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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Air (un)conditioning

I moved to a new home in December, then started traveling for work. I thought that once I am back in March, I will set up the home, buy nice furniture, buy an air conditioner. I was about to spend part of the summer in the US and Germany anyway, so I did not bother. 

And then, the pandemic happened.

Now, I am stuck in the 45 Celsius (and rising) heat, without an AC. And this is only May. This house is so intelligently built, it is freezing in the winter and blazing in the summer. Add to it cooking, cleaning, and all the household chores that make you hotter (pun unintended). Even in the middle of the night, the fan lets off a plume of hot air from the overheated ceiling. The mattress absorbs all the heat. I have never had so much hotness in life. 

I’ve moved my makeshift bed to every room to see which one feels a little better- the ground floor bedroom, the ground floor living room, or the upstairs bedroom. The suffering is all the same. 

I’ve considered sleeping on the open rooftop, but fear being bitten by bugs and mosquitoes. Worse, imagine waking up and seeing a monkey sidling up to you. I’ve also considered sleeping in the office, either on the floor or atop my wooden desk, but fear the bugs, the hiding lizards, and my own snoring alerting the security guards and a consequent email on the notice board the next day. 

Everything I cut for food, I try applying it on my face to see if it would cool me down. Cucumbers, lemons, melons, and papaya have worked out great! Tip: Cauliflowers and eggplants don’t help!

I updated my playlist to play all the Raag Megh Malhar songs. And it started raining in Kolkata!

Watering the plants is my favorite chore now. Most of the water goes on me.

I’m fantasizing about an ice bucket challenge. Right now, I could eat ice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

I am trying to look at the positive side. Less electricity bills. Absolutely no need to work out. Reliving childhood nostalgia when we had no AC.

When most people around the world are working from home, I am going to office every day. Even on weekends and holidays. I stay there as long as I can, staring at the AC and fantasizing about stealing it.  

I keep watching winter videos of Switzerland on Youtube, hoping that it helps. It has. By now, I know all the names of the Swiss counties. There is nothing left for me to see in Switzerland anymore. 

Some activities are a complete no-no. Not getting embroiled in Facebook fights. No reading romantic stories. No watching kissing scenes in movies. No horny thoughts. Complete abstinence from all activities that tend to raise the body temperature. 

I look at old pictures of me wading in the snow the one terrible winter I spent in Nebraska, hoping that it will produce some cooling effect. 

I chant this mantra to myself, “Evaporation causes cooling!” 50 times every day while sweating, hoping that all this positivity will get me through till the end of summer in November. Here is another one. Close your eyes. Imagine there has been a power cut. Now open your eyes. Look at the ceiling fan still working with gratitude. You will not feel as hot after that. 

I think of life as a Bikram hot yoga class, a meditation retreat, or a tropical vacation. People pay a lot of money to get some of these experiences. I’m getting it for free. 

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Thinking out of the dabba

The dabba (boxed lunch) is back in my life after more than two decades and brought many memories of school. For the last 12 years, I cooked my own breakfast and lunch and dinner every day. I ate cold lunch at my desk or microwaved food made the previous day. I continued the tradition here because I love cooking my meals and have major control issues with anyone taking over my house or kitchen.

And then, the knight in shining armor aka the dabba-waala showed up with his contact number and rang the doorbell. I still ignored him for a month. But the day I missed lunch because of deadlines and ended up chewing on raw bell peppers, I decided, enough is enough. I called the dabba-walla.

Sure enough, he was right on time with my lunch, freshly cooked and piping hot. Rice. Ruti. Dal. Curry. I had forgotten what it feels like to have a freshly cooked, piping hot meal delivered at work or home in a proper stainless steel dabba, sans cheap plastic. The food was heavenly. I had tears in my eyes.

Later that evening, when the dabba-waala came to pick up his box, he started gossiping in true Indian style. This must be his idea of bonding with the customers to make lifelong business connections. I didn't even ask him to sit, but he never took the cue. He stood in my office and gossiped away. I learned more about my colleagues through him than I would have cared to. I now know whose husband emigrated to Canada, what does the Dean like to eat every day, whose parents are visiting this summer, and where are so-and-so currently road-tripping. He tempered privacy in smoking hot oil and threw it out of the window.

No one who comes in contact with you in India will leave without telling you something about someone you did not need to know. Every time the driver picks me up from the airport, I learn which of my colleagues are currently traveling and what airline. This is so India! 

Lunch: 80 INR/$1.14

Gossip: FREE

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Middle-men ecosystem

In India, one thing I quickly found out is that the ecosystem is built in such a way that unless you do your own thing, you will be bleeding money. Take visa applications for example. All my life, I have done my own visa applications (and I have done it many times, thanks to my foreign student/worker status as well as my love for travel). US visa applications from Kolkata are easy. I have driven to Washington DC at 4 am to reach the German consulate on time. I have driven all day to apply for a German visa in Chicago, struggling with finding parking more than driving. I have traveled for 8 hours in a bus to go to Berlin for a US visa. Long story short, I am used to spending a lot of time to get a visa.

Back in India, I have an upcoming conference in Canada and need to apply for a visa. The travel agent my employer hires assures me that they will take care of everything. That, they do. They do the paperwork and get me appointment dates. They compile the application together, book me a car, and come to my office to give me my file. All this looks great on paper. But here is the catch!

I don’t need a car, I can take an Ola/Uber. Yet, they hire a car for 4 hours that will wait till I submit my visa paperwork and bring me back on campus. It roughly costs 1,500 INR. I could have taken a cab for less than 150 INR round trip. But they do not let me do that.

They tell me that “their man will be waiting in front of the Canada consulate.” I am still not clear what the role of this man was. All he did is take the stairs with me to the second floor office, hold my bag (although I asked him not to), and wait for a few hours till I came back. Yes, I needed a photocopy in the meantime, which I could have totally done on my own. I ask him to go home but he assures me that his travel agent office is next door and he is happy to wait. Till date, I still don’t know what his job was, but he would have taken a commission in the process.

And yes, he put me in some premium waiting lounge without asking me. All that premium lounge does is seclude you from the suffering of the common man. While everyone waits in the common area, only six people get to wait in a special room. They ask you for tea and coffee, which I never needed anyway. They have a bowl of unhealthy chocolates and cookies in front of you to munch on. They assure you with bold letters on that application you signed that up to six sheets of photocopy is free for people in the premier lounge. How much does 6 pages of photocopying need? I am used to carrying 2 extra copies of all documents anyway. I still had to wait there for 2 hours. The man whose role I did not know assured me that I would have had to wait for five hours otherwise. I was half ready to stay there for a few more hours and see if his claims were true. Oh, and they charged me 2,000+ INR for access to the premier lounge I never wanted in the first place.

You might be wondering what a miserly, complaining woman I am. Yes, I am careful about my money, that money came from my grant and I have a limited budget. The visa itself cost me 14,000 INR, but with a car and a middle-man and a premier lounge, I will be shelling close to 5k INR more in my estimate. I watch my money like a hawk, and I am proud of it. And other than money, I also have problems with the lack of transparency. The travel agent I worked with never told me about these add-ons and the amount I have to shell out in the process. If you are not careful, you end up wasting a lot of money. The ecosystem is built in such a way that there will be a middle-man at every node asking for money.

It has been a sharp learning curve for me the past 6 weeks. Surviving and thriving in India takes a different mindset. I am very happy that I am back for many reasons. But I have quickly learned to get my alert radar very active. Every person I do business with, I clearly ask them how much money they will charge and how many people will be getting a share of that money. Talking about money is somewhat of a taboo in our culture, but screw all that. I have quickly learned to unlearn a lot of my prior programming. I know that if I have to survive here for the next 30-35 years, I will be encountering a lot of middle-men after my money. The only way I can deal with it is by keeping my alert radar at high levels all the time and doing as much of my paperwork as I can on my own.

PS: On a different note, I am considering moving away from blogging. I have found other platforms on social media that are way more interactive. The only reason I keep writing here is sheer nostalgia for having owned this space for 13 years now. I started blogging way before I knew of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. Now, I have found all those platforms and no longer know what I am doing here.

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I’M in India

More than ten years ago, I used to write about my life as a teacher in India. I used to write about my aspirations of moving to the USA.

Then, I went to the USA and spent a number of years getting an education. In between, I did a backpacking trip to Europe and absolutely loved it. I even started dreaming of living in Europe.

Soon enough, about four years ago, I moved to Germany. Loved my stay there. Spent the next two years traveling all around Europe.

I was also looking for a faculty job. So I found one, and moved back to the USA. Between being a school teacher, a student, and a faculty, this blog continued. Between tales of India, USA, and Germany, this blog continued. I didn’t write as often, but I continued to write. It was my comfort space.

To complete the circle of things, I have moved again. I am still a faculty (thankfully!). And I have moved to India. Only last month, I would struggle to spot an Indian within a 10-mile radius. And now, I hear Bangla outside my office all the time. It's a very comforting feeling, not having to work hard to fit in, not losing sleep over visas and work permits, not being asked when I am going back, and not being a minority anymore.

My entire family, with their limited means, have already made their own, individualized plans of visiting me, although I have not yet invited them. My dad told my mom that the next time he is nearby for work, he is going to take a day off and visit me and mom cannot say no or throw a tantrum. My mom, in return, went to Google and figured out that there are five weekly trains from Kolkata. She has also figured out their timings, schedules, and fares, and has made a plan of everything she will cook and bring on the train ride. But my grandma's plans take the cake.

My 76-year old grandma recently called up a few of her siblings and close family members. She inquired about the current ages of everyone older than her in the greater family who is still alive. She sort of created a spreadsheet of ages and figured out (using her own calculations) that she still has about 10-12 years to live. Armed with this information, she is preparing to take a flight and come see me!

Stay tuned for more updates. And holler if you are around. This blog space has been very quiet of late!

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Country Rap

Have you noticed how Bengali expats who congregate with other Bengali expats at the airport and bond while bitching about how India will never improve usually share certain common attributes?

One, they usually wear GAP or Nike clothing.

Two, the farther they get from the US (or the closer they get to India), the louder their rants get. They might not be as vocal in Houston or Seattle but will be very loud in Dubai. Perhaps the humid Dubai air makes them realize that shit is about to get real in a few hours.

Three, the rants are always, always in English. Ninde korar belaye accent diye Ingriji.

Based on what people say, it is easy to predict who is who.

"Ayi saala suorer bachcha plane ta deri koralo" -- A Bengali from India.

"Can't believe nothing runs on time. It's always sooo hard to get things done in India. This country will never improve" -- naak oonchoo expat whose patriotism is confined to missing and discussing aam jaam lichu tyangra lyangra on Facebook but dreads every moment of their trip to India. 

A curious spectator (sunshine).

Every day after that day

48 hours since my bombastic entry into Greece. My first armed robbery (armed because they stole my valuables from literally under my arm). Hundreds of messages from friends and family wanting to know how I am doing. How am I? I am okay. Trying to cope after coming dangerously close to having to sell a kidney. I feel 10 times heavier. I have splitting headaches and nightmares. When bad news comes in little installments over a period of time (like an impending breakup or obesity), one gets more time to prepare. But when the same dose of bad news happens in 60 seconds leaving you almost bankrupt, the mind does not know how to respond. It was traumatic to take another metro after that.

But then, there are many good things that happened after that. The Indian embassy gave me a temporary passport in 2 hours. I met Sara, a fellow traveler from Singapore. Together, we did some sightseeing in Athens and hiking in a nearby island. Disaster was about to strike again when while hiking, we were chased byan angry donkey and had to run downhill for our lives after huffing and puffing and hiking for 40 minutes. We never made it to the top again, the donkey blocked the trail. Robbed by Greek thieves and then death by a donkey? There would be no dignity for me after that.

Now the big question that was plaguing me was, should I or should I not go to Malta next? And the even bigger question. Will they or won't they allow me to take a plane to Malta on a handwritten, temporary passport? I decided to leave it to my fate. What saved me is that they did not steal my German residence card. That would have jeopardized my entry even to Germany as my new passport has no visa. Between stealing a passport and stealing a residence card, they somehow cushioned my loss by stealing the passport.

The people at the airport were a little intrigued by a new passport with no stamps. I decided to shut my mouth until being questioned. A handwritten passport could have been a problem. But I boarded the 6 am flight. When the security people at the airport in Malta wanted to check my passport again, my heart stopped. They could ask me to return. They did not. They said, "Oh, you have a new passport? No problem, the residence card is good enough."

All this seemed to have happened a lifetime ago. Greece and Malta later, I came back to Germany, applied for a new passport, obtained one, and flew eastward ho to Kolkata for a few weeks. The mangoes and litchis have been cushioning my sense of loss so far.

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Judging a bottle by its cover

Baba Ramdev has been omnipresent in our household for decades now. In an era when watching television before evening was a strict no-no, my mom would dutifully watch his yoga programs first thing in the morning, hoping that watching proves to be at least half as effective as doing it. So this time, I was not surprised when I saw that the entire household has been taken over by his brand of products. From cooking spices to breakfast food to hair oil, personal care products, cosmetics, and even the vermilion my mother wears on her forehead, everything had Baba Ramdev's stamp on it. Open the kitchen drawers, open the bathroom shelves, he is everywhere. 

Now, I strictly refused to use these products, mainly for three reasons- Did not like the smell, did not like the name, and did not like the fact that everyone in the family was obsessed about him, using terms like "natural" with no idea about what natural is. Ironic enough, my sister has an equally voluminous stash of beauty products collected from Europe and America, although she has never stepped outside India. 

One day while taking a shower, I am pleasantly surprised to find a bottle of shower gel amid a jungle of Ramdev products. L’Occitane is a very favorite brand of mine (French in origin), and I remember getting all excited about discovering this store when I visited France earlier one summer. It is an expensive brand, and I use it quite conservatively. I am quite surprised that my sister knows about it too, and more importantly, has a huge collection of this brand, way more than I do. I happily take a shower, but wonder why I step out of the shower smelling of papayas and pumpkins. 

Looks like she emptied a bottle of Baba Ramdev's hand wash into the L’Occitane bottle.

We haven't been on speaking terms ever since.

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Of tea and coconuts

Our domestic help (wonder if there is a better term) in Calcutta knows that "didi" (elder sister, referring to me) lives abroad, and visits occasionally. I had never met her prior to a recent trip, but heard many interesting things about her. A woman in her twenties, she went ahead and had her system ligated after she was forced to conceive. These are stories you typically do not hear every day, even among the upper and empowered classes. 

Now this is not your average hourly help in the US who shows up in their car, cleans your mansion in silence, and leaves. Growing up with temporary help (those who do not live with us, but show up for a few hours every day) has been an essential part of my life in India. She is a little different though. She hates missing work. While every household complains of domestic help gone missing from time to time, this was surprising. I later learnt that every morning she arrives, ma makes fresh and hot rotis and curry, and feeds her a proper breakfast. Food is a great incentive, naturally. She was so happy to see us when we arrived from our week-long family trip earlier. "Chhuti nitey bhalo lagena tomar?" (Don't you like vacations?), I had asked. 

I am not a tea/coffee addict, and drink it only when I have company. She drinks a different kind of tea than the rest of my family. Her's is boiled with milk, spices, and ground cardamom, and I love that kind of tea. Every morning, she and I would sit and drink our cup of tea, chatting up. She talked about her family, her desher bari, and so many other things that I listened to with great interest. She now knows that I love coconuts, especially green coconuts, and she already got me some from the neighbor's tree. 

As I am getting used to the comfort of drinking piping hot cardamom tea every morning and chatting up, she disappears. She calls ma to inform us that her one-year old is suffering from measles, and she will have to stay home. This being a contagious disease, ma asks her to take her time until the little one gets well. With my tea drinking buddy gone, I have lost my motivation of drinking tea. I am leaving in two days, and will probably not meet her anytime soon. I miss her funny stories and her energy. I wish I could meet and say goodbye once.

As if hearing my thoughts, she rings the bell one morning. She is lugging a huge bag, and I rush downstairs to see what the matter is. She is looking haggard, like she hasn't slept in a long time. She is wearing her usual nightdress with the dupatta thrown in. It might seem a weird dress combination to someone not used to this, but this sight of wearing a nightie and throwing in a dupatta before you go outside is pretty common in Calcutta. She places the huge bag on the floor, careful not to touch me so that I do not catch measles germs. She knows that I am leaving soon, so she got me six coconuts. These are not coconuts really, but a stage between the green coconut and the ripe coconut (something she calls "laava", and not a daab or a narkol, although I have never heard of the word before). She got hold of the neighbor guy, bargained prices, and bought me six of these. These originally have a thicker shell that I am not so good at removing (I can break coconuts though), and she takes time to remove the shells, so that all I have to do is split these open. These have a very tasty, soft and white flesh (shNaash), and a lot of sweet water inside, much more than an average coconut does. She hands me these, wishes me luck, and leaves. I tell her that I have missed drinking tea with her, and she says that she hasn't even had the cardamom tea ever since. She has a sick baby waiting at home, and tells me that she felt conscious walking on the streets, not having combed her hair or preened up like she does. She still got me the coconuts though, taking me by surprise.

In my Calcutta trip, love has come to me in all shapes and sizes and ages and circumstances, and I have received it with open arms. Neighbors feeding me whatever they cook on a daily basis (kumro, chalta, tyangra), because I do not get to eat all this in Germany. Strangers (strangers to me, not to my parents) bringing me narkol naadu. People showing up to tie my sari, because I am not good at tying one. Friends inviting me home and cooking my favorite food. Friends calling me cabs because they have discount coupons that would save me some money. And I continue to accept love with gratitude, enriched by the daily life experiences of the immediate people in my life, collecting all the stories they tell me, creating memories, and feeling the magic of this place. 

Breaking a coconut to that.

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Some food (and clothes) for thought

I have never been a more curious spectator of the sartorial idiosyncrasies of mommies of a certain demography living in the west, a self-appointed, judgmental vigilante in no way though. Now if you are a mommy whose dressing doesn't stand out when you go to drop your kids to school or the school bus, good for you! Please don't go protesting and shouting, "I don't! I don't! How could you write about me?" here. Really, you are not who I am thinking about. I am merely sharing my observations about mothers of the other kind. 

A month well-spent dropping and picking up the little ones to and from school every day, G's kids actually, and I consistently watched so many come to drop their kids off in their nightclothes. Mostly nightclothes of the desi kind, with a hint of innovation thrown around. Like, a nightie with a dupatta around the neck. Or a pajama I would never wear outside home. As if a dupatta makes the nightie and the pajama more official, almost as if it was never a nightie or a pajama in the first place, but something more formal like a business suit. 

At first, I discarded it as a figment of my imagination. I am sure that the nightie-wearers I see everyday are no lesser mortals; they are entrepreneurs and networkers. They are independent women who drive their Hondas and Toyotas to drop their kids. They might even be frequenting pubs and shaking a leg at night clubs. Yet early in the morning, in the freezing cold, the nightie or the pajama is omnipresent, peeking from the coats and jackets. With the dupatta of course.

Perhaps this is a strange form of liberation for the immigrant woman trying to fit in a western country, or a self-proclaimed liberation from the bondage of being forced to wear something in order to blend in. Perhaps the desire to be the 5% located around the two tails of that "Normal Distribution Curve". Perhaps a sartorial compromise between the past homeland and the current homeland, a thin thread of nostalgia connecting the two. I imagine a dozen floral-printed nighties bought from Calcutta or some place in Chennai (two randomly picked cities) making their way across the Pacific Ocean as a part of a wedding trousseau. As a curious spectator trying to read people's minds, I wonder if it is sheer nostalgia, old habits, laziness, or rebellion to stand out.

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Landing in style

Landing in Calcutta for me is landing in style. I live dual lives, and with time, I have learnt to switch between the two. My life in the west can best be described as calm, methodical, and predictable. I know exactly what I am supposed to do every day. In my free time, I read, write, and ruminate. Sometimes, I work on my own and do not talk to anyone for days. If I want space and privacy, there is ample of it.

Then, I take that flight to Calcutta, and my entire way of being changes. I step out of the air-conditioned airport lobby, trying to identify my parents in the crowd. However, my glasses fog momentarily due to the humidity, and I am unable to see anything. While I am still trying to recover, a pair of hands grab my luggage, and wet, sloppy kisses start raining on my cheeks from nowhere. As I regain my composure, I realize that dad has taken charge of my bags, and mom, my cheeks. The first time, I was extremely disoriented, but this is routine now. Glasses fog. Baggage is gone. People grab me. I know I am home.

As we make our way to the car parking, the first thing I notice is that I have started to sweat. The feeling, although not quite alien, is uncomfortable. Back there, I only sweat under controlled environs, when I am working out. I am still wearing sweaters and coats because it was freezing cold when I had started. I might have parked my car at the airport parking and taken that flight singly, but the rambunctious crowd that awaits me at the other end of the world always consists of mom, dad, siblings, siblings-in-law, and an assortment of neighbors or close friends. All of them have stopped whatever they were doing in life and have showed up to come pick me up. I suspect that if dad owned a bus, more people would show up at the airport. Kakima and her family always send their car to pick me. As I am finally settled in the car, my hands involuntarily looking for the seat belt although knowing that there is none, the fun ride starts. Dad is more restrained in showing his joy, so he sits in front and instructs the driver in his baritone voice what roads to avoid. But the rest of the family goes wild, laughing, joking, pulling my cheeks, and saying inappropriate things. My mom had rechristened me "bachcha" (kiddo) at some point, and although I made her promise that she would never call me that outside home, she forgets her promises and shouts my name from the opposite street, making a dozen heads turn and my head shake in embarrassment. The car moves through the bumps and the potholes, shaking me as I squint outside and try to recognize the streets. I do not, because every time, there are new flyovers, new streets, new malls, and more people. For a change, people who look like me. 

"Chul koto jhaakra jhaakra hoye bere gechey. Eto mota hoye gechish. Kaanchkolar jhol khaabi aaj theke. E ma chul peke gechey. Hagu hochhey to theek kore? Jaanish paraaye ei cholchey. Eder breakup hoye gechey. Ei cinema cholchey. Ranbir er cinema dekhechish? Ebaare ekhane ekhaane khete jaabo, bujhli?"

("Your hair is so grown now, we need to get it cut. How did you manage to put on so much weight? We need to feed you green banana curry. My God, look at the graying hair. Are you still suffering from constipation? Do you know so and so in the neighborhood eloped with so and so? Do you know so and so broke up with so and so? Such and such movies are in now. Have you checked out the latest Ranbir movies? We should try out these restaurants this time.")

If you have seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you will exactly know what this crazy family of mine is like.

As I get off the car and make my way upstairs, all the close neighbors are waiting to greet me. Suddenly, there are so many people, and so much commotion. Hordes of people show up to meet me, and the commotion continues until I go back to the other home, a home where there is no one to pick me up from the airport, carry my bags, or shower sloppy kisses. I am blessed that even at my age, this is the celebrity treatment I get. I can literally get away with anything here. I can ask for anything I want to eat or drink, travel anywhere in the country, and my wishes will be fulfilled. Even as I am walking towards my apartment in Germany, my head buzzes from all the commotion. It feels like I just woke up from a dream where I showed up at a party and thousands of people were merry-making. And then, I insert the key in the lock and open my apartment door in Germany. Absolute silence. Everything just the way I had left it, orderly, in place. The calm and the silence is back. The only mementos I have brought back with me from the trip are memories, hundreds of pictures, and home cooked food that will last me the next month or so. 

Old age is going to be very hard for me to get used to. I am well aware of that.

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Nightie, the All Mighty

I have never been a more curious spectator of the sartorial idiosyncrasies of the women living in our community in Calcutta, the city where my parents now live. I do not live in Calcutta anymore, not since the last six years, and this is perhaps why little things that did not stand out earlier tend to do so. I am an outsider now. I see things that I had never noticed before. Let us take the nightie, for example. I have never seen something that has popularized itself more than the nightie has. The women of the extended family still remember my dida (grandmother) for her unconventional modernism. Dida has been gone for 13 years (maybe more), and is more of a distant memory for me. She would be close to ninety if she was alive today. Every female acquaintance of hers remembers her for, no, not her unconventional outlook or her lack of prejudices as a sign of modernity, but the fact that she owned and wore nighties. Yes, I have distant memories of that too, of the time when I was five years old. Dida would take a shower late at night, after finishing the chores, organizing food in the fridge and cleaning up the kitchen, and emerge in her green and white nightie, smelling of Boroline and Cuticura talcum powder. She would switch on the table lamp by the bedside, take out her collection of books and magazines, and read for the next few hours until I hugged her and fell asleep. Now when I talk about my dida, an epitome of a modern woman in the family, I am talking of no flimsy sheer Victorian secret. Victorian it was, covering her from head to toe, full sleeves and a high neckline. There were no laces, frills, or buttons, but a pair of strong fasteners securing the nightie, which was pure heavy cotton, the stuff you use to make heavy curtains at home. You could not see a square inch of bare skin below the throat, even if you tried to. The nightie was a companion for a few hours at night, emerging from her wardrobe much after everyone fell asleep, and vanishing much before anyone else woke up. Every morning when I woke up before seven for school, she would be back in her sari, preparing for the morning puja. Yet she was a modern woman, as the women of the extended family teased her, perhaps with a mix of jealousy and hypocrisy in their voices. The nightie was her id to modernism.

            The sight of the nightie is so common during my annual visits to Calcutta these days, but sadly, nothing like the sight my dida made, reading by her night lamp, her face glowing in the soft yellow, a nightly sight, almost a figment of my imagination because I have never ever seen her in a nightie in broad daylight. My parents live in a community interspersed with buildings five stories high, and during summery evenings, it is a common sight watching women, mostly elderly, prancing around in the terrace of other apartments wearing a nightie. They are seen doing every possible activity- taking evening walks, drying the chilies and mangoes for pickles, haggling with food vendors and salesmen, socializing with other women from adjacent apartments, untangling knots of the nylon rope with frayed edges tied to a dirty little piece of bag, also known as the “bajaarer tholi” that holds the keys to the entrance door, or conversing with anyone who has some information about the missing maid. I am yet to see an elderly Bengali woman from Calcutta who does not own a few pairs of sleeveless nighties. She takes a shower during summery evenings, dabs a generous amount of talcum powder on her visible upper extremities, including the armpits, and takes a stroll on the terrace. Hanging lards from the biceps or an endowed physique have never been deterrents. The term nightie is a misnomer, for you can easily find women performing a good portion of their morning chores in nighties. The milkman brings milk, the maid arrives and leaves, the newspaper guy delivers newspapers, the salesmen continue with their unwanted solicitation, the mailman delivers mails, and random strangers ask for “dada” (usually the husband), to which they have to crane their necks out of the windows and iron railings of the balcony or the stairs from the fifth floor and scream, “dada barite nei” (Dada is not home). The nightie remains a faithful accompaniment, never leaving your side.

When the hemline is too low or the design perhaps a tad too modern, a dupatta, usually sheer and gauzy, is used as an accompaniment. I have seen so many women who feel no hesitation stepping out of the house, even as far as the “moodikhana’r dokan” or the “kirana” (a small shop in the locality selling groceries) for some potatoes and lentils, or venturing out to the nearby “mishtanno bhandar” (sweet shop) for some evening snacks of “shingara- kochuri”.  A dupatta makes the nightie more official, almost as if it was never a nightie in the first place, but something more formal like a business suit. Or a swim suit. For I have seen nighties with dupatta in pictures all the way from the beaches of Puri, Digha, Pondicherry, and the southern shores of the country. Honeymoons, wedding anniversaries, birthdays and threading ceremonies, you name it. The nightie wearers are no lesser mortals; they are entrepreneurs and social networkers. The owner of Jasmine Beauty Parlor (“we have no branches”) in our community is often seen threading, waxing, snipping, and giving orders to her subordinates wearing her deadly nightie-dupatta combination.

I do not know if they are women of the modern strata in Calcutta. I do not know if they frequent pubs or shake a leg in clubs. These mashimas and boudis do not go around giving driving directions to their chauffeurs, cocktail in hand. Yet this seems like a strange form of liberation for the middle class Bengali women, liberation from the bondage of wearing something strictly Indian, a compromise between the extreme westernization of the miniskirts and jeans and the eastern sari. When the mailman rang the bell one afternoon, I was about to get the door in my tee shirt and sweatpants (that barely reached my knees) when my mother instructed me to don a nightie on top of what I was wearing. Confused, I wondered how ridiculous that would look, when I realized that it was the obvious choice over the somewhat contour hugging fabric I was wearing. I never donned that ridiculous combination of a nightie over sweatpants, much to her consternation.

Living outside Calcutta for the last six years, I got used to seeing and wearing different kinds of nightwear, those that were restricted to the sleeping quarters and were not worn during conversations with the neighbor or the salesman. I was meeting my newly married ex-colleague, Mr. Basu, during a certain business trip to the bay area in California. I was a little lost in their parking lot, and Mrs. Basu, who had recently moved from Calcutta, kindly volunteered to step outside and show me the door. I was parking my car when I saw the silhouette of a newly married lady in her mid-twenties emerging, an unmistakable silhouette of someone wearing a nightie with a dupatta thrown in. I smiled to myself as I realized that I might have left Calcutta years ago, but Calcutta hasn’t left me yet. I imagined a dozen bandhni-printed nighties bought from Dakshinapan in south Calcutta making their way across the Pacific Ocean as a part of Mrs. Basu’s wedding trousseau. That was when I realized the power of the nightie, the almost all mighty. 

Happy Diwali, Bollywood?

I always thought that Bollywood would have a healthy collection of songs suitable for any Indian festival, but I am not so convinced anymore. The lack of an optimal number of songs dedicated to the festival Diwali (optimal number n being greater than five) only reconfirms my theory that ours is a sex-driven race, just like any other species in the animal kingdom. Have you ever thought why there are hundreds of songs for Holi, Sagai, Sangeet, Shaadi, Karwa Chauth, God Bharai, or even Nag Panchami (characterized by the sinuous dance moves of a reptile-turned-heroine-turned-reptile cursed by some black robe wearing evil man) but only three songs for Diwali? I would argue that in a testosterone and estrogen-driven society where macro-level phenomenon like preening, grooming, mate hunting, courtship, marriage, and procreation exist in any random order, there is no respectable place for a festival which lacks the insinuations of the primal needs of man, namely rain, color, hormones, or the need to touch, want, and hug. Come to think of it, there are hundreds of songs not just for festivals, but for seasons, be it the cot-displacing brrrring of the winter when the khatiya is begged to be sarkaoed because of jaada, the jeth ki garmi waali dopahar (where the heroine instructs the hero - aake god mein utha thaam le baiyan), or the obvious tip tip barsa spawning season. After all, what could be so inviting about a festival characterized by crackers, ear-deafening sounds, the smell of gunpowder, and a bunch of cranky policymakers unhappy about noise pollution? Images of a heavily endowed woman in a flimsy white sari drenched in the rain running around while a male chases her with Holi colors rings a few familiar bells. However, imagine a woman gyrating her hips with a bunch of sparklers and crackers in her hand, hurling fire crackers at unsuspecting males every now and then and singing “Wanna be your chammak challo”? I fail to imagine the latent sexual overtones in this setting. No wonder Bollywood has never really considered dedicating entire songs to the pursuit of the celebration of light and sound, two very important concepts in an extremely dry subject called physics. Sure there are songs with occasional shots of the chick and the lad entwined, playing around with a bunch of sparklers (remember the song Mujhse Mohabbat Ka from Hum Hai Rahi Pyar Ke?), but a random youtube search for Diwali songs yields three results, one from the movie Home Delivery which is not really a “pataakha” item song in any respect, an old song from the time of Akbar where Mukesh’s adenoidal voice (although very melodious) of “Ek who bhi Diwali thi, ek yeh bhi Diwali hai, Ujda hua gulshan hai, rota hua maali hai” sets off a chain reaction of melancholy potent enough to extinguish any number of sparklers and crackers in the world (let’s face it), and another song from the year 1946, where the heroine’s sad state of mind reminded me of the day I had cried buckets at the scary thought of turning 30 because I was convinced that I was approaching senility and half-life decay at an alarming rate. Surely the Ramsay Brothers show more tactile actions (also known as touchy touchy) and hanky (s)panky (amongst ghosts and haunted spirits of course) than these songs do. Sure, there is one song in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham where SRK makes the grand Bhagwan Ram like entry, but then again, every song in that movie reeks of showoff, celebration, and affluence. No fault of Bollywood, which is just a reflection of the evolution of human race (or the lack of it), which brings me back to my irrefutable theory that everything in life ultimately boils down to preening, courtship, mating, and procreation. And anything that does not involve diaphanous clothing, the consequences of global warming (bouts of hot, wet, and cold weather, pun unintended), an umbrella, a few bees buzzing over a rose, a cot (khatiya), or even a reptile-dance number to save the mate from the curse of the evil man will never make it to the Hindi silver screen.

A very happy Diwali everyone, never mind the disappointment Bollywood has brought us.

[P.S.: I thank my friend S who made me notice the scarceness of Diwali songs in Bollywood, something that I had entirely overlooked for reasons not quite clear to me].

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Pants down Hands down

The other day while crossing the subway in one of the metro stations, I saw a man peeing 2 feet away from where people walked. Not a single person stopped to complain.

While traveling in a metro, I have found puke on the floor on 3 occasions now. Someone must have overeaten and felt unwell in the stuffed underground metro and have thrown up. While I sympathize with the person, I don’t understand how the person just got off the train and walked away without informing the authorities to ensure it was cleaned up. People made a face, but no one really did anything about it.

But what happened today surpasses everything. I was on the train when I saw a bunch of women and children get in the train. One of the women sat next to me, a toddler in her arms. A few minutes before the train started, much to the horror of everyone, the woman pulled down the child’s pants, instructing the child to pee right inside the metro compartment. The child obliged. Within minutes, there was a pool of water on the floor. The woman looked unperturbed.

People, myself included, watched in horror as the episode unfolded. I felt like retching. Unable to control myself, I confronted the woman. To which she argued about “What was I supposed to do? Get off the train? The child would have peed anyway”. People got some entertainment for the next few minutes, some even smirked and made a face. Worse, a man joined the argument, supporting the woman and alleging how I could behave so insensitively with a child. Still, not another person had spoken up. Finding support in numbers, the woman and the man (a stranger to the woman I think) kept shouting, arguing, and asking for sympathy from other passengers, asking them “How could this woman behave this way with a little child. The child had already done what she had to do, what was my fault in this”.

I haven’t gotten myself into a confrontation with strangers for a while now, and I don’t know what I could have done differently. First, it was a deliberate attempt by the mother, not an “accident” like she kept claiming to get sympathy. And to see something happening and people watching silently, having some drama and fun it in their otherwise boring life, I couldn’t imagine things have come down to this. Was I wrong in raising my voice? Could I be a silent spectator and watch as the woman instructed the child to pee right in the metro compartment? And a man, a rather creepy one indeed, telling others what an insensitive woman I was to misbehave with another woman and her child?

I wish I had taken a cab today. The reason I didn’t is because metro is fast, economic, and environmentally friendly. But is it conducive for everyone to let in people who have no civic sense? And for a society that reacts at the slightest provocation with slogans of “cholbe na cholbe na” (won’t do, won’t do), a city that has seen three bandhs in the last 3 months, for a society that is vocal and opinionated about everything from politics to football, I wonder if the people had lost their voices when I was the only one confronting the woman.

I won’t really conclude by saying something like “India has gone down to the dogs”, or “No improvement can happen in Kolkata”, and I insist you don’t do it either. Perhaps the metros should have public restrooms. Maybe such actions should be reported and heavily fined? Or maybe you could argue, “But what could the poor woman do? She cannot afford diapers, and she could not afford to get off the train”.

I don’t really know. All I can say is, I am deeply disappointed and disturbed.

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FAQs and a survivor’s guide to those visiting India the first time

Are you single?

Are you a woman?

Do your pestilential neighbors think you aren’t marrying due to suspicious reasons?

READ ON …

The maiden visit to the home country is always the most interesting. Most people would pay a handsome entry fee to merely come check you out and your ways of talking, eating, and walking, just like those visits you made to the zoo as a kid during the vacations, intently watching a gibbon eat a banana. Most listen intently to the way you speak, and are amazed at how you still haven’t forgotten Bengali or haven’t at least developed an accent while speaking Bengali. I tried faking an accent to not disappoint them, but it didn’t work. My Bengali-ness took over.

Anyway, I found that after meeting a few people, it became increasingly easy to answer their questions. It’s not because they asked easier questions, or stopped asking questions. It’s because all of them asked questions from the same question pool, just like our great University of Calcutta that has been reusing and recycling questions from the time Chengiz Khan had last invaded Russia or your grandfather had last watched Krishi Darshan on Doordarshan.

Q 1: Baaabaaa you look so different ..

Which euphemistically means you have put on weight and look ugly. The claim to the prolonged “baaabbaaaa” is not from ba ba black sheep. You aren’t a Bengali if you cannot drone a prolonged nagging baaabaaaa at the beginning of a conversation to show amazement. What it actually means, or if it was coined by someone great like Tagore, I don’t know.

You: Nod and smile

What you ought to do: Nod and smile. Don’t ask for explanations. You are not going to like being told on your face that you are fat.

Q 2: So what have you got from the US?

Don’t: Start giving an account.

Do: Keep them guessing. Say this and that. Don’t even bring them close to the room where you kept your suitcases. If possible, say NOTHING. Stuff some Hershey's kisses chocolates in their hands instead.

Q 3: So don’t you miss home?

Now this is a tricky one. If you say yes, you will be asked why you didn’t visit earlier. If you say no, you are finished. You will be portrayed as that insensitive monster of a child who never cared about old and ailing parents, and while the poor father was toiling hard and the poor mother was cooking for the family in the heat and humidity and missing you, you were gambling and having fun in Las Vegas.

Don’t: Try thinking of an apt answer.

Do: Smile and nod at an angle which could mean both a yes and a no. Say you’ve never been to Las Vegas or gambled.

Q 4: So when are you getting married?

A trickier one, with the question having many sub-derivatives. Some ask if you’ve decided to marry a foreigner [foreigner by the way is anyone non-Indian. So hopefully even Sri Lankans should qualify]. Some specify certain religions and races whose people you should never marry even if he is the last man with who you can repopulate the earth. Some demand that no matter who you marry, the ceremony should be in India. Some even ask you if you have come home to (secretly) get married.

Don’t: Let them believe you are as clueless as they are about your wedding. Never let them know you don’t have a plan or that useless software engineer bugger from the Bay Area fucked up the relationship and after 4 years of hanky panky, saying he needs more time to “figure things out” and you are too old, stigmatized and tired to find someone new.

Do: Smile suspiciously and coyly. Let them know there is something you are hiding. They will be dying to know the truth.

Q 5: So do you plan to become a citizen? Are you settling there?

The most unsettling of all the questions. For one, with the screwed up economy and your singlehood, you are light years away from a green card, let alone a citizenship. Your boss is making your life at work miserable and the last thing on your mind after 12 hours of coding or mixing chemicals in the lab everyday is to think if you are going to “settle” in the US.

Don’t: Try explaining things. Before you know, the neighbors would have found out how much you earn, spend, and save.

Do: Smile and nod making an angle which could mean a yes maybe or a no maybe.

And then there are some other questions you would have no answer to. Even the smile and the nod will not help.

Q 6: I’m not asking you your salary, but how much do you earn compared to India n standards? (You can almost see the currency converter in their heads ticking).

Q 7: So I’ve heard many Indian girls and boys in the US live together. Is that true?

Try saying: Yes, it’s called an orgy.

Q 8: So do you cook Indian food at all? No, you must be eating burger and fries, and beef and pork, no?

Try saying: Yes, and bull balls and bison meat too, transported all the way from Yellowstone National Park.

Q 9: Aren’t white people smelly and refuse to take a bath everyday?

Try saying: Yes, and it is sometimes required by the law in certain states that immigrants soap them.

Also try saying, yes, and we act that way too for days sometimes.

Q 10: Is there some good news we should know about?

Try saying: Absolutely. And look indicatively at those flab tires on your tummy.

While most questions are innocuous, bordering mainly on curiosity and lack of knowledge, answering them might get awkward after all that privacy and space you’ve had in the western society. No one really cares why you are not married or how much your earn away from home, unless of course it is the same desi aunty who is visiting her sonny boy back in California this time.

In summary, you can get away with most questions with an innocent smile and a nodding of the head which could mean a yes, no, maybe, probably, most likely, anything.

sunshine