New Year 2018

New year is a time when many people make resolutions. One of my new year resolutions was to take one nice, well-framed picture of something every day. But in the first six hours of my new year, I learnt two important things. One, those resolutions do not matter (for me). And two, when it comes to basic survival, my crazy, weird, eccentric ways of being and doing things do not matter either.

I did not book my airplane ticket to Seattle until the very last minute. Even then, I made a deal with myself. I had a writing project I had delayed for more than a year now. If I did not finish that by December 31^st, I will not take the plane on January 1^st. I will sit at home and feel bad for missing my trip, but finish my project first. So I worked diligently for the past two weeks to finish it.

Looks like the flight was delayed by many hours. Rather than arriving close to midnight, it would now arrive very early in the morning. I was exhausted to the core from finishing work last-minute. I half-packed my bags, set the alarm at 4 am and fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was horrified to see that it was 5:45 am. Somehow shaking off a gripping, paralyzing fear, in 15 minutes, I had brushed, packed whatever I could, and left the house. In my mad rush to not miss the plane, I left without taking a shower, still wearing my sleeping pajamas and woolen socks, I had forgotten to pack many essentials, I had not taken a blanket or pillow, but I had miraculously managed to catch the plane just on time.

What is the big deal, you were able to take the plane after all, one would rightly say. Well, I am the OCD kind who reaches the airport two hours before required, diligently packs everything, checks the cooking stove and the heater twice before leaving home every day, packs enough dry food during travels to last any crisis for 24 hours, stores quarters (25 cent coins) at two different places in the bag, boards a bus with exact change in hand, and so on. I am quite mental that way, I like to have things figured out beforehand.

This time, I forgot my pillow and blanket and shivered through the long plane ride (and ended up with neck cramps too). I let people see me in mismatched pajama and blinding red woolen socks with a rip in one of the toes. I forgot my entire camera bag home, something that has never happened before (so much for my new year resolution!). I forgot to put things away in the freezer (but I checked the cooking stove and the heater, only once though). But it did not matter. My constant need to micromanage things around me and feel like I am in control of the environment did not matter. Taking those DSLR shots every day did not matter. What mattered is that I was able to hop onto the plane just in time, spend part of the new year with the kids, inhale deeply Seattle's warmer air when I arrived, eat pongal from Thiruvadarai pujo that G had cooked, eat mutton biryani, and leave behind all my work, worries, writing projects and new year resolutions for the time being. This house, my room, this bed has so many memories for me that spans over years.

Baby Kalyani (who is a baby no more) excitedly told me the names of all the country capitals that she has recently memorized rote (and I asked her to memorize all the countries that constituted former USSR before 1991). Her baby sister spotted me from afar and screamed in delight, squeezing some more toothpaste on the bathroom counter top. G taught me funny new Tamil words like Thiruttuthanam while I sat on the hardwood floor in the kitchen (my favorite place) and ate hungrily. And finally, I hopped onto my bed at the end of the day and slept peacefully without the worry of alarm clocks and missing airplanes.

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Because Seattle will always mean homecoming

Growing up, I always lamented the fact that I was never allowed to live outside home, in a hostel. I knew some people who did, and the celebrity status they received on visiting home blew my teenage mind. As a kid, I was attached to this drama of going somewhere far away so that coming home would be a celebratory occasion, a big deal. I used to fantasize taking an overnight train while people waited for me at the Howrah station, to hug me and tell me how much they missed me and how thin I have become. 

So after high school, I got this random idea of moving to New Delhi. I didn't know where or what I would study there, but I knew it was far enough for me to gain celebrity status whenever I visited home. When I mustered enough courage to vocalize my wishes, Ma said, ask your Baba, and Baba sternly said that there were enough good colleges in Kolkata. There was no need to go to New Delhi, or Pathankot, or Ludhiana, or even to nearby Chandan Nagar. "We grew up in the hinterlands of Bihar, studying in Hindi and Bhojpuri. If we have done well, you will be fine living in Kolkata." These words had a finality that marked the death-knell of my wishes. 

Many decades later, I have had my wish fulfillment from a different person living in an entirely different continent. 

G is the first friend I made when I moved to Seattle in 2006. Naturally, we have a little bit of history. I left Seattle in 2010, traveled the entire world from Virginia to Nebraska to Germany and then landed back once again close enough to Seattle. Now, every few months or so, I take the train to Seattle and receive the same treatment I had wished for while growing up. 

First, there would be excitement about my arrival. Counting weeks, and then days. Then, a lot of phone instructions- "Pack light, don't bring slippers or night clothes, you left them the last time. Don't forget your ticket printout." She would be waiting to pick me up (since I live and travel alone, I am not used to people waiting on me, but this is different). In between meeting me and getting to the car parking lot, she would try to catch me unaware at least twice, pinching me hard around my arms or waist (She plays in attack mode while I play defensive, we share a pretty dysfunctional bond that way). She has a new name for me every time, a name I'd rather not disclose in public, while I continue to call her Gundamma. 

In preparation of my arrival, G would have soaked the rice for the dosa batter, because that is what I love to do, sit on their hardwood floor and eat dosas and idlis and vadas to my heart's content while chatting up with the kids (aged almost five and almost nine). I have my own room with shelves full of my stuff. I bring a list of everything I need to take back- Indian spices, food, and she will mostly open her pantry and give me stuff, asking me not to waste money. She will pre-order any medicines or books I need, take me to the bank, the hair stylist or the doctor, and help me do my laundry. She would drive me to the Indian store where I buy frozen coconut, curry leaves and laddoos to take back. 

As the weekend gets over and I prepare to head back on Sundays, she will pack me a bag full of home-cooked food to take back- sheera, pongal, aviyal, poriyal, and another bag of curry leaves. She will ask me to visit the Swami room (prayer room) and bow to the two dozen deities living there, smear vibhuti on my forehead, put an apple in my hand, and ask me to text and let her know once I reach home after midnight. She would drop me off, but not before making a pit stop at my favorite Indian restaurant and pick two boxes of mutton biryani, my favorite, to go. 

I always wanted to experience a similar drama (and I do not mean drama in a derogatory way, but more as an action), a situation where I move away, but not too far away so that I can still visit periodically and experience this comfort of predictability; expressed through soaking lentils and grains to prepare my favorite food, taking me around to buy whatever I need, drinking tea together twice a day (I drink tea only when I have company), taking me to Inchin's Bamboo Garden because I love their garlic lamb, and making me look forward to my next trip. Because going back to someone is always a nice feeling, and while a few hundred miles is not too far, it is just the right distance to make me feel the excitement of going home from another home.

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Craving Seattle

I was in Seattle recently. While leaving, I had the same feeling of sadness that I have experienced every time, no matter how nearby or faraway I live. The invisible and intangible umbilical cord keeps me tied to this place.

I took some time off during this trip to do what I love doing- reflect while passing some of the familiar streets and neighborhoods that were an integral part of my twenties. A bus ride from Green Lake to Fremont, Dexter Avenue, the troll, all the way to downtown. A walk from the Montlake Bridge to the university avenue. A drive through my previous workplace in Redmond. A trip to the Lincoln Square Mall in Bellevue. I do it every time. Yet, I never tire of it. 

Somehow, in the process of a laborious and complicated rubric cube solving exercise that lasted me seven years, I was able to find my way back, at least somewhat near Seattle. When I had left Seattle seven years ago, I had no idea about where life is taking me. Had someone showed me a crystal ball and told me that in seven years, I would move to the east coast, actually finish the PhD that I did not finish the first time, move to the mid-west, move to Germany, complete two postdocs, and come back, I would have only stared at them in disbelief. Yet, it all happened. And I was able to slowly inch back as close as I could.

Seattle to me is like falling in love with someone and never getting over them. This time, the people I met talked about skyrocketing real estate prices, worsening traffic, racism in the backyard, the rapid expansion of greater Seattle, and other such things. Yet, I am oblivious to these vices. In my time capsule, I am spending my 27^th birthday at midnight, climbing the troll and digging its nose for a goofy picture. I am a graduate student absconding from work and spending the day at the Gasworks Park, feeding ice cubes to the ducks and seeing how long it takes before they realize it. I am eagerly waiting for my Husky sticker to arrive so that I can start taking free bus rides again. And I am that poor student who is walking down the halls of the health sciences building, meticulously reading every advertisement to see if there is an experiment I could qualify for and earn a few extra dollars, cheap free goodies, or even a slice of pizza for my time. Sensitive teeth experiments where they alternatively squirt warm and cold water on your teeth and gums, sleep experiments, nutrition experiments where they feed you some liquid everyday for three weeks and monitor your blood sugar, respiratory experiments where you run on a treadmill and they monitor your forced expiratory volume, or ergonomics experiments where they ask you to type on a bunch of different keyboards and ask for your feedback. Someone asking for my feedback used to be novelty back then. That is why I did it all, with full gusto. 

I am insanely happy with where I am right now. Yet every time I leave Seattle, I do so with a prayer on my lips. That someday, someway, I find my way back to Seattle. That is my happily ever after dream.

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The train named nostalgia

I took the bus to the UW campus the other day and spent a few hours alone, walking the paths of familiarity and nostalgia. Reliving bits and pieces of an era bygone. I do it every time I am in Seattle, as many times as I can.

It was a typical cloudy Seattle day, just like it was when I first arrived here almost a decade ago. I got off at the Montlake Freeway station and walked by the moss-colored Montlake bridge to the Husky Stadium where my convocation took place many years ago. The Burke Gilman Trail, U-Village, Zoka, and the University Avenue, all invoked diverse memories from the same era. Every shop and building I passed by, every street I walked has a connection with my past. I have lived in multiple places in the US, but Seattle is where all the "first times" happened. My first bank account, first time eating Thai and Japanese and Korean and American, first drivers license, first car, and so on. I was flooded with memories, and there are two random, inconsequential ones I particularly remembered.

I am a huge fan of Chipotle (A close second to biryani, I could eat it every day), and my first time was at the one on the Ave. It's still there, and I stood in front of it, reminiscing. There is a particular guy there who had taken a liking to me. I used to frequent that place, especially when I had exams, and this guy used to steal some time out of serving food to come up to my table and make small talk. I remember once he asked me very subtly if I would go out with him. I never got the hint. I was a 25-year old fresh-off-the-boat living outside home and the country for the first time. I was not really worldly wise, not used to people asking me out, and not used to seeing so many people who did not "look like me". I could never chat up random strangers like I do now. Back then, I would not know what to talk, even if I had gone out with him. Honestly, I was more uncomfortable than flattered. So I stopped visiting that place for some time. The good thing is, he used to serve me extra servings of guacamole (I love guac!), and this, some of my friends would remember too. 

Then, there was a senior PhD student who had befriended me from some common shared interest group on social media, although we had never met in person. One day, he said something like, "You don't know Seattle, so I can show you Seattle. There are many parks here. Let me take you to a park some evening after class." I am old and wise enough to now know that he was just nerdy and socially awkward. But back then, I had freaked out, mostly because I grew up being told that one should not go to parks and secluded places with strangers. I could get murdered, my body chopped up into pieces, sealed in a sack, and shipped off somewhere. I did not know that parks are safe places here where people worked out and walked their pets. G, my Seattle guide and guru back then had also freaked out and warned me not to go to parks with strangers. I never went. Sometime back, I looked up the guy out of curiosity. He is a professor now, doing very well for himself.

Nostalgic moments like these always remind me of a line from a Bangla song, translated as: “The train named memory and nostalgia always runs backwards.”

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Timeless parental advice

G and I made a trip to the UW today with the little one to relive our decade-old journey. We were filled with nostalgia as we walked by the campus and the University Ave. Look, this is where we met! Look, this is where we worked! The Harborview Medical Center shuttle. Chipotle. The Thai lunch place. Starbucks. Agua Verde. Chili's. And the second hand clothes store (that closed down eventually) where I used to buy clothes during the first few years, because I was a poor student and had no money. We were glowing in nostalgia, reliving every moment of those two years we spent there.

The little one looked clueless, so I was making up a corny line or two to tell her, something like, "Look, this is how I met your mother." Before I could say anything, G gave the most profound speech to the little one-

"Look kanna (little one), auntie and amma (mother) studied here. This is where you will study, okay? Every day, I will nicely pack you thair saadham (curd rice) and maawadu (mango pickle). Appa (father) will drop you to the bus stop every day, and will hug you tightly and do total PDA (public display of affection) so that you don't do any boyfriend stuff in undergrad, but only focus on studies. You can study anything kanna, medicine, engineering, or architecture. Puriyar dha? (Do you understand?)"

"Puriyar dhu (I understand)", bleated the very clueless child meekly.

And I thought to myself, Wow! Curd rice and daily bus ride and a protective daddy and living with your folks and studying engineering. Long live Indian parenting! Ironically, I flew half the way round the world to come to the UW to escape the same Indian parenting.

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Food hunting and gathering skills

Skills practiced since childhood never go waste. I have developed some weird sleeping habit of late that has been too chronic to blame on jet lag. I doze off by 9 pm every day, as soon as G’s kids are off to sleep. As a result, I wake up by 4 am, starving and my stomach growling angrily. So I am really proud of the way I have honed my primal food hunting and food gathering instincts. The fridge is on the first floor while I sleep on the second floor, mathematically at the longest distance from the fridge. I almost feel like Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment while doing these stunts every day. 

1. See and walk in the dark, with only the blue little light of the thermostat mounted on the wall guiding me.

2. Tiptoe silently down the creaky wooden stairs and the wooden floors, so as not to wake up the adult humans and the tiny humans.

3. Stay away from the activated alarms, and from accidentally turning on any light, or initiating any 9-1-1-kind of disaster.

4. Not step or trip on squeaky toys on the floor.

5. Scan food quickly for stuff like dahi vada, gajar halwa, idli, and fruit cake, carefully avoiding the salads and the vegetables, and avoiding spilling, breaking, and disasters of such kinds.

6. Eat quickly, and in the dark. Also, wash my hands, opening the tap minimally to avoid any sound of water flowing.

7. Not get startled by the sounds in this home. Dish washers, the house heating furnace, and mostly, snoring human beings in the house. 

8. Tiptoe back to my room quietly, carefully avoiding the squeaky bed, or bumping into any sleeping human or humanoid.

9. Perform the entire stunt of hunting, food gathering, eating, and finding my way back in less than five minutes.

10. Not re-enter the wrong room in the dark by mistake.

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An honorary Tamil

I will be soon extracting myself out of the German womb of cultural immersion to reach Seattle, and re-immerse myself in the Tamil cultural womb. G, one of my first friends in Seattle (back from 2006) is originally from Chennai, although she is hardly the stereotypical Kanjeevaram-clad, vibhuti smearing, Swami (God) fearing lady that I had expected to meet all those years back. 

They speak in Tamil and English at home, and make no exception for me. A rather rambunctious family, they even argue, fight, and watch movies and TV shows in Tamil. When we go on drives, I'm always forced to listen to Tamil songs. 

As a result, my rudimentary knowledge of Tamil is quite impressive. I can ask you to please come inside, go outside, come downstairs, and go upstairs. I can ask you to go take a shower, and ask if your bowel movements were fine this morning. I can ask you if you need a diaper change, and question why are you shouting or putting your hands in your mouth. Everything in Tamil. I know quite a few bad words in Tamil, and the good words that sound like bad words too (like poo, that means a flower). I know what an ass is, and what a buffalo's ass is. I even know random words like karandi (daal'er haata in Bangla) and couppai thotti (trash can). 

However, my abilities go far beyond linguistics. I am familiar with many of the popular Tamil soaps, and can sing (or at least hum) quite a few songs too, including Vaaji Vaaji Sivaji. I am kind of familiar with a subset of the thousands of Gods and Goddesses, particularly amused by a Quick Gun Murugan God, and a Hyper God (It's actually Hayagriva God) who accepts clove offerings. I can name many varieties of food, from the koota to the kolombo (not to be confused with Colombo), sundal, aviyal, poriyal, mostly made with nariyal. I still don't understand much that they speak, but I can recognize word patterns. For example, whenever I hear a series of words like, "andre pandre andre pandre dosa" or "andre pandre andre pandre appam", I know it is time to drop whatever I am doing, follow my nose, and land up in the kitchen for some lip smacking food. 

This time, I intend to add much more to my vocabulary, and teach G some interesting Bangla words too. She already knows Kosha Mangsho (trust me to teach that first to a pure vegetarian), Paanchu Gopal, and Paaka Meye. The knowledge exchange will be fun this time, and so will be my nocturnal fridge raiding sessions. Theirs is the only fridge (other than the one in Kolkata) that I shamelessly raid after midnight without any inhibition. 

Until then, my German lessons continue. Ten lessons done (eighty more to go), and they are still hung up on teaching me how to order beer and wine and food at Restaurant Sumloven in Opera Platz, and meet some male friend at 8 o'clock and go have a drink at his place later. Talk about focusing on the right things.

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Impromptu Poetry

One day, I wrote this while taking the bus to work.

Today was my most gorgeous day
Hot and sultry, inching towards May
The sky with the deepest promises of blue
The water in Lake Washington mirroring its hue
Dissecting it, stood the longest floating bridge
Towering above were the Cascades, and the Olympics' ridge
And there stood the Rainier, mighty and tall
To be admired at, and mesmerized by all
The view from the bus was a visual treat
With hopes and promises did Seattle greet
Yet alone, I sat mesmerized, none in my wonder journey join
Heads bowed to technology, everyone was busy staring at their groin
If only they'd looked up, what all they'd see
The sight of Heaven on Earth, that's how it'd be.

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New Memories in Seattle

The morning I reached Seattle, G was there to pick me up. Seeing her made me feel like I had never really left, but just gone for a short vacation to Europe. Her place has always been my home in Seattle. That's where I left from when I moved to Germany. Once back, I did not have to hunt for my room. It was all right there, with all my stuff, just as I had left it. The bathroom had my soap and shampoo, everything that I had left behind, exactly like that. The bed, the couch, it all felt the same. But I totally realized that I am home when she dangled two huge, football-sized onions in front of my nose and told me, "Here, chop them finely, now that you are here."

As much as I hate chopping onions and garlic, arguing that my fine motor skills are bad, that's my duty in this home. It's not a bad deal at all, staying home, being entertained by the kids, and all I have to do is chop onions and peel garlic every day.

We chatted for a long time that day. I am not a tea-drinker, unless I have company. I had two cups of tea. All this tea and catching up on the gossip made me realize how much of a history we have, going strong ever since I moved to Seattle nine years ago, when she had hosted me. Her home was my first home in the US.

After seven years of graduating from there, I found myself walking the campus, looking at the same buildings, the fountain, the Quad, and the Red Square. This campus is full of my favorite nook and corners, the Burke-Gilman trail I used to walk daily, the U Village, the same buses 372 and 68 and 75. It made me realize, my life is nothing but hundreds of terabytes of memories from different chapters. My life will probably not make any sense without those memories. If someone erased my memory today, I would not know what to do next.

I found my department, went up the stairs, found a quiet corner, and started my laptop. I had no hopes of connecting to the internet. However, a very familiar page opened, asking me for my id and password. I had not used that id since 2008, and didn't think it was alive anymore. I put in my information. And there, I was connected!

It looked like although the id is dead, I could use that to connect to the university internet.

And much later at night, 24 hours into reaching Seattle, I had a visitor from Idaho. We never stopped talking after that.

Despite the many great things that Seattle is, commuting in bus is complicated. You pay $2.50 every time you take the Sound Transit. However, they do not give you a transfer. Other buses give you a transfer for 2 hours only. However, there is no concept of a day pass. Getting an Orca card means added investment, which doesn't make sense for me. To pay the $2.50, I need to carry exact change. In summary, it is complicated.

A 3-day bus pass in Chicago had cost me $21. A 10-day bus pass cost me $29. I scanned the entire city, but could not find a 10-day pass. Everyone was out of them. So I had to get three individual 3-day passes. But it was still better than no bus pass. You do not realize these things when you drive around. Taking the public transport is a different story.

A few days later, I visited the nearby temple, and was amused by two particular things the leader of the temple said-

"Your soul does not belong to Microsoft. It belongs to Krishna (God)."

"When you pray, don't ask for promotions, raises, cars, and houses. That's not a prayer. That's making a business deal."

Some of you might remember Baby Kalyani, who is all of six now. You could teach good values to your children as much as you want to. But when Aunt sunshine is in town, all of that will go down the drain. Seriously, it is so much fun to spoil your friends' kids.

So the 6-year old learns classical music, and wanted to teach me a certain devotional song she knows. It goes like, "Parvati nandana bala ganesha ... Vighna vinasha varada Ganesha."

And I said, enough of this baby. Now let's learn some devotional songs from my collection.

So the little one sang, "Dum maro dum, mit jaaye gum, bolo subah shaam, hare krishna hare raam", and "Jai jai shiv Shankar” for the next few days, without realizing that these songs picturized people high on crack and totally stoned.

The next few days, life fell into a beautiful rhythm. We often find the routine of a Monday to Friday work life monotonous, and seek excitement in the unknown. I myself have often fantasized about a life without roots, without set geographical boundaries. But I am discovering all the excitement and beauty there is in a life well-grounded, well-balanced, and with a clear sense of purpose.

Despite my initial anxiety about not having a phone, car, or address, life fell into a beautiful pattern of regularity. I would be on campus three days a week, and work for home for the rest of the days. And I would travel on the weekends. I love the work I did there. G would drop me and pick me up from the Park & Ride or from Target. I took the Sound Transit, and then walked for a good 30 minutes one way, soaking in the beauty of Seattle. I had tea with G in the mornings, and ate dinner with the kids. I enjoyed all the music as the little one practiced her Sa-Re-Ga-Ma every day. We took long walks, admiring the view of the mountains. Living with G is like living on the sets of the movie Chennai Express, with all the andre-pandre I can make no sense of. But it is comforting to hear all the andre-pandre, and coming back to a place that feels like home. Her husband once told me that G can even talk to a wall if there is no one else in the room. And with more flexibility with my work hours now, I got to meet other friends, and explore restaurants, new and old.

Working. Socializing. Reliving old memories and making new ones. Traveling to other cities, and welcoming friends from other cities who visited me. Seattle and I have always had a history, an energy I have felt with no other place. If I could paint a picture of a perfect life, this would be it.

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Remembering Yoni Ki Baat

Come February-March, I fondly remember the excitement and the gusto with which I would wait for Yoni Ki Baat. I don’t know how I found Yoni Ki Baat (or how Yoni Ki Baat found me). In the past, I have written about my hesitation in performing for this play. Honestly, the hesitation left me the first time I went up on stage for my performance. It was a Eureka moment, a life defining moment for many reasons. From there, there was no looking back.

2008 and 2009, I performed in Seattle’s Yoni Ki Baat. I don’t know if anyone of you was there for the show, or if anyone remembers my performance. I have never been a stage and spotlight loving person. In school, I would be the last person you would see voicing her opinions. The darkness, the sharp stares of the audience I could feel, with the bright lights on my face has always made my knees jelly-like. The whole world staring at you from a dark vista point is not a very comfortable feeling to live with. Stage performance was so not me. Then, Yoni Ki Baat happened.

Was I scared? Hell, yes! No matter how much you have rehearsed your lines, nothing can help those butterflies flapping their wings inside your stomach. You know that your friends and the entire Seattle/greater Seattle community is going to be there to listen to you. In some ways, you are the most important person on the stage that evening. In some ways, the stage is the most important and the defining thing of your life that evening. It is natural to feel queasy, for it is much more than a performance. You know you are about to talk about some really personal and taboo topics. No amount of hand holding and good wishes can dispel the fears that are nagging you. Was it the right thing to do, to be on stage and talk about things that can turn away a potential boy friend if he found out? Is it okay to talk about things you would rather your mother did not hear of? I am reputed to have made some daring stunts on stage, now that I think of it. Do not get me wrong, my issues were not always sad issues. I have had some very happy scripts as well. They were taboo issues nevertheless.

A girl in the 6^th grade orgasms in class without knowing what an orgasm is, and believed for years that she had a “happy blackout”. The writer Juno spoke of unfulfilled dreams of motherhood. That was me performing on stage. Sometimes I was a 6^th grader wondering what exactly hit my world that day and gave me a blackout. Sometimes I was that twenty-something old woman who wants to experience motherhood. Sometimes I was 27 and unmarried, unable to find a connection between the Jakes and Lukes from Harlequin Romances she dreamt of, and the Kamal Kishores and the Neelkanth Kumars she actually met in life. Sometimes she was a happy yoni, sometimes confused, sometimes angry, and sometimes scared. At the moment whatever her emotions were, she always found her voice on stage, a truthful and authentic voice that belonged to her and never failed her.

I realized in the process of scripting my play, that comically cynical, sarcastic satiric writing is my forte. I wrote about grave and serious issues in a way that had the audience in splits. It just came naturally to me. Here I was talking about how “the common man, even after topping the IIT and ending up as a software luminary, spends his entire life paying off mortgages for a house in the outskirts of Bellevue”, and here my audience was laughing uncontrollably. When I was sad, the audience laughed. When I was angry, the audience laughed. Once, all I had to do was go up on stage to start my performance, and some people (probably my friends who knew me) started laughing J

It was an important realization, that this is perhaps where my voice came from. I found it immensely therapeutic. It is not that I intended to become a standup comedian. However, no matter how I said my story, and how sad my story was, the audience always laughed. I am glad they did because I did not want them to weep, feel sad, or shift uncomfortably in their seats. Yoni Ki Baat gave me a blank canvas on which I could paint whatever I wanted to. And I found my voice in humor. Some of my best writings turned out to be the ones coated with a cynical, satirical overtone.

I discovered my comfort zone in writing scripts. I got hold of my stage fears. I learnt to get there in front of people and talk about things that were important for people to think of. Not only this, I made a set of wonderful friends during the process of rehearsing for the play who are my sisters I will cherish all my life. These are not just friends who I’d watch a movie with or have dinner with. These are my sisters I would call up and talk for hours. They are the friends who know me as I am, know of my fears, and still love me for who I am without the glitter and the makeup. Unconditional love is what I got from them. This is why Yoni Ki Baat has been such a life defining moment for me.

I missed Yoni Ki Baat in 2010. Last year, I moved out of Seattle and hence, I will be missing Yoni Ki Baat 2011 as well. Yoni Ki Baat 2011 is special. My good friend Shahana Dattagupta who I met through this play, and performed with for two consecutive years, is directing it this time. I know I am going to be there in every sense, except physically. If it were not the middle of the semester, I would have flown to Seattle in a heartbeat. But I realize that is not going to happen.

If you happen to be fortunate enough to live in or around Seattle, I would strongly recommend you to go watch the show. My best wishes go out to the participants this year. I know you will be nervous on stage, but it is very important that you get on stage and tell your story to the world. From personal experience, once you are there on stage and the show has begun, you realize nothing can hold you back, and nothing really matters anymore. I went up and told my stories as if nervousness or hesitation had never mattered to me.

Lastly, dear Shahana, congratulations on your new role as a director. You have all my love and best wishes. You have made quite a positive impact in my life, and congratulations on your journey from being a performer for 3 years to being the director this year. Someone out there 3000 miles away will be cheering for you and is very proud of you. Good luck to you and the entire team of Yoni Ki Baat 2011.

Link to Facebook page

sunshine

Trying new things

A few weeks back, I opened my eyes to the glorious sunshine one morning to exclaim, “Shit, I will be turning 27 this year!”. I scurried to the bathroom mirror for tell-tale signs of greying hair, wrinkles on my face, or even a receding hairline. But everything looked fine. However, I now felt that my life-wicker was waning while I did the same mundane stuff over and over again. Nothing was wrong in my life, not an extra pimple on the face, no degenerating hormones or dystrophic muscles. But the very thought of spending a life analyzing health impacts of metals on humans was depressing. So I decided to try something new, something exciting.

I’d heard that my university friends were performing a classical dance for the opening of a new South Indian temple and were looking for another dancer. I speak or understand no Tamil, but I found myself for the rehearsals, inwardly rolling on the floor laughing when I heard the lyrics (which I understood nothing of). Having danced to tapori songs all my life, a classical performance was not what I had expected. Nothing had prepared me for a chance to dance Bharat Natyam to the song “Margazhi Thingal” in a temple. Most people I know perform after years of classical dance training, and the little bit of dance I had picked up was due to my interest in Bollywood. Yet the choreographer had immense confidence in me, no matter how long I took just to get my tripatakas and ardhapatakas and the other mudras right. Not just was the song alien to me, there were parts in the song where there were no words at all, but the tei-yum-dat-ta’s and the Jatis. I do not know if ignorance gave me the courage to go classical the first time in front of an audience, but here I was with a mini jasmine garden on my head, kohl-laden eyes, my limbs painted resplendent red with the red highlighter as a substitute for aalta, my mind vacillating in between controlling the ticklish sensation and wondering how very dermotoxic the highlighter would be. When I sent pictures, my family back home thought that I had dressed up all classical and hired a photographer to take my pics just for kicks.

 

My group wanted to perform to another song. It was a far cry from the Bharat Natyam I was religiously practicing. It was full of hip jerks and ovary-dislocating pelvic thrusts. For the next few weeks, I danced to songs that I did not understand with friends whose language I did not speak. I made my own version of the song in my head, making strange words out of what I understood. Imagine the fun you have dancing to something you do not understand, especially when the dance moves looked like milking cows. Someone even told me that I looked “authentic South Indian,” whatever that meant. Again, it wasn’t an earth shattering, but I think I did well. I was also able to get out of the lethargy that prevents you from trying out something new, getting pally with a group of unknown people from different backgrounds, no matter how trivial or unimportant the act or the effort itself was. I danced to kumbida pona deivam and yammadi athadi.

That summer, I also registered for level 1 salsa classes with my roommate and her boyfriend and completed it. I tried my hand at some bowling, thanks to a classmate of mine from Pakistan. I went to a bull riding show in Tacoma last month, starting watching (and liking) South Park, and went for a dance audition for another group last week.

sunshine.

Nature Did It.

They said it rains a lot here. So what? As if it doesn’t rain in India. That’s what I thought.

You had to be here to know what the rains here are like. And they say this year has broken the record of the past many years. Unlike India, it doesn’t pour. It keeps drizzling all day. This has been the case for the last few weeks.

I guess people don’t really notice the rains here. Back in India if this were the case, everyday would be declared a rainy day and people would never go out for work. Here, I am expected to attend classes from 8 am three days a week. Well, I don’t remember seeing daylight anywhere before 7 am here. What more, I don't even need to look out to know if it's raining. The constant sounds of the angry slaps on my windowpane says it all.

The weather is such that you wish everyday was a holiday. You wish you could delve deeper into your sleeping bag and the alarm clock wouldn’t ring at all. You wish there was mom making hot and comforting food. But in the morning, all I survive on are milk and cereals.

I know that I signed up for this life. But then, I saw a very beautiful sight today. Remember Indian weddings where the groom's car is decorated allover with flowers? I have no clue what happens in American weddings. But on my way to school, I actually stopped in the rains to take out my camera and click this.

Who decorated it? Nature did it. Don’t you think it looks amazing?

sunshine