Game Changers

The life of a postdoc is fraught with anxieties. It’s like having a full-time job where you work double-time and get paid less than half of what you should be making. You are working on other’s projects, fulfilling other’s dreams. It’s only a temporary situation for someone who has not yet found the real job. Just that finding the real job could take a long time, and there are no guarantees.

For me, a postdoc even involved an extra layer of moving to a new continent. I am not complaining, since it gave me a great opportunity to travel all over Europe. However, finding a faculty position always remained priority. I often spent my evenings and weekends applying for jobs rather than chugging beer or drinking coffee in the nice cafes of Germany or attending potlucks with the fellow Indians. And as I looked for a position, I got advice from all kinds of people. Close friends, random people, strangers, everyone felt that they had an opinion they needed to share and they knew exactly what I should do next. I was applying for jobs everywhere- in Germany, USA, India, South America, Singapore. However, I ideally wanted to live and work in the USA.

People mostly gave me two kinds of advice. And both these kinds had nothing to do with actually finding the job that I wanted. They seemed more like shortcuts, ugly patchwork to hide something unsightly.

One. Get married. Find a guy who lives in the USA. This will mark an end of your singlehood, take care of the visa situation, allow unrestricted reentry into the USA, get you a green card and what not. This advice came in all different variations. Set up a matrimonial profile. Don’t shy away from marrying for convenience. So what if the man is old or bald? Security comes first. Maybe get into an arrangement of sorts with a gay man. Marry for convenience and get a divorce later on. Or simply marry, because having a family would take the mind off finding a job for a while. I am too old and it is too late anyway.

Two. Learn some software skills. Change fields. Get into computer programming, a totally different field where apparently there is more money and there are more jobs. Learn a new computer programming language. Talk to consultants to see if they would do an H1-B for money. If the bachelor degree holders from random unheard of colleges can do it, you can do it too. You chose a wrong field. You should have done your homework about the job situation. This PhD was a waste. Yada yada yada.

To the women of the world who married for convenience or the software people, I am sure you consciously made your choices and excel at whatever you do. Although both these kinds of advice came absolutely for free, they did not do anything to help my situation. Neither of them was related to my actual job search.  These were merely the perceptions of people who thought that they have figured it all out in life. I imagined living a sorry life, married out of convenience, desperately trying to fit in a new (software) field I had no desire to be in. How is it that I made such wrong choices in life? Based on what people were saying, it looked like married women and people in the software industry were having a ball. So now, almost in my mid-thirties, I would have to forego my old skills and acquire new skills. Skills of the conjugal or software kind. Looks like my life were a complete failure.

So I continued to ignore these advices and kept working on my goals. People had no clue that this was not just a job for me. It was my career. It was my life. I am a lifelong academic, I am the happiest doing research. I did not want to marry out of convenience, neither to a man, nor to a software job. It was not about doing odd jobs to kill time. It was about finding a vocation I am passionate about.

Almost a year and half into living in Germany, I was offered a position in my field in the US. In the exact position and department I wanted. With full dignity.

In 2006, I had moved to the US as a graduate student.

In 2016, I will be moving to the US as a tenure-track faculty at a research university. I am going to start as a kick-ass(istant) professor.

I did not need to marry for a green card. I did not need to learn new coding languages. However, this experience taught me a few things.

Your friends may be your friends, but they do not know what is best for you.

It’s not just about finding a job. It is about building a career.

Self-respect and hard work never go out of fashion.

And most importantly…never give up. Your instincts are always right. You might not find results right away. But persistence will eventually get you where you want to be.

sunshine

Othering the non-mother and the lesser-mother

Update: Another post I wrote on this.

“Accepting the motherhood dare. I was nominated to publish a picture that makes me happy to be a mom. I am going to tag a few friends who I think are fabulous mothers and can rise to the challenge of publishing a picture of their own.”

I find the wordings of this post utterly disturbing. I repeat, I am talking about the wording of the post, and not about the concept of posting pictures of your children in general. I enjoy seeing the pictures of (most of) your children on Facebook, until you get to an obsessive point. Some of you, I do not know and do not care much. Most of you are my friends, and I feel happy. I even “Like” and of late, “Love” some of those pictures.

However, I find the above “motherhood dare” game disturbing at many levels. When I first saw a few women chip in, I shrugged it off as one of those low-IQ-but-innocuous chain posts on Facebook. Posting the color of your bra, the size of your shoe, we have seen it all. However, this post grew viral in no time, and everyone and their aunt were suddenly rising to the challenge (whatever that meant). I found a well-written article that mirrored my thoughts. So I posted it on my wall, asking what exactly was challenging about publishing pictures (that you do anyway), and what exactly was the “dare” part of it? Many got angry. Women who never write on my wall started defending themselves. Some who have not interacted with me in the last ten years “Like”d the posts of others defending themselves. Clearly, I had stirred up a hornet’s nest.

To paraphrase some of the conversation (since I cannot directly quote people without their consent), women asked what is wrong with posting motherhood pictures when people were posting pictures of their life events anyway. Everyone refused to see that I had problems with using words like “dare” and “challenge”. I had recently met a Mexican immigrant, a single mom of two who worked four jobs and earned meager wages cleaning people’s homes and toilets. If she fell sick, there would be no money coming. To me, that is a challenge. I recently met an eminent professor, a stalwart in her field, who had to bring up a child while being a graduate student, TAing three courses and doing full-time research. She had no help from parents and one day, she passed out in the parking lot out of sheer exhaustion. That to me is a motherhood challenge. I know a parent whose newborn was secretly taken away from them because the partner did not get along with them and decided that they will no longer have a role to play in their child’s life. The parent has been fighting for their rights. To me, that is a challenge. A fellow blogger has had the most difficult birth that I have known of, fighting against all the odds to keep their premature newborn safe and healthy. I know women who want children, but have not been able to conceive. That is a challenge.

To me, my own life choices are somewhat of a challenge. I wish to have children, but have never had a stable job, have been working in yearly contracts for the past several years, did not find a partner whose intellect complements mine, a person who can look beyond the money he makes and the model of the car he drives, and refused to get hitched to anyone just to get some stability and security. I know that I am running against time, and I may not have a child in this process of getting set up in life. But I do not earn enough right now to raise a child on my own, and I have decided to stay single until I find someone who believes in an equitable relationship and makes me feel that we are worthy of being with each other. There are mothers who are alone and working very hard to make ends meet. And then, there are women who want to be mothers, but cannot be due to many reasons. To think of some elite, privileged, smug women who have access to all the basic needs, who are social media savvy and posting their pictures as a challenge, a dare, seemed somewhat ridiculous, insulting, and marginalizing. Marginalizing not only to the non-mothers, but to the lesser-mothers. It’s like welcoming some people to an elite club and telling the rest that you do not belong here. As I reflected on my post and the angry comments it instigated, a few things came to mind:

1. My biggest question was, “So what exactly was so challenging and daring about this post? Did you overcome a disability? Climb Mount Everest perhaps? And when you handpick some of the so called “great moms” according to you, aren’t you marginalizing the “lesser moms”? Why did most people think I was making a personal attack against all the mothers of the world, and to the concept of motherhood in general? What might have led to such wide discrepancy in understanding?

2. Why were women writing on my wall, dissing me and defending themselves? While they posted pictures on their walls, I posted my thoughts on my wall. I never questioned them or commented on their posts. They did, to me, on my wall. Isn’t that intolerance towards alternate-opinions? Not only do you do things you assume correct, but argue and shut people who are differing in their own spaces?

3. I have heard so many women say, “Motherhood makes me complete.” Why haven’t I heard the same thing being said by men, that fatherhood makes you complete? And why don’t women (or men) say, “My job makes me complete. My degrees make me complete. My parents make me complete. My dog makes me complete.” and so on? Of course this is a general question, a reflection, and not a criticism. How can any one thing make you complete and the lack of it make you incomplete?

I had looked forwarded to some constructive comments and reflections. Something more that “You are wrong and you need to feel happy for mothers just like we feel happy for you when you visit a new country or get a new job.” None came. What came were lame, weak explanations something on the lines of, “We are modern day women. We do not judge you. It’s the older generation that did. Our generation is very progressive.” Some more sweeping generalizations on the lines of “these things never happen in our generation.” Perhaps this is what blind racism or blind casteism looks like. To totally not acknowledge that racism and casteism still exist.

Interestingly, women from our generation give me a lot of flak about my life choices, and these are women roughly my age. When I finished a PhD, they said, “Get married now, and your life will be complete.” When I found a new position and moved continents, they said the same. It is like something was always amiss according to them. With every milestone I reached, the need to be coupled to feel complete became even more profound. And the judgment came too. Big time. “This is abnormal. How long can you stay alone? Everyone needs someone. How will you have children?” People assumed things about me, that I am alone and lonely and unhappy. The discrimination was always there. Unmarried or childless women are still treated as second class citizens by our own clan. This, I speak from personal experience. 

sunshine

30 Rock(s)

Earlier this month, I finally did what I have dreaded the last 5 years. I left my twenties and stepped into my thirties. Not that I particularly had a choice, and not that someone came knocking at my door asking me if I was ready to be in my thirties, or if time should freeze for a while. Turning thirty came with a lot of contemplation, reflection, and introspection. If I continue to live the healthy life that I have lived so far, I would like to think this is where people break for the interval or half-time in movies. Of course, no one knows for sure.

I wonder how I would sum up my life. I wonder if I wrote a book off my life, how it would read. Certain times it has been a joy ride. Sometimes it has been painful. There have been achievements, yes. There have been failures and disappointments as well, lots actually. Did I get everything I had hoped for? Perhaps yes. Yes, there are certain things that I wish had never happened, or had happened differently. Such is life.

I wasn’t really trying to summarize my blessings, but I started to think of all those things, those eventful moments I have at 30 that I am thankful for, and all those things I wish I did. I am primarily an academically driven person, and I am thankful that my academics always got priority. I never had to choose work over academics because there was a dearth of money. I am immensely thankful for that. I have had an excellent education, although measuring education in terms of degrees defeats the purpose of education in itself. I have been fortunate enough to have two masters degrees, and to experience both, the Indian and the American system of education. I have been closely associated with two reputed research driven R01 universities in the US. I consider myself amongst the fortunate who came to the US as a graduate student, and got the opportunity to study without having to pay for it. I don’t think the experience would have been any better had I come for work on-site. My academic trajectory has exactly been the way I wanted it to be. I wanted to move to the US for academics (and not for work), and that is exactly how it turned out to be. Currently, I have a US degree to boast of, and another terminal degree in the making.

Traveling has played a significant part in my interest and development. I have lived and traveled in 3 continents. Sometime in life, I discovered the joys of solo, independent traveling as compared to traveling in herds, and have singly backpacked dozens of places. Along with travel came the interest in photography. Over the last few years, I have tried to better my photographic skills, and feel very special when a particular picture I took is recognized or appreciated. I am fluently conversant in 4 languages, and have workable knowledge of 2 more languages. I am proud that I got rid of my unfounded fears and learned to drive. I love my car (and camera) as much as I would love my family, and in the last 2 years, I have driven roughly a little less than the distance of the circumference of the earth at the equator (about 22,000 miles). I have visited 18 American states, 10 American national parks, and a handful of the wonders of the world. My first flight experience was 5 years ago, when I got to sit in the cockpit of the plane for hours as we flew over Turkey. I love visiting corners, and have been to the north western most and southernmost tip of continental US. I have had 2 full time jobs, one as a teacher and the other as a researcher, and survived a lay off during the American economic depression. I know functional salsa, and have performed on stage in Seattle 4 times, twice for dance performances and twice for a play.

I have spent 26 birth days with family, which is great. I have successfully managed to blog for the last 6 years. An activity that started out of fun and the need to do something with the extra time I had after graduating college soon became a driving motivation for me. I love my evolving sense of humor I have developed over the years, bordering on biting sarcasm mostly. I really like the way I see the world, myself included, and make fun of things around me. this wouldn’t have happened without the practice of writing for years.

I have had a brief (really brief) stint with modeling, when I modeled for a line of products. Don’t ask me more, I am not particularly proud of being in front of a rolling camera. I have managed to stay single, despite immense societal pressure and peer pressure. Most of my friends are married with school-going children now. I am not against marriage per se, I just didn’t want to marriage to become another one of those things in my check list of things to do before I died. I didn’t want to get into something without entirely being sure I was doing the right thing, just because the rest of the world has gone the same path. I have seen too many relationships going haywire, and till marriage happens, I am very comfortable living alone, globe-trotting confidently, and will not feel weird walking inside a restaurant having a meal just on their own or take a train and travel for hours just happy reading or seeing the world go by them. I would prefer it any day, than wake up beside someone not knowing why I married him in the first place.

On the flip side, there are things that I wish I had done by now. I haven’t read a single Harry Potter book, and haven’t watched a single movie from the Matrix series. I still haven’t visited Delhi, a city I have always wanted to see and know more of. I still haven’t written a book, despite contemplating it for years now. The list of things I wish to do, but still haven’t, is endless. However, beyond my entire list of achievements and disappointments, I consider my greatest achievement to be the fact that I have a job, a work life that defines my identity. I am neither financially dependent, nor work deprived. I would rather be swamped with work, looking for a vacation, than have my life as a vacation with ample time but no direction. Sometime during my twenties, my greatest fear was that I would live in the US, but as a dependent. Although I am a poor graduate student with no green card, multi-storied town house, fancy cars, or the so called achievement of bearing American children (like a friend once pointed out) to boast of, I am glad I steered clear of that dependent route, not succumbing to the panic of staying single.

I have had a great life so far. Fast-paced, eventful, and mostly the way I wanted it to be. But being 30 is not just listing the achievements and disappointments. For me, being 30 is also being wise. At 20, I was exactly the way people at 20 are. I was starry eyed, passionate, energetic, a dreamer, took up challenges, and believed that I could become anyone in life. At 30, I have an idea of probably who I am going to become, and am content with the fact that I will perhaps not become everything I aimed for, and am okay with that. Realistic is what I was not then, and am perhaps learning to be now.

sunshine

Unexpected Nostalgia

I woke up this morning with a strange emptiness in my stomach. There was this inexplicable feeling of hollowness, and for no reason absolutely, I felt tears streaming down my cheeks. I lay in bed, not wanting to get up. I repressed the urge to take a flight and visit Kolkata. This is strange because I shamelessly admit that I never really miss Kolkata. I miss spending time with my family, yes, but I do not miss visiting India per se. After I moved to the U.S., it took me four years to visit Kolkata, and in these four years, no one in the family had visited me. Unexpected circumstances came up during my stay in the U.S., sometimes I was left without money, sometimes without time, and sometimes without a visa status that guaranteed re-entry. As a result, it took me four years to visit Kolkata. It’s not that I keeled over and died in pain. It’s not that I put daily Facebook crib updates about how sad and jailed I felt. I did pretty fine.

I enjoyed my 4 month stay in Kolkata, but when the right time came, I was ready to move on. It’s not that I cried at the airport while saying a goodbye. I didn’t hate my life in Kolkata per se, but I was pretty detached to it. I don’t remember my undergraduate and postgraduate days in Kolkata with great fondness, and with the career-related insecurities it brought me, I was convinced at some time that I will end up living and dying in Kolkata all my life, the life of a nobody that nobody would remember. I am still a nobody, but it took me a giant leap from Kolkata to the U.S. to fulfill all my career related expectations from myself. Kolkata and I never had any differences, but over a time, we had grown indifferent to each other. This time when I went back, I was glad to meet my family, to eat all the good food and enjoy all the attention. I was doing okay in Kolkata, but I was also planning a trip to Europe without wanting to spend those extra 2 weeks with family. That should tell you something.

For me, the concept of home has always been the place I live in. When asked where I am from, I always reply with the name of my current location, and not Kolkata. Kolkata used to be home once upon a time. Then I moved, and it no longer remained home. My home is where I come back every day, where my belongings are, where I wake up every morning. You get the point I hope.

Hence, I was somewhat unnerved when I woke up this morning missing Kolkata terribly. I had random images from the city in front of me, images of my grandparents’ place I used to spend my childhood summers in, images of the river Hooghly and Howrah Bridge, images of getting off the bus opposite Victoria Memorial everyday when I worked as a teacher, images of taking the yellow colored metro as a student everyday and images of the streets of Kolkata I no longer remembered the name of. I wondered if it was my inherent escape mechanism to avoid the travails of studying for the approaching statistics examination, but honestly, I have studied for more difficult exams before, and I never missed anyone or anything as an escape mechanism. I called mother and told her about the situation. I told her that I was confused about the sudden intensity of my feelings. It seemed something powerful and inherent had shifted within me, or maybe, something in the alignment of the stars and the universe had shifted. I had never thought of revisiting Kolkata this year until now, but now, I am no longer sure. I need to work out my financial situation and see how many days can I take off this summer. This means an unavoidable talk with academic daddy, telling him I need a couple of weeks off. This means changing a lot of plans for me, my work plans, my travel plans, my plans to visit Utah, knowing that I will have to sacrifice many other travel plans, recuperating from the financial dent a visit to India is going to cause me. But all this is besides the point. What I am worried about is why I feel the way I feel right now. It is okay if it is a short-duration nostalgia that can be cured by an annual visit to Kolkata. What bothers me is what if these are incipient signs of me wanting to move back in the long run. I have never thought of things on those lines, if I want to move to India, and so on. Being single and free of baggage, I have always wanted to keep my options open, work in U.S., and Europe, and wherever life took me. Homesickness befitted my plans for myself. Maybe I am overanalyzing things. Maybe the uneasiness in the gut was caused due to bad food. Maybe those were mood swings or hormones. Maybe it is that time of the month already. Maybe the feeling would pass.

I have always wanted to see myself as an independent person, independent not because I wanted to stay away from home and study in the U.S., but independent because I was free to choose the kind of life I wanted for myself in any corner of the world, and do well in life without familial forces pulling me back. Whatever this newly found feeling is, I hope I continue to be independent and free in making my decisions based on what I want, and not be chained by dreams and desires of my perception of what I think is best for me.

sunshine

Draw-ing The Line

The other day, in one of my contemplative moods while waiting at the bus stop, I looked at my hands, palms outstretched, and wondered at the number of skills I had mastered over the years. I am not just talking about writing that first word “APPLE” or drawing the first house with a chimney. Even as an adult, I have mastered various skills over the years. Though not professionally trained, I have developed a knack of picking up and performing various dances. In my play, I did more of hand gestures than I could ever think. Always a pathetic cook, I have learnt to make a decent meal over the years. I have held the needle, I have created stuff with a pair of scissors, I have tried to make a point with the pen and the key board. I have raised hornworms for laboratory research. I have used the calculator to balance complicated expense sheets. I have done so much with my hands, these short stubby fingers with nails neatly cut. But if there is one thing I regret having not been able to do so far, it is picking up the art of drawing, sketching, and painting. It is not one of those things I’d rather regard as “Who cares” and move on. Quite contrarily, over the years, I have tried picking up the pencil on several occasions and come up with something even remotely coherent, if not artsy. Alas, my high built hopes have been cruelly demolished every time.

It’s not that it does not run in the family. My dad is a great painter, he can paint what rich people hang on their walls. But it seems that the particular genes have not been rightfully passed on to me. My greatest fears in school were those assignments when we had to draw science experiments depicting Brownian motion and Pascal’s law on the left hand sheet of our science notebooks. This was followed by having to draw different human systems, stems and roots, ginger rhizoids and potato tubers for the biology classes. I would look at the better artists in my class and marvel at that extra shade added to the stomach diagram that would give it a 3-dimensional look, those extra few lines in the liver that gave it a shiny appearance and identified it from the rest. Ironically, my diagrams were not bereft of the “Good” and “Very Good” remarks scribbled by the teacher. This is because I always managed to put on a helpless, lachrymose look the night before the submissions when dad would take pity on me and make a few strokes in my copy. He screamed at me, he got impatient, he got mad at me, but at the end of it, he would remain awake late and complete my drawings while I would always excitedly wake up in the mornings with a broad grin on seeing the best photosynthesis experiment protocol diagram in my copy. Dad always went an extra step to shade and give a 3-dimensional effect, that always worked wonders. I hated him getting mad after a hard days office work to stay up and do my drawing assignments. But over the years, he gave me hundreds of those beautifully drawn things I preserved and showed off in class proudly for ages.

When I finished school, dad sighed in relief to have been relieved from his duties. But alas, God had different plans. I took biology, and had to draw 50 times more this time. But this time, dad made the rules clear. I could bug him only on weekends, not more than 2 drawings everyday. I just could not appear with pencil and paper and expect him to start drawing. However this time I had a better plan. I started to do outlines and little bits of stuff of the drawing before I showed it to dad. I would draw, let’s say, the head of the fish or the tail of the rat, show it to dad, and exclaim more to myself, “Naah, this is not half as good as what dad draws”. He would take a look, start erasing things, and would redraw things for me. I still remember I had to draw a mouse one time, and he drew such an animated version of it, all dark and hairy and real, that one look and mom had almost thrown up- Yuck ! Even the tail looked so real with the rings that one would feel like swinging it by the tail.

So dad bailed me out through my torturing drawing assignments while I earned goods and very goods. But I never really learnt how to draw. It’s not that I never tried. I tried emulating simple sketches, carefully noticing the way dad held the pencil and made strokes. I also realized that I was not that bad in seeing something and exactly replicating it. But I had no imagination, no creativity. You ask me to draw something as simple as a caravan and I would end up making something that would look like a cow without a tail. With time, I told myself that there are only certain things I could master, and I had to live with the knowledge that I could not excel in everything. But then I would look at a certain painting in wistfulness, marveling at the brush strokes, the paint and the water color, with the signature of the artist scribbled below illegibly, and wonder if I could ever learn to draw something as simple as sketches showing different facial emotions. I looked at the art teacher in school with all jealously, amazed at the way her hands moved with speed as she drew fruit baskets and vegetables and flower gardens for the kids. One visit to my friends home and I gaped in amazement at the huge paintings she had drawn and hung on the walls that gave her house such a “rich person’s house” feel to it. A simple flower vase with flowers. Faces of different women waning into the background colors. The plumage of a multicolored bird.

So what reminded me of this? I was at the hospital earlier today for some bill settlements, and while I waited for someone to attend to me, I looked at the different paintings on the wall with the same feeling of wistfulness. What caught my attention particularly was a certain framed picture that had dozens of hearts, each unique and drawn differently from the rest. Every heart had a different color, a different pattern, and I was amazed at the creativity and the imagination of the painter. For a while, I wondered about the idea of making a life painting and hosting art exhibitions instead of studying cells and molecules. Perhaps I could use my creativity and learn to draw different patterns on the DNA, draw weird looking cells with star patterned cell walls, and weird looking red blood cells and mitochondria. I think I will give it a try tonight by sitting with my pencil and paper again, trying to replicate simple patterns of shapes and emotions and moods. But something in me tells me that I’ll again end up drawing vegetables that look like lamp shades. And just in case people can’t even understand what I was trying to draw, yohoooo !! I can always call it modern art.

sunshine

Visit To The Haunted Ground.

The man on the street was playing a heart-wrenchingly sad music on the flute. It was a cold chilly night and the dry wind blew wisps of hair all over my face. It was one of those cold nights that made you cling tightly to whatever dear you have, which wasn’t a lot more than a few winter clothes that didn’t really help much. I didn’t know if the misty eyes were due to the harsh chilly winds or a response to the sad flute music playing beyond. The music reminded you of pain, of loss, of letting go of everything you have dear.

There was quite a crowd of tourists like me all over the place. It was my first visit to New York City, and all day, I had been excitedly taking pictures. These were the places I had seen in movies, on television, in albums of other people, and now I was seeing everything anew. Even after a hundred pics or so, I thought that I could not have enough of the mightiness of the Empire State Building, the majesty of the Statue of Liberty, the liveliness of the Times Square, the serenity of the Staten Island. If there was a model city I wanted to live in, this was probably it. I walked on the streets and thought-“Wow, is this the Wall Street, the hub of so much going on in the world?” I was like a kid finding my way through wonderland, never knowing what fascinated me more.

NYC gave me neck aches in no time. I was craning my neck every time I wanted to see the sky above the buildings. There was very little sky to see anyway. The place wasn’t called one of the most happening places for nothing. The Manhattan skyline was a complex mesh of the tall sky scrapers straight out of a Matrix movie, and one just had to see them to gape in astonishment. The buildings were so tall and there was so little sky to see beyond them that I was actually beginning to wonder if people didn’t feel claustrophobic walking down the streets.

On one hand there were these tall buildings that made viewing the sky almost impossible. And then there was the broad, clear sky dotted with stars. Though one would expect such a thing, it was a different thing altogether to see it. I am talking about the ground zero- the remnants of the place after the 9/11 tragedy. All these years I saw the videos of people jumping out of the WTC in desperation. I read stuff and saw pictures. I watched documentaries and movies. I replayed and watched them again. But nothing, I repeat, nothing compares to what I saw standing right on ground zero. The place was almost fenced with thick material and there were people at a distance who peeped through a tiny orifice in the fencing material. When I crouched to take a look myself, I could not believe that I was witnessing from that 4” by 4” window one of the worst acts of nefariousness mankind has witnessed in recent times. It was different to read about world wars and disasters and movements in history books and to watch movies and documentaries about them. But here I was peeping out of a window in the NY cold watching the area that had witnessed the loss of everything one could value, and withstood it. There were no signs of wreckage, no mangled metal and trapped bodies, no blood or stench of death. The area looked akin to a large construction site with neat cement and concrete and construction workers wearing helmets and safety gear. I tried to imagine what the site must have looked like 6 years back, but my imagination failed me. 

The man was still playing his flute and there were people walking past the spot to catch the train. There were visitors like me, tourists who were taking pictures and were reading the stuff there. There was a list of the people who had lost their lives and given the amount of space the list took, I estimated it to be around 3,000. There were about 3,000 names in front of me, names who meant nothing to me, but names who were people once, who had lives and families, and who had lost their lives on the very spot that I was standing. There was nothing placed deliberately there to attract your sympathy, in fact it was mentioned clearly that no materials were supposed to be distributed or no public speeches were to be made around 25 feet near the place. Yet I saw the names and wondered who they were and what fate had caused them to be there at that particular point that day. My friend later debated that more people died elsewhere, in wars and suffering, and we pay no heed. That is not the point. Here I was standing in that spot, and that is all that mattered to me. I did not care about quantifying how big or how small the loss was. I was standing there like a visitor, like people visit museums and Disneyland, yet it was none. I looked up and saw the biggest stretch of skyline I had seen in New York. They claimed that in the next few years they are going to erect structures and buildings, but that was not the point. I wondered staring at the mangled pieces of construction if the memories of the dead were to reside there forever and to come back and haunt whoever cared to think of them. Life went on, people were busy catching trains and celebrating the holiday and getting on with their life and work. It was good in a way, since life is all about moving on, no matter what. Yet I stood there speechless, transfixed, my vision crystal clear after the tears had wiped the debris off my eyes. I wasn’t really crying, I found out much later on my way back to the train station that my eyes had gone misty. And in that strange moment of realization, I discovered that after spending a holiday taking hundreds of pictures, not once did I remember to take out my camera standing at ground zero. And why would I? It wasn’t a memory I would have loved to take back with me. I could have sent the pictures home, but did it really matter? If you felt the pain and the sadness as much as I did, you would not even remember walking away from there, let alone taking pictures of the place. There were ample pictures on the internet anyway if you googled "Ground Zero" for images. The least you could do was to let the dead rest in peace.

sunshine

Look Hair, I'm Fine.

What happens when one fine morning, you open your mailbox and find an email where someone from the department you do not even know introduces herself and asks you out for coffee?

You feel good about it.

And what happens when you get another email from someone else from the department asking you out for lunch the following weekend?

You feel elated.

What happens when you get a few more of such emails with people asking you out for more coffee and lunches, people from the department whom you do not even know that well?

You tend to get suspicious.

Tracing back the origin and the reasons of the emails and then correlating it to what happened in your life that triggered those emails proved to be a task as difficult as solving murder mysteries in your mind while you read the detective novels.

It took the Sherlock Holmes in me a while to figure out what was happening.

A few weeks ago ….

When I moved to Seattle, I started losing a lot of hair. Every day, as I combed my hair, I found strands of hair everywhere. Despite the humidity and pollution in Calcutta, I hardly lost hair. I never applied curd and eggs on my head. I never made any effort to maintain my hair. Yet, nothing happened. Every time I went for the haircut, the hairdresser commented on the thick crop of hair I had.

And then, I moved to Seattle. I would be horrified to discover strands of hair in the shower everyday. I was unable to figure out a plausible explanation for this, since the weather suited me fine and I was eating and sleeping well. I was so excited in my initial few days here that I wasn’t even depressed or missing home. I was clueless about what was happening. I asked my friends if they faced the same problem and some of them admitted that they did. But they were mostly men. A young woman with a thick crop of hair and not suffering from any major illnesses or setbacks in life didn’t really fancy rubbing shoulders with such balding men.

So every morning, I looked into the mirror to see how much more of my forehead was showing. But beyond a point, I stopped worrying. I believed I was aggravating the hair loss problem more by worrying and losing sleep over it. Even at the current rate of hair loss, it would take me perhaps another 30 years before I had to think of a hair transplant. Soon, I forgot all about this and moved on.

But then, I met someone in my department who casually asked me if I got a new haircut. I told her that it was perhaps the loss of hair that made me look a little funny. The rest of the conversation from my side was more in jest. I told her how the US wasn’t treating my hair well, and that very soon, they would name me a bald eagle. I also told her that I couldn’t find a roommate and was living on my own (not that I had any issues with that, I was quite enjoying the space actually).

With some logic not quite clear to me, she put two and two together, and concluded that I am suffering from depression. She thought that the absence of social company in the form of roommates was adding to my depression.  Perhaps I wasn’t eating or sleeping properly. Perhaps I was missing home. And that’s why I was losing hair. I was perhaps on the verge of sinking into cause chronic depression. Some people who remained depressed often committed suicide or tried to harm themselves. Naturally, I was in desperate need for help, according to her of course.

This is how she interpreted the seemingly innocuous conversation of hair fall. So she immediately shot a group email to some of the older students, discussing my “situation” and telling them that I needed help. She feared that if left on my own, I’d end up with chronic depression. Maybe I needed some more time getting used to the place. Maybe I needed to hang around with people a little more.

I understood this after I read those emails the students wrote me. They told me how difficult the transition was, and how brave I was living away from home. My doubts were further confirmed when one day I accidentally bumped into one of them, and she admitted that an email was sent to many older students asking them to help me out. Everyone after that started asking me if I was fine, and if I needed help. So much for a joke that backfired on me!

Of course the person doesn’t know that I come from a place where competition is the way of life, starting right from primary school. Everything is a struggle. Even going to work on time, navigating the traffic is a struggle. People get used to standing in line and waiting for hours and still not have their work done. Buses get crowded, drivers swear, passengers grope or fistfight. And then there are floods and heat waves. Bomb blasts. Earthquakes.Political unrest. And people survive all that. People who write their exams better end up getting lesser marks than those whose mommies and daddies are influential. Answer papers get misplaced, never to be found again.

I myself have written the board exams with a fractured leg. I have qualified and interviewed at better universities, and was rejected solely because my university did not publish results on time. I have had my masters thesis copied word by word with the consent of the professor, because the person could not get her readings right. I have had my statement of purpose plagiarized too. And I have survived a lot worse than this. Yet, nothing depressed me.

And then, I come to the country I have always wanted to be in, and people assume that I am depressed. I am in love with Seattle. I love the weather, the people, the campus, the roads, the buses, and everything else. I no longer fear crowded buses or question my safety when I walk home from campus late at night. I am spoiled for choices. I have an assistantship, and I have health insurance for the first time in life. I am making new friends. Life couldn’t be better. Yet, someone thinks that I am depressed because I am losing a few strands of hair, and creates mayhem for me. Should I call this caring? Or a sign of being panic stricken? Perhaps these people haven’t seen what real struggle is.

Seriously, I am doing just fine. In fact, I am doing great in life. I just wish that my department would understand this.

sunshine.

A Day When....

Everything went wrong. Well, almost everything.

I thought it would take me a long time to hate this place. But then, I got fever. Wednesday night, I came home with a slight temperature running. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought and gone back to doing the daily chores. Just that I soon found myself too tired to cook or study. I collapsed on the carpet.

I would have been that way had a friend not called. Something seemed wrong from my voice, and she insisted that I come over for dinner. She gave me a ride, cooked me dinner, gave me medicines, and offered her living room since I was too ill to get back home.

The next morning, I found myself feeling better. I waved her a goodbye and got back home. Since classes started a little late that day, I might have some time for a shower and a brunch.

The shower, I had. I still had some 40 minutes before classes started. I thought I’d rest a while, just lie down and listen to music so that I didn’t doze off.

And doze off, I did. When I woke up with a start and squinted at my wristwatch, I knew that the classes had just started about a minute back.

Shit !!!!

I couldn’t afford to miss classes because we had to make a small submission every week based on that day’s class. If you were absent, you couldn’t make the submission. No handouts were available online. I called up a friend to ask if she had reached class. She didn’t even pick up the phone.

Wearing my shoes and taking the keys with as little time as possible, I dashed for the door. From my home, I have to walk down a straight lane for a few minutes, and then wait for two signals to cross the road and then get to the bus stop. It’s like a “T” where I walk on the vertical line of the “T” to take the bus on the horizontal line. This means that even while I walk, I can see the buses running. 

And just when I thought I would cross the first signal and still make it on time, I saw the shuttle leaving. There was no way I could have done anything but helplessly see it go. This isn’t India where you wave at the bus from a distance and the bus stops in the middle of the road, never mind the honking cars behind. The next one was 15 minutes later.

It had been drizzling all morning. I made it to the bus stop fine. But Mr. Murphy had more drama in store. At least three different buses took me to the department from home. But none of them came. Other buses came and left. People at the bus stop came and left. And I just kept standing there. I had even forgotten my umbrella. Surely I looked like a drowned rat in trouble.

It is then that I felt the first few drops of tears trickle down my eyes. I wouldn’t have noticed it since it seamlessly mingled with the rain on my face. I will never forget that day when I kept hugging the wooden plank in the bus stop, waiting for the bus and weeping. I realized what it meant to be alone and a foreigner in a new country. 

Would I skip class and go home, and live with the burden of feeling like an irresponsible person because I had dozed off ?

I don’t know why but I kept waiting for the bus. The bus eventually came and I took it. By the time I reached my department, I was already 30 minutes late. The class was 50 minutes long, in one of those huge auditoriums where you entered from the front door and climbed the steps so that when you came in, everyone could see you. There was no escape from a back door. I was still debating if I should enter the auditorium. It felt humiliating.

I did. I must have been real desperate to make it that day. When I entered, I thought that a thousand eyes were on me, judging me. I wished I could turn into a whiff of smoke and merge into oblivion. But I did not. I crept in silently, wishing that people would not recognize me. This is one of those seminar classes that both the students and the faculty attend. 

And just when I’ve climbed a few steps and taken a vacant seat and settled in, I craned my neck to look to my left to see the Chair of our department and the head of this class look at me.

I wish that the ground had opened up and engulfed me. But nothing fortunate like that happened. 

I did attend the last leg of the lecture. But it is on that day that I realized how difficult life had become for me. Sometimes, you fail to appreciate your family and take everything for granted. You fight, you complain, you whine. I'm not saying that the role of my family is to be my alarm clock and my cook. I hated that my parents did not like me studying late at nights, objected to long phone conversations and frequent eating outs, and absolutely did not allow sleep overs. So I argued, rebelled, and left home. I realize that you need a family, not only to force you to do the right things at the right time, but also to give you that overall love and support that essentially forms the backbone of your well-being.

sunshine.

In Our Own Shoes.

It’s now become a ritual to meet her daily. Every morning as I get down from the bus and walk the long stretch down Theatre Road, I see the familiar sight of two human figures holding hands and walking towards me. As we approach each other, gazes locked, she makes it a point to smile at me and wish me good morning. I return the greeting as always with a smile, get near, and pat the kid on her head. This has been a routine affair for the last few months now.

Initially I used to feel very uncomfortable at the prospect of having a lady almost 10-15 years senior to me wish me “good morning ma’am”. Now, I have gotten used to it. Every morning, she makes it a point to stop and ask the kid to wish me morning while the kid shrinks into mumma’s shins. Then follows 30 seconds of polite conversation when she asks me about the progress of the elder daughter and while I give a brief account, I try to grab whatever I can of the kid’s cheeks. And then I smile sweetly at her and walk away. After a few steps, I turn to look back at her. And as usual, I see the familiar sight of mother and kid holding hands and walking down the streets.

I have a weird feeling whenever I look into her eyes. If I could trust my gut feeling, I think she wonders what would it be like to be in my shoes. What do I appear to her? A young girl in her mid twenties who is a teacher in the school where her elder daughter studies? A young girl who has a job, a career, a set of friends? A girl who holds the key (according to her) to her daughter’s academic performance? I would have shrugged off the gut feeling had she not asked me for my email id yesterday on the pretext of wanting to be in touch with me even when I am gone from here. Why? I mean, I wouldn’t be the daughter’s class teacher anymore. Then what might she want to have to write to me?

Perhaps she thinks I am lucky to have the life I do. Perhaps she wonders what it is to be in my shoes……

Strangely, I am sure she would be greatly surprised to know that her feelings are mutually reciprocated. Sometimes I wish I could be in her shoes. Everyday when I see the familiar sight of mumma and baby holding hands and walking down the streets, I feel an inexplicable pang. I wonder how it feels to be the mother of two kids. I wonder how it is to wake up every morning, get your kid ready (all the more since most of the time, I have trouble getting myself ready, leave alone attending to someone else), drop her to school, and discuss her academic performance with the teacher. I wonder how it feels like when a lady 10-15 years your junior bends down to pat the kid’s head.

Perhaps she will never know….

Perhaps it’ll be a long time before I get to know……

She wishes she could be like me….

And here I wish I had a life like her. At least the part of her life I get to see every morning….

Suddenly I realized that I was still staring at mother and child while I had already reached the school gate. I shook my head and smiled to myself. Life…. Somehow you always ended up wishing for the things others have, never mind whatever God has given you.

sunshine.

A Chapter Shall End Soon.

For the umpteenth time in the last few hours, I read the letter neatly typed and signed and folded it again. I had known all the time that doing this would be difficult. Yet never had I anticipated that I’d actually end up hating myself for doing this. For reasons unknown and sans basis to me, I had started feeling guilty. Not wanting to prolong the wait further, I moved towards the door carrying the letter with me, and knocked softly. I entered the room with oodles of trepidation, knowing that my life would never be the same again once I came out of it. For this was the very room where I sat nervously almost 8 months back, nodding dutifully when my classes were allotted to me.

And in these 8 months, I have come a long way from what I used to be, so much that it actually seems 8 years’ worth of experience. Every moment I have spent in school has turned out to be a memorable moment for me. For what I joined as a job to keep me busy for a few months before I left home turned out to be much more than a job. It became my life.

And I was so happy with this life. If there weren’t a few factors to be considered, I’d have never even thought of quitting. But then, US has been a different dream altogether, and a much older one.

The tidings spread fast in the staff room, and it was a boon since I was spared the pain of having to announce it personally. But telling the kids turned out to be one hell of an emotional rollercoaster ride for me. I entered the class as usual and spent the next 5 minutes helping them to settle down in their places. I took the class attendance as usual. The kids had kept their diaries on my table for me to sign even before I had asked them to. They too had kind of entered into a routine life with me the last few months. Like everyday, I saw their Math textbooks opened in front of them. They looked at me in anticipation, wondering which chapter would be started today.

I just stood and looked at their faces. Not a word was spoken. It seemed that I had entered into a trance for a few moments. I just looked at their faces, my eyes drifting from one corner of the class to another. Finally, I cleared my throat and found my voice.

Children, I shall be leaving this month. And I want a promise from all of you that you all will behave yourself and will not give anyone the chance to complain once I am gone.

I somehow hurried through the seemingly rote lines, wanting to get over with the torture as soon as I could. What I saw in their faces was a stunned expression. Whatever is in their hearts gets reflected on their faces. In fact if telling them a goodbye wasn’t so traumatic a feeling, I’d have actually laughed at the remarks they had to make about the news.

Oh ma’am, are you getting married?

Who will teach us math now?

Ma’am, you won’t be there this year with us for our class photographs?

Ma’am, you will give us your email id?

And so on………….

Most of them were very curious to know if I am getting married. When they were told the real reason, some of them actually asked me how much more they have to study after leaving school to get a PhD. They were disheartened that I would be leaving before the Teachers’ Day. And so was I.

When I’d entered this school, I’d wondered how I would be able to remember the name of every student of my class. And now, I just have to take a look at their handwriting to know who they are. It was a strange period of adaptation for me when I would be treated as the junior most amongst the teachers and still the senior classes would treat me with all respect. On one hand I was pampered and kind of bullied (though it was great fun) and taken care of by the teachers. On the other hand it was weird to be wished by the kids, ranging from the boys at least half a foot taller than I am to the ones who barely reached my hips. I could probably end up writing a book about my experiences of the first job. And it is this very job that actually made me realize what is it that I really want to do in life.

Yet it is pointless to relive each and every memory and prolong the pain. Goodbye times are indeed painful times, all the more since I know things would never be the same again. If you have ever read Kabuliwallah by Tagore, you would know what I mean. Children learn to adapt fast to the changes in their surroundings. They get to forget people as quickly as they learn to love them. So even if I met them a few years down the line, I know I’d never find the same expression of joy on their faces again.

I am about to embark on a new journey of life, of working for a dream I have envisioned for long. Initially this job had meant to me nothing more than an opportunity to spend the next few months doing something useful instead of whiling away time. Yet now I am strangely engulfed with a strange feeling of sadness. These are the classrooms I’ll never walk into again. These are the corridors I’ll never take again. I’ll soon be expected to return the teachers’ copy of the text books. My personal cupboard would soon be empty. For a few more months, I’ll live in this school as some hundreds of signatures in the students’ copies. And then these copies would be replaced by new ones. And slowly things would get faint and I would be forgotten. Never again would I have to wait to take the 6-15 am bus. Nor would I need to conduct assemblies again. The various noises associated with a school, the kids running around, the bells ringing, would all be silenced soon. Never again would I have to sing the national anthem or say the pledge daily. Never again will I get a chance to sing “Happy birth day to you” in unison with the whole school. Never again would I be asked how old I am. Never again would a 2 and a half footer come running to me and say, “Ma’am, he is pushing”. Never again would I have to stay up at nights correcting answer scripts and laughing my guts out at the funny answers. I’ve already started feeling miserable.

Just give me the strength that I don’t end up crying on the 31st (which would be my last day here). I just don’t know what more to say.

sunshine.

Occupied Space.

I was wondering about the concept of space in my life. Not the molecules of hydrogen and helium beyond the exosphere, but the one I occupy at different places, in different ways.

Home, sweet home. For 9 long years, I have lived here. The walls, the paint, the smell of my room seem so familiar. It is strange that all of a sudden, I have started to notice things I would not previously. My room has been my personal space for so long now. This is where I have studied for all my exams. When I was in my final year of school, dad had designed a cupboard for me. It is similar to the ones you would see on the Inside Outside magazines, where when you unlocked it, one of the sides would unfold as the study table. When you were through, you could close it like the door of an oven and lock it up again. Dad had designed it for me to keep my books, and that was perhaps the most special possession I had. Slowly, my books started increasing in size and volume, and dad designed another huge showcase for me (it is of the same height that I am) that covered one full wall of my room. I still remember how I would proudly show it off to my friends, unable to sleep out of excitement. Probably it was after that that I started buying new books and novels with greater fervor.

My room is where I cried in solitude when nobody would understand me. It is where I read those hundreds of novels to kill loneliness. It is where new thoughts and ideas have taken shape. It is where I saw the sunset from. My room houses all the normal things any room would have. Yet somehow, every bit of my space seems so special to me.

The bed, the pillows, the bed sheets, the cartoon wall hanging, the corner where I would hang my weekly planner, the wall clock, the large snap of mine on one of the walls, everything seems to have survived with me for years now. I have a huge collection of weird things. There is a black cardboard box where I have a huge collection of the greeting cards friends would give me. I love to collect earrings. And then, I have a habit of collecting dozens of pencils and pens of different colors. I have a huge collection of seashells of different shapes and sizes and designs. I love to keep all the letters that I get and read them over and over again. I have a few dozen albums filled with snaps of all occasions- our childhood, school, freshers’ parties, farewells, excursions, weddings, and so on. There was a time when I would collect hundreds of audio cassettes. Now, the collection has dwindled and shifted to CDs.

I know that I will be moving out of this place pretty soon. And since it is not possible for me to carry everything, I will have to get rid of a vast chunk of my paraphernalia. This includes all the things I have mentioned, and many more. These are things that I hold dear, these are things with which are associated so many memories. These are the things I have amassed over a period of years. I still remember how I persuaded mom to get me that black sleeveless dress from Metro Plaza. I would touch the particular page on my slam book for months where a former crush had scribbled. Almost every tee shirt I got myself, every dress, every accessory I bought would be the result of saving money and some mad bouts of endless shopping spree. Every thing I possess, every space I occupy, holds so many memories for me.

The particular dining chair I sit on, the window panes in my room, this swivel chair dad got me, this computer keyboard I am typing from, my favorite collection of songs I listen to, everything holds a different memory for me. It is the space that I have occupied for years now. I will soon be alienated from all this. Hopefully in a few months’ time, I will be living in a different country, breathing different molecules of oxygen, touching unfamiliar doors and windows, sitting on unfamiliar chairs, typing on an unfamiliar keyboard. I would soon learn to live without reading the letters that I almost know by heart now, or live without the same things I do now.

I have been touching everything of late, trying to get a feel of things. My wardrobe, my clothes, my books, my study table, my cupboard, even the huge cartoon wall hanging. Soon, all this would be from a different era. I will make newer memories with newer things. Things would soon change and spaces would again be occupied. But the memories associated would remain frozen in an ice of timelessness forever.

I must be feeling these things because this is the first time I would be moving away. I just don’t know.

After all, there are so many other spaces I occupy. Spaces in people's lives. Friends and family.

Speaking about space, there was this favorite bench I had in the classroom where I could sit and pull a prank on others, write instant poetry, all being inconspicuous to the eyes of the teacher. The last time that I had been to college, there was a different batch, a different face sitting on that particular bench. I wonder if that person shares the same sentiments that I have about that place.

And then when I speak of space, I think of the space I have created for myself here in my blogs. There have been so many people I’ve known in these last few months. And even after all these months, I would still type my mail id and wait with bated breath, eager to read the comments I get for each post. Somehow, all these are not just statistics for me, they mean a lot more. I thought the eagerness to read comments would subside and I would soon become lackadaisical. However, that is not the case.

Anyway, I should leave now. Get back to the favorite corner in my room. Touch and feel my prized possessions once again. I need to go through the files and sort out the novels. Maybe I am getting excessively sentimental about things. Or maybe I am just plain tired and exhausted and stressed out. I just don’t know.

sunshine.