but difficult to be humorous. Needless to say, a good sense of humor is a big turn on, not the cheesy, slapstick, eager-to-impress kind, but the one that reflects depth of thoughts and observation. It makes dealing with hardships easier. It is therapeutic. Word play and turning words to ones advantage is the weapon of the intelligent and the cogent. So the next time you read a post making fun of people, situations, or even me, you know where I am coming from.

Let me know the next time you read a book, see a movie, or face a situation that has my kind of humor in it.

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My New Found Love

I am glad I got to know him, though I wish I had met him earlier. He has become such an integral part of my life that I cannot function without spending some time with him every day. I would be preparing for an important exam, and then I would sneak out and spend some time with him before I resumed work. I cannot get through the day without chatting incessantly about him, laughing at every little thing he says, every funny gesture he makes, reciting verbatim his one-liners and the songs he sings. Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce you to my new found love, my addiction and obsession, the one and only, Eric Cartman !

I don’t know how a friend of mine got me introduced to him, and truth be told, I didn’t even like the first few episodes of what I saw. For here I was seeing a bunch of 8 year old kids swearing profusely and blurting profanities and farting with such enthusiasm and gusto. But once I got the hang of what was happening I was hooked. I was hooked to the extent that I cannot get through the day without my daily dose of 3-4 South Park episodes. And then we would spend hours ruminating on the new things we had just learned, talking to each other in what we call the “Cartmanish language”, singing all the songs we hear this fatso sing. When we are irritated, we try to clench our fists, close our eyes in that typical “X” and scream “Goddddammit”. I have never looked forward to watching the TV every Wednesdays before this ever since the days of Chitrahaar on Doordarshan when I myself was Cartman’s age. Within a few weeks, I had completed season 1, 2, and 3, and am looking forward to the other seasons. Frankly, it was an interesting discovery to know how I can relive my childhood again at this age. You can see the amount of the crazy-cartman-syndrome effect this thing has had on me.

For imagine the puzzled expression on people’s faces when I pick up a stick and scream “Respect my Authoritah”, or hum “Stinky bridges” all to myself. My roomie would go crazy if I told her something like, “Aye woman ! Why don’t you go to the kitchen and make me some pie, or go home and make babies?” See a cat crossing the road and scream, “No kitty, bad kitty !” The “big boned” guy thinks that independent films are all about gay cowboys eating pudding. Cartman and group, Mr.Hanky- The Christmas Poo, Chef, Butters and group are my new friends now. I have been looking for a restaurant in town called Casa Bonita. I look at a bunch of kids arguing and wonder “How do I reach these kids”. If you know what I am talking about and have experienced the same level of madness, then welcome to the club. If not, please join the club. For everyone is entitled to a little humor, a little laughter, and lots of craziness in life.

And here goes Cartman online, in its entirety.

“Sweet” !!!, like he would say.

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(Role)ing On The Floor Laughing

Some professors have this amazing way of teaching in class. Slideshows, video clips, whatever works. I remember my days in India when a conch-shell bespectacled prof would come and make us write notes for a full two hours till our biceps threatened to fall off. If the prof was especially a woman, she would hold the bunch of brown papers back from the days of Akbar’s rule so close to her bosom that any unsuspecting individual would suspect she was holding confidential FBI reports. Anyway, things are different here, and professors device new methods to ensure that people like me do not doze off in class. Sometime back I was in a class on asbestos and lung cancer, and the prof spent an hour’s class passing samples of asbestos in different forms so that we knew what he was talking about. And no, he did not hold the asbestos samples close to his bosom like the confidential notes in the previous case.

So I am taking this class on the health of mothers and children in developing countries, and we had already spent a few classes looking at the live videos of childbirth. While my fellow mates stared in amazement and excitement, I clenched my hands together, almost on the verge of passing out. Trust me, it might be very touching, but not really exciting to see clips of childbirth, especially when you have a history of passing out every now and then.

This being done, the prof told us that the next class would be spent enacting a skit. There would be a particular maternal health situation and the students will take on different roles to present a short play. Now this was a cool idea, since although we were not very clear about the scripts, we were told the various roles people would have. There would be big officers from the government agencies who are involved in policy making and implementation. There would be renowned doctors and skilled birth attendants. I mean, all these roles would be enacted by different students in the class. So after class, the teaching assistant came up with her list of who was gonna be what. Though it seemed like child play, suddenly I was very excited at the prospect of participating in this play. You see, barring the “scared of bloodbath” part, I have always thought that being a doctor is a cool thing to do in life. So even if not in real life, I could at least act the role of a doctor in the play.

Teaching Assistant (TA): So X, Y, and Z are gonna enact the role of policy makers from the WHO. (X, Y, and Z do a somersault in joy).

A and B will act as representatives of the World Bank (Same reaction, more somersaults ensue).

P, Q, and R will be health workers (I started to wonder when she would tell me about my role. Which by the way I was sure was going to be that of a doctor).

C and D can act as birth attendants.

G and H will be nurses.

K, L and M would be doctors (What !!! I am not a doctor? Then what am I? A sinking feeling started to dawn on me).

Anyone else remaining?

I raised my hand in anticipation. The TA smiled. I started to breathe easy.

TA: Oh yeah, we forgot you (She looked at the list in her hand).

I: So what will I be?

TA: You’ll be the patient.

I: What? What patient?? (I was already disappointed).

TA: A pregnant patient.

I: Ohhh !!!!!! (Suddenly, my world had become very dark).

TA: We are dealing with health issues due to multiple pregnancies here. Developing nations need to know the harmful health effects of producing too many children. You will be the woman on her 5th pregnancy who already has four kids.

Everything had suddenly gone irrelevant for me. Pregnant with the 5th child, of all the roles? I don’t know why, but all I was reminded of was the white rats in the labs that reproduced in litters. If each of our lives was a movie, I am sure everyone was the protagonist, the hero and the heroine in their own lives. I did not care about the “pregnant” silence and my “labored” breaths as I refused to take the bus and walked back home instead. Punning was the last thing on my mind, believe me.

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The Kiss Eaters.

We Bengalis are strange. Social. Gregarious. Food lovers. Corrupt. Morally depraved. People tell me that you cannot mistake a Bengali. Why? Do we wear two extra horns? Do we talk a lot? I don’t know- says a friend. When you see a Bengali, you’ve got to know it is a Bengali. Okay, that was very intuitive. Not that it helped a lot. Often I have been told about half-cooked ideas of Bengali women being very proactive, with huge eyes and dusky complexions and luscious figures. Not that it helped a lot to boost me up. Then they said Bengali men loved to be dominated by the women folk at home and seldom had a mind or a voice of their own at home. This angered me further, because this was stereotyping. Although sometimes, interaction with the men folk in the friend circle had somewhat confirmed this. But then again, it is one thing to live with a notion, and another thing to vocalize it. 

Would you want to marry a Bengali? Asked a non-bengali friend in hush tones at a party. He was expecting a rebuff, a rebuke, like he must have been used to with every Bengali chick now. I looked around me and whispered in equally hushed tones- “No way !!! I have heard they are quite boring !”

And then we had laughed, my laughter borne out of guilt for having such an opinion about my own people. So tell me what Bengali people are like, asked my friend. The ice had been broken long back with the confession of not wanting to marry a Bengali, and the conversation had taken a somewhat humorous tone. I thought hard.

They are complete foodies.

And?

They like to talk a lot.

And?

They make friends everywhere. Strong networking skills, you see.

And?

Umm……… oh yeah. They eat everything.

So you said. They are foodies.

No, not that way. They eat everything.

Everything? My friend looked somewhat amused.

Yeah, everything.

Like what?

Like, they eat food. Everything. Fish. Meat. Eggs. Rice. Dal. Vegetables. Everything.

Oh wow !!!

Yeah, and even Bengali Brahmins are meat eaters. They eat everything, unless they are into Manekaism and animal rights kinda things.

And what else do they eat?

At this point I realized that it would be unfair to carry on the whole conversation as “they”. Who was I talking about? I myself was a Bengali too. So I decided to be politically correct here.

So we eat everything. We eat water. And we eat drinks.

My friend looked confused.

The colloquial Bengali language has no concept of drinking. We eat everything.

Even water?

Even water. We say, jol khabo, which roughly translates to- “I’ll eat water”.

My friend looked amused. What else do you eat?

I thought hard. We eat cigarettes.

Cigarettes? As in crush them and chew them?

Hell no, we smoke cigarettes, but when we say that in Bengali, we again say, cigarette khabo, which means I’ll eat a cigarette.

Really?

Yeah, it goes with cigarettes, beedi, alcohol, everything.

Wow. What anything else you eat?

Umm… that’s pretty much it. I thought hard. No wait, we eat something else.

Yeah?

Umm… I don’t know how to say this, it is kinda embarrassing. 

What else?

Umm…. We eat a kiss..

What? Holy…. My friend started to roll on the floor laughing even before he had completed his words. What the…..

Well, yeah, I squirmed uncomfortably. You see, we say, ami chumu khabo, which roughly translated into English sounds like, “I’ll eat you a kiss”.

With this, I too started to roll on the floor laughing, so funny it sounded. You were right indeed. We Bengali people are the weirdest people. We even eat kisses. I just wonder if this is what makes us the epitomes of romanticists. Good food for thought. 

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