My Bleddy Fears

Water travel makes me nervous. One, I cannot swim. Two, when I travel international, I not only carry my camera gear, but my passport too. That summer, two years ago (when I did this trip), three passports had changed hands (the stolen, the intermediate, and the new). After debating about whether or not to take the boat ride in Lake Bled, I decided to give it a shot. I sat tight, clutching on to my bag and chanting some permutation/combination of God's name in a loop. However, people around me aren't perturbed a bit. They are in this urgent need to take selfies, and every time someone shifts, the boat slightly shifts too, giving me many butterflies in my stomach. The children are leaning out and difficult to control, as usual, the parents have kind of given up, and the guy rowing the boat tells us that the lake is only 31 m deep. Only? Even 31 feet is going to make me nervous. People are changing angles to take pictures of the lake, tempting me to ask them if they have never seen a lake before. But the father of a family of seven (parents and 5 children) take the cake. Ten minutes into our ride, he decides to play music on his handheld device. Céline Dion starts singing her Titanic song. Shit, this is a bad omen, I tell myself. God, please don't let me die like this, due to a capsized boat in Slovenia, of all places...

sunshine

Traveling with Baba

Fifty years ago, a young boy saw fascinating, hand-drawn pictures of the ruins of Cambodia in his school textbook and was blown away. He made a wish, a dream to be able to visit the ruins someday. Later, he went on to study history in college, but could never fulfill his dream. Finishing college led to gainful employment, family, children, and he only sunk deeper in responsibility. Then, a few years ago, he told his daughter about his dream, in passing. So off went Baba and I to explore the ruins of Cambodia together earlier this summer

Of course Ma refused to join us outright once she figured that it would be a physically exhausting trip. That it would be hot and humid, that we would spend hours every day exploring the ruins and climbing up and down high steps. So we respected her wishes too, and for the first time, went somewhere without her. 

The best way to know someone is by travelling with them. Baba and I have never spent one-on-one time before this (without another member of the family being around), and it was very enlightening. It was like knowing a person all over again, something that would not have happened if we traveled together as family. True to our nature, we had our hilarious and hardly-matters-in-the-long-run conflicts and arguments. And true to our nature again, we had a blast!

Baba is a history buff, whereas I have very little brain space for remembering dates and historical facts. He uses a historian's lens while I use a social scientist's lens. So while he spends weeks reading up and learning about a place even before he has arrived there, I arrive with a blank slate and take in whatever I see at the moment- what people look like, what do they wear and eat and talk about, how are physical spaces organized, and so on. 

The moment I reached Kolkata, Baba started enthusiastically reading me excerpts from all the books on Cambodia he had recently amassed, not that I got much of what he was saying. One night, I fell asleep while listening to him, floating in a soup of names of many unknown people that ended in "varmans." I might have even dreamed of a tune or two in my sleep composed by the famous R.D. Burman. Baba even prepared thorough hand-written notes about the history of Cambodia. I am not too sure if he thought that we would be taking a history exam at the passport control office in Siem Reap. Who prepares detailed, chronological, history notes before traveling somewhere?

Our host in Cambodia, Mr. Kim, is also a tour guide. He shows us a map, chalking out the things we could do in the next few days. I continue to listen with enthusiasm, although, my energy levels are depleting alarmingly. It's 3 pm, I still haven't eaten lunch, our flight was delayed, I have barely slept the previous night, and all I wanted to do is have lunch, drink a green coconut or two, come back home and fall asleep. Mr. Kim says something about some king building some temple, and that sets Baba off. Baba does not agree with a historical fact Mr. Kim said. Or maybe, he is convinced that Mr. Kim did not get the name or number of the king right. 

Whatever it is, he sprinted to his backpack, dug out his notes as reference material, and you should have seen the look of shock on Mr. Kim's face. Never has his knowledge been challenged by a man who had barely stepped in his country for 30 minutes. For the next hour or so, they animatedly discussed kings, their names and numbers and achievements. With every new varman for a king in a new generation they discussed, I saw my lunch stepping away from me further. Facepalming, I accept my fate of a hungry, grumpy, dispassionate listener, not understanding what difference it makes whether Yasovarman built monasteries or Indravarman, whether Prithvindravarman was the grandchild of another varman, and whether Harshavarman was more powerful or Suryavarman II or Rajendravarman or some other varman. That discussion on varmans led to both of them uncovering all their cumulative knowledge about Cambodia, the Khmer empire, its history, religion, and what not, lunch and everything else momentarily forgotten. And that is how Baba and Mr. Kim bonded, both of them deep in conversation with their notes and maps.

sunshine

Driving again

There was a time until 2014 that I could not imagine my daily life without driving. I loved driving. When someone needed a ride to the airport or needed to be picked up, I was the one who would volunteer. When the PhD adviser needed someone to drive 3 hours one way to visit some research sites, I was the one who would volunteer. It almost seems like a different life now.

I drove for the first time after 27 months, and it was quite a humbling experience. I suddenly became every nervous driver I never understood- those who complained of loud music, fear of speed, fear of changing lanes, etc. I know people who have either never driven on the freeway by choice, or have been practicing in the parking lot for years. It did not help that unknowingly, I picked the worst day weather-wise to drive to a nearby city for work. I had hoped for some parking lot/empty street practice first, but the car rental company had a busy parking lot that directly opened to one of the busy arterial streets that further took me directly on the freeway during peak office hours. Snowflakes (that later turned into slushy rain) started to fall fast and thick as I put the key in the ignition. I have never been this nervous even during that first driving test.

With a thudding heart and shaky hands, I started, took a few wrong turns, got on the freeway, in the wrong direction. I made a bunch of blunders. I struggled for the basics- staying in lane and not taking a wrong turn on one-way streets. 27 months is a long time, it is three full-term human pregnancies, back to back. Imagine not writing or not cooking for that long and then one day, suddenly starting to do those defensively (Also, cooking wrong doesn't kill you, but driving wrong does). Little things rattled me, like that tiny rear windshield wiper that suddenly started to wag its tail like a lizard's. Among the myriad of switches, I had no idea how to turn it off.

In this nervousness to drive, I actually forgot to panic about my upcoming and dreadful dental procedure, prioritizing my panic issues. The last few nights saw me spending hours in bed sleepless, googling for articles with search words like, "does one forget driving after two years?" Hear me out, from my personal experience. You don't. But you get rusty. Real rusty. Your instincts are not as sharp anymore, and the fact that you are nervous and overtly alert makes it worse. Pro dancers do not think and then do a series of steps mechanically, they just do it with fluidity. Public speakers do not rehearse every word in their head before speaking up, it comes naturally. When you analyze every future step in your head, you instantly become a bad driver. Driving to me was always calming. I never analyzed it, and I never feared it. Today was different though.

I think I finally understood what driving memory means. Sure, it is knowing how much to swerve left or right without going out of the lane, or how quickly to change lanes without hitting or being hit. It's all those little measurements in your head. But how much of that constitutes actual driving? During long distance freeway driving, it is actually remembering to coordinate your foot between the brakes and the gas pedal. We do it sub-consciously. Most drivers control the speed of a car on a freeway by taking their foot on and off the gas pedal, they do not hit the brakes unless there is a pressing need. For me, that instinct has rusted. People usually drive defensively, which also means sticking to speed limits. I drove like a mouse, I no longer felt I own the road like I used to. I constantly drove 5-10 below the speed limit (driving 25 at 30 and 50 at 60). This is because the sensors in my brain have somewhat lost the perception of speed. Earlier, I did not have to look at the speedometer to know if I was speeding, I just knew it. Now, I did not have a clear sense of how fast or slow I was going without constantly looking at technology. An analogy would be knowing how much to turn on the gas/cooker to fry your onions without burning them. You do not constantly check the temperature of the flame to see what temperature produces what heating effect. You just do it instinctively and with visual and olfactory cues. You know that probably 5 minutes is too less but 30 minutes is too much. The speed sensors in my brain went nuts, they thought that I was speeding while in reality, I was not. Multitasking was another issue- keeping your eyes on the road in front of you, on traffic behind you, staying in your lane while constantly checking on your speed and also listening to a very harsh-pitched, talkative GPS that I had never used before while driving a car that I had never driven before. It sounds complicated when I put it like that, but really, it is not. Every time a huge truck went past me, my car shook, and so did my hands. These things do not bother seasoned drivers. But one day if you suddenly forgot and had to relearn how to walk, walk with speed, and not get killed while walking, imagine your horror.

So when people say that driving memory never fades, what they perhaps mean is that people still remember to maneuver their cars, turn left when they intend to turn left, and right when they have to turn right. That knowledge never goes away. What gets rusty is the fine tuning- how much to hit the gas pedal, when to start applying the brakes, and how quickly to change lanes. But perhaps, the memory comes back with practice, just like with most other things.

Driving those 160 miles was the most stressful thing I have done recently, and I came home and crashed for two straight hours, I was so exhausted from focusing on the road all the time. I am actually looking forward to taking the bus tomorrow morning. I wanted to meet a friend, but changed my mind after my morning drive since I wanted to be back before it got dark. These things never bothered me before, I have breezed through some of the notorious cities like Chicago, Miami, and Houston. Yet today, I struggled to wade through the paddy fields at a humble speed of 60. Summer of 2014, those 8,000 miles driven all over the US in one month was my reality. And today is also my reality.

sunshine

Teething Troubles

The most horrific thing happened to me this Halloween. While chewing on a piece of Halloween candy flicked from the office kitchen, I bit on a piece of something rock solid. In a split second, I instinctively knew what it was. I was engulfed with a sinking, panicked feeling in my stomach. I'd be less freaked out had I spotted someone staring back at me in the bathroom mirror. I had bitten on a porcelain cap that was guarding one of my upper molars. I had gotten it done in Kolkata last year, amid lying in a pool of blood and tears during a root canal surgery. What is even more horrifying is that I had woken up that same morning in cold sweat after a nightmare where I saw some of my teeth falling off. I could not believe that I was living my nightmare happening for real within a few hours.

I immediately smelled dental cement. Shit! This was not good. I could have swallowed it by mistake and then, they would have to trace my plumbing system to get it out. Worse, I could have choked on it and died in my thirties, even before attaining tenure. Carefully, I spat out the tooth cap, my tongue feeling very raw on the exposed remains of the tooth. I wanted to keel over and throw up.

Last year, I had spent an arm and a leg and a sizable portion of my kidney to get a root canal done from this dentist who claimed that the sophisticated machinery he used meant one would feel no pain. Far from it, I had wept and whimpered, periodically spitting salty mouth wash and coagulated blood. His hands had felt like boxers pummeling fists inside my mouth. I had been sore for days. Even with all this, he had not done a foolproof job. Danger bells had started ringing in my head when I overheard him take a call and brag to someone about an upcoming Dubai trip and plans for buying the new iPhone. I instinctively knew whose wallet would be riddled to pay for it. I have always had a hate-hate relationship with dentists since my milk teeth days.

In a fit of panic, I made a terrible mistake. I somehow managed to put back the cap in its position. I instantly knew it was a mistake because now, I could not eat without fearing that I might swallow it once again. At night, I was afraid to fall sleep lest I swallow it and choke and die in my sleep (I slept on my stomach that night and duct taped my jaw). The next morning, I chewed on another piece of Halloween candy and there, the cap was out again. I was so relieved.

I messaged the Indian dentist on Whatsapp. Rather than sounding apologetic, he admonished me, sounding defensive and telling me how he had taken fresh impressions and gotten me a second cap (yes, this was the second cap that came out, he did such a good job). I wasn't expecting him to miraculously cure me on Whatsapp, but I was not expecting rudeness either. He alluded that the architecture of my teeth must be faulty (blaming the victim, as always). He asked me to find a dentist in the US and ask them to glue it back. As if I did not know that already. I hope that the Dubai trip was worth it. Someday, when dentists in India start getting sued for malpractice, I'll be the one laughing. Perhaps a toothless, gummy laughter by that age, but I'd definitely be having my last laugh.

It's been a nightmare since then. The next few days found me dentist-shopping, and the wide array of options confused me. Some said I need an endodontist, some said an orthodontist, and some, just a dentist. I have never seen a dentist in the US or Germany before (always depended on my Kolkata trips to get my vision and dental issues fixed), don't know how the insurance works here, and the thought of lying in another dentist's room scared the hell out of me. I am suddenly way more troubled at the thought of getting older. I am suddenly repentant for asking grandma more questions and making her talk more on purpose every night after she removed her dentures (and giggling at how funny she sounded). I feel sorry for having thrown grandpa's dentures on the garage roof at the age of five, just for fun. I can sense karma catching up with me big time. Will I ever be able to chew on a mutton bone from my biryani in peace? My Korean dentist friend once told me that most of the patients who visit her do so to fix their dentures since they sometimes come out while kissing with force (why people would be kissing with dentures on is a different story, but who am I to judge anyway?). Would I ever be able to do that without fearing disastrous consequences? Would I be able to fix my tooth without filing for bankruptcy? Would I ever be able to chew on a piece of bone without worrying? Or smile without looking funny? Would I be able to teach three-hour long classes from the next semester without bellowing like a broken harmonium? Or feel less mental about my dental problems? Stay tuned if you have nothing better to do in life and want to know. And if you have secretly suffered from dental problems all your life like I have, let's bond over virtual coffee and share those stories.

sunshine

A car(e)free life

Priorities change. Our fears change. We change.

My greatest stress about moving back to the US involved getting a new driver license. When you have been gone from the country for 2 years, you are out of the system. Everything needs to be done afresh, and involves liberal amounts of paperwork and running around.

Multiple Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in the area told me that I would have to start afresh- clear the knowledge test as well as the driving test. Although I drove quite a bit for 5 years, more than the average person does, knowledge test involved studying, and often memorizing facts that were not directly relevant (e.g., remembering permissible blood alcohol levels for someone who doesn't drink). I was lazy and did not have the mindset to study.

And then, the actual driving test- a chicken and egg problem. You cannot rent a car without a driver license, and if you don't rent a car, you cannot take the driving test. I do not know anyone outside work here, and when I was invited to attend a Sunday bhajan followed by a vegetarian potluck, I was convinced that I am perhaps better off not knowing anyone outside work. Now how would I get a car?

Burdened by these (first) worldly problems, I decided to at least get a state ID first (needs to be done within the first 30 days). I show up with all my documents. The first person at the counter confirms that this will be a state ID and not a driver license. I need to take the driving test in some other location that needs prior appointment. So I wait patiently until my name is called and I walk up to the counter to get a state ID.

"Your driver license expired in 2014. I see that you did not renew it."

A gut feeling inside told me to keep mum and nod, without explaining that I was gone from the country.

"If you pay a fine of such amount, we can renew your license," I could not believe my ears.

Quickly, I paid the fine, furtively looking around and making sure that no one comes from behind and gets me in trouble. With a racing heart, I quickly took the vision test, pledged to donate my organs when I died, smiled for a horrible ID picture, paid all the dues, gave copious amounts of thank yous and sorrys for not renewing on time, and ran out of the DMV office once they issued me a temporary driver license. I did not even stop to use the restroom, lest they change their mind and take away my new license.

Twenty six months into not driving, I got a driver license. Just like that. Without a knowledge test or driving test. Two weeks later, the actual driving license was in my mailbox.

That was part one of the story. Part two is, around the same time, I had an epiphany (with old age, I have many these days) that I did not want to own a car anymore. Not for the time being at least. Yes, this is coming from a person who drove 8,000 miles solo in one month before leaving the US, and suffered from strong separation anxiety when she had to sell her car. I used to itch to drive other people's cars after that. But as of now, I am done with my love for driving. The only three places I know in town that matter (home, work, and the dentist's office) are all connected by bus. Seattle is only a flight away. For other things, there are cabs. This aligns perfectly with my aim to live like a minimalist. A car means additional costs for gas, parking, insurance, and maintenance. Taking the bus makes me walk more, meet more people (I have already made friends), and plan my days better. Restricted mobility also means not being tempted to do unnecessary things, like driving 2 hours to a neighboring city for good biryani. I used to do that all the time. But now, I am happier getting home and reading a book than driving to someplace with no clear aim. And if I am suddenly dying to drive all the way to Southern California or Florida, I can always rent a car.

It's funny how things changed with time. My car was my life, and I could not imagine life without driving. Then, Germany happened, the much needed reset button in my life. By doing the same set of activities, I was engaging the same neural networks in my brain. Now, I was forced to develop newer networks, new skills- learn to take the train, learn a new language, learn to make conversation with the bus driver, and so on. Eventually, I reorganized my life around different hobbies that did not involve driving. Even with a driver license in my hand, I do not care to drive anymore. It's a truly freeing experience.

sunshine

A stitch in time

I was made to strip in the dean's office. Not once, but twice. This story is eyebrow raising, riveting, and sadly, true. My adventure-packed life is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Earlier that morning, I vaguely remember hitting a sharp corner and momentarily wincing in pain, but brushing it away. I was in a hurry. It was a big day.

I was interviewing with the dean. My talk was about to start in less than 30 minutes. It was not until I was sitting in the dean's office that I looked down, and to my utmost horror and an intense sinking feeling in my stomach, saw a rip on the right leg of my trousers. A good chunk of cream-colored flesh from my outer thigh was showing. I don't know how long it had been that way.

My world instantly started to feel dizzy, my head spinning. God, tell me this is not happening to me, this has to be some cruel, cosmic joke. I had given a lot to be there that day. I had taken an international flight in 48 hours notice, put up through grueling airport security and showed up on time. I had taken every measure to make sure nothing went wrong and there were no surprises. I had saved my presentation in three different places and emailed it to myself. I had woken up at four, set my hair, worn my most expensive clothes, and checked everything thrice to make sure nothing went wrong. 

That pair of trousers was new. I had bought them a few weeks ago from Macy's for an important occasion like this. The price tag had burnt a hole through my pocket. Now, there was a larger hole in the thighs.

I told the dean. I had to, and it's good I did, for she called her secretary and a sewing kit magically appeared in five minutes. I do not know why I had the crazy idea that someone will sew the gaping hole for me. I was clearly not thinking straight anymore. The dean smiled kindly, told me not to worry, closed the door and left the room.

I was faced with a new dilemma now. I don't think I know how to sew. The last time I did this was 22 years ago, in the eighth grade when we had compulsory sewing classes for a year. My mom did most of my assignments at home, but in order to kill time in school, I had picked the basics of back stitch and chain stitch. Now, just like it happens in most emergency situations, my mom's voice was looming over, "See, I told you to learn basic sewing over the years and you ignored me. You deserve it!"

Screw prior knowledge, it was time to act purely on instincts now. With shaking hands, I somehow managed to put the thread in the eye of the needle after many failed attempts. I double-threaded the needle and put a knot at the end. I had a talk to give, probably the most important talk of my life starting very soon. And here I was at the dean's office, stripped waist down, trying to put a thread in a needle and hold on to the rest of my dignity (both metaphorically and non-metaphorically). I tried remembering from eighth grade experience, pricked myself a couple of times, and after what seemed like a lifetime, managed to close the rip. The stitches were so unsightly, they looked like squiggles. Thankfully, the fabric was not torn. It's only the stitches that had come off. I had not even worn those trousers three times. 

Once done, I could not find a pair of scissors handy. I tried using teeth like mom does, but did not succeed. So I gave up. A rip, I could close, but lost dentition would be irreparable damage to my career. Using every inch of muscle power I had, I tore the thread, making a deep red gash on my hands. Once I came out of the office, visibly shaken, the dean handed me some black duct tape. Once again, I went inside, stripped, and put duct tape both on the inside and outside of the tear.

Those 15-20 minutes that seemed longer than eternity felt much harder than the actual interview. What are the odds that you hit something sharp and rip your clothes on one of the most important days of your life? I am not even prone to accidents. Amid this panic, I had forgotten to panic about the actual talk. Huffing and puffing, black duct tape on my trousers all the way down my knees, I entered the auditorium just in time to be quickly strapped to the microphone. In this commotion, I had forgotten to use the restroom. So I rushed outside, forgetting to remove the microphone strapped on me. A miracle saved me from embarrassing myself the second time that day when I quickly remembered to switch off the microphone before getting inside the restroom.

The talk went well. A hundred people had shown up. The duct tape fell off during the talk at some point, but the stitches saw me through. My good fortune saw me through. I had everything I might have needed in my bag that day- a snack, water, mouth freshener, comb. I never thought of putting in an extra pair of trousers. Once I was over the shock, I started laughing hysterically. Look at God's cruel sense of humor. Such a freak accident this was.

Lesson learnt- Mom would say, learn to sew and stitch now. And I would say, just keep your calm even when the world is falling apart and learn to laugh at things. And yes, if needed, don't hesitate to strip anywhere. Not even in the dean's office.

sunshine

Death by a donkey

In Greece, I met 24-year old Sara, a Singaporean who has traveled many times more than I have. Despite our age difference, we instantly bonded and could not stop chatting. She was heading to Santorini after spending a few days in Athens. In Athens, I was willing to play it by the ear. One night right before falling asleep, she was perched on the bunk bed above mine.

"Where are you headed tomorrow?" she asked.

"Hydra", I lied, not sure if I was going to Hydra after all. "And you?"

"Acropolis."

"Good night Sara."

"Good night sunshine."

I woke up to the creaking sound of the bunk bed above me, seeing her perched the same way again.

"Do you want to go to Hydra together?" she asked me enthusiastically. It was past 8 am and the ferry left at 10. If we were to make it to the ferry, we had to leave in 5 minutes. So we did, both jumping out of our beds. The hostel had arrangements for an elaborate Greek breakfast. Fruits, milk, cereals, feta cheese, sausages, salads, bread, eggs, juice, Greek yogurt, and what not. Being the religious breakfast eater that I am, I was not going to miss this feast for anything. The good thing about like-minded travelers like us is, none of us cared for preening and makeup. We had our priorities right. Food. Metro. Ferry. Hydra. So we ate in hurry, each grabbing an apple, and took the green line to the Piraeus port. Thankfully, we got a seat.

We arrived at the Piraeus port and ran like crazy, arriving four minutes prior to the ferry departing. It was an expensive 58 € round trip ride, an hour and half each way. We had no idea why Hellenic Seaways (Flying Cat) was charging us an arm and a leg and a few kidneys for this trip. Oh, well!

The ride was beautiful and the ferry stopped at several islands. Ours was the second. I fell in love with Hydra (enunciated as ee-dra) at first sight. The best thing about this island is that it is completely free of cars, bikes, and any mode of transportation other than walking or riding horses. This place is completely pollution free. The air was so fresh, and the water crystal clear. We walked around the island for a while. Most of the houses and streets were painted white. On a sunny day like this, the white reflected sunlight and caused a lot of glare. We were kind of done with touristy things. So we decided to follow the signs of a trail and go hiking up a lighthouse that was supposed to have amazing views of the sea.

Huffing and puffing, we set off after getting a map. It wasn't that bad, maybe an hour and half each way. We passed by beautiful homes with painted doors leading up to farms with roosters and orange and lemon trees in people's backyards. I wonder how expensive buying property in this place would be. Occasionally, horses and mules carrying passengers and their luggage went past us. The sun was rising higher, and we were beginning to feel the heat. Panting with our tongues hanging out, we hiked for an hour, sweating like pigs and looking forward to a promising view of the sea. The sea was just beginning to show amid a mesh of electrical wires from the poles. I did not want to pull out my camera yet. We could go a little higher and then take pictures.

The dirt road forked like a "Y" at one point. On the left seemed like a possibility to get to the lighthouse. On the right stood a donkey, a bell around its neck, on a leash in front of the only house. We paused. The donkey raised its head. Sara was behind me. As a leader, I decided to ignore the donkey and take the left fork. Maybe this was a sign that we do indeed need to go left. I don't know.

As we started to inch forward, the donkey started to walk towards us, the bell making a sound. It was still tied on a leash, so it could only go so far, stupid donkey. My job was to make my team avoid the donkey and take the left road. As the donkey walked towards us some more, I realized with a sinking feeling in my stomach (like the ones I get during airplane rides, especially during turbulent weather) that the donkey was not tied to the leash after all. The rope hung loose round its neck. And now, it started walking towards us quite fast.

Fight or flight? Fight or flight?

Lighthouse or death house? Lighthouse or death house?

"Shit! Run Sara, run!" I screamed.

We turned back and scrambled downhill. I was hoping that the donkey would stop in a little bit. But it charged us full on, the bell a warning that it is moving fast now, perhaps a death knell and not a bell. I am running, and I am thinking. Do I need to run faster than the donkey? Or do I just need to run faster than Sara? Or do I just need to think fast for an alternate strategy to outsmart a donkey?

Involuntarily, I stopped and picked a stone.

"No don't threaten the donkey" Sara screamed. "Don't make it angry."

She made sense.

Sara was getting out of breath. But I had no time to catch my breath. The worst that could happen to me is death by a donkey. If it kicked me, I'd be rolling down the hills. I'd die instantly. What if it was a friendly donkey and just wanted to be petted? What's wrong with you sunshine, it's a donkey, not a dog. It was making weird sounds from its nostrils. Even if my theory was true, I'd die of trauma anyway if the donkey came and licked me. If it bit me, would I get rabies? Kick, lick, bite. I did not want to choose anyone. I did not rise up to the highest position in the evolutionary tree to be trampled over by an equine. For all the hullabaloo I make about not liking running, I have never run faster in my life, my sympathetic nervous system on full throttle.

We ran for a lifetime, billowing white dirt on the dusty trail. We could still hear the bell which means it was still running after us. What took us the last 20 minutes to climb, we were back there in less than five minutes. I mentally thanked God that we were running downhill and not uphill. I mentally also made a note of losing 50 pounds, in case I had to run for my life uphill in the future.

We stopped at one point when I was convinced that the donkey was far enough. Terrified, we looked behind us. The donkey was standing there, right at the entrance of the road, guarding it and daring us to cross the entrance again. I had no desire to test my luck again.

I was really angry by this time. Look at Shrek's donkey, it was anything but lethal. There was no way I was going back that way again. We met a few fellow hikers coming down a different direction. We asked them how far they hiked.

"Two hours from here."

"Did you get a good view?" I asked, still hopeful.

"Yeah, lots of ruins."

There was no way I was hiking 2 more hours in the scorching heat to see some ruins instead of a breathtaking view of the sea. We decided to head back. We were supposed to finish our hike and eat the apples from the breakfast. Instead, we went down to the foothill where all the shops were and ended up binging on the not so healthy ice creams and yogurt with fruits and nuts. My heart was somehow beating normally again. I was not going to risk being killed by a stupid donkey.

Instead, we sat by the water like two retired people, waiting for the ferry. We settled for looking at the birds and the bees and the half-naked Greek Gods with sculpted bodies jumping into the nearby pools. The sight of those rippling muscles and toned abs managed to transform me to the days of reading Mills & Boon. Perhaps there was no lighthouse for me that day, but there was definitely some light at the end of the tunnel.

We took the ferry and came back to Athens. Sara got off to see the Acropolis. I had no more energy to see the ruins. So I came back to the hostel for a power nap.

sunshine

Stone-faced and pot-bellied

The bus from Germany reached Netherlands without the slightest hiccup. Still getting used to good things in life like unrestricted border movements, I was surprised once again when no one stopped us for passport and visa checks. However, the way back was a different story. 

About six hours (and two cities) into crossing the German border, somewhere close to the northern fringes, the bus pulled over at a desolate place. Soon, every piece of luggage was taken out of the belly of the bus and laid on the floor. A bunch of armed, uniformed men and sniffer dogs started checking every piece of luggage. Next, we were asked to get off the bus, five people at a time, and go through another round of thorough searches. Every bag went through an X-ray machine. A couple of people had their passports checked. The uniformed men, all tall and well-built, walked around with grim expressions. Ten minutes later, we were given the clearance and allowed to board the bus again. 

And I, still feeling giggly from last night's shenanigans, got on the bus with a little bit of an unsteady gait, thankful that whatever happened in Amsterdam stayed in Amsterdam, and I had the sense not to bring a souvenir back home.

sunshine

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.

sunshine

Shaken on a 5.8 scale

I experienced a 5.8 on Richter scale earthquake today. A first time experience for me. How did it feel? I was in the department, working on some papers, when it felt like a team of horses running and stampeding all around you. The glass window panes were shaking, and shaking badly. Within seconds, realization hit, and we ran toward the exit doors. Soon a huge group had gathered outside the building. It was the first day of the fall semester, and many were in classes. Professors and students had evacuated the building, and together we watched the glass windows shake. However, nothing shattered or broke. Even afternoon classes were not cancelled (much to my disappointment). Everyone was back to business, though unknown people kept making small talk, referring to the earthquake. I walked to the two libraries to collect a few non-academic, fictional novels, and both times, the librarians asked how it was, experiencing an earthquake of this magnitude. The irony is, living in the Pacific Northwest (an earthquake prone region) for 4 years, I had never experienced anything like this. However, this one seems to have shaken up more than half of the east coast.

I came home to discover (much to my relief) that everything in my room looked the way it was supposed to be. The mess in my room was more due to the procrastination of unpacking suitcases. Not a single picture had moved off its frame, not a single book had displaced. However, as I sit and work in my room, I felt two more minor tremors in the last hour or so. This time, I do not know if I am imagining things, or if it is just the couple next door.

sunshine

Culinary Exploits…. Bits n Bites !!!

I was thinking of my culinary skill almost a year after leaving home. When I left home, I didn’t know how to cook. Not that I am any better now. But when you have people like G in your life, who always make sure they give you 4 days of food every time you visit them, you barely want to take the trouble of cooking. Eating mom’s food has heightened my taste buds to such an extent that it is very difficult to survive on my own cooking. Add to it the fact that I start to cook following a recipe, but at the middle of it I get so impatient that I just do things my own way to take a short cut, and then everything ends up in a mess.

My neighbor became extremely useful to me in these situations. Whenever I cooked something barely palatable, I would eat it. And when the food was utterly unpalatable, I'd present it well, garnish it, and knock on my neighbor’s door, telling him that I had cooked an Indian delicacy for him. I mean come on, the food was not rotten or fermenting, just badly cooked. Mom always said, do not waste food. 

Dad always told me that the best way to ensure good cooking is to take a lot of time and patience to fry the onions. Mom says that too many and too much of spices only ruin the food. However, I never learnt to cook back at home, and I still do not have much idea about what ingredients to put. But I have survived. I cook very rarely, but every cooking session has been like performing an experiment. There were disasters, there was excess or too little spices, and sometimes the food was damaged beyond repair. And yeah there were earth shattering accidental discoveries in the process. And then I would feel like Archimedes in the bath tub, basking in the glory of my own success.

Naah, I am not telling you any disastrous recipes here. But when I look back at my collection of pics from the last one year, I cannot help but smile at so many memories, disasters, failures, anger, frustration, and all for the lack of the knowledge of cooking. Here take a look-

This was the first time I had ever cooked. And you will roll on the floor laughing if I told you what this was. Obviously it had tasted too yucky to even go to my neighbor’s stomach. This is a disastrous attempt to cook pasta without sauce, the Indian way, where I went ahead and added lots of vegetables, and then most disastrously added one whole tablespoon of turmeric powder.

Lesson learnt- Never be generous with adding turmeric. And before Italians fall off the Leaning Tower and commit suicide, stop using pasta to make an Indian-style curry.

Then this is the mushroom curry that turned out to be relatively better.

Did you know that I could never make omelets without messing them up and ultimately ending up making scrambled eggs? Here they usually look like this.

But the only time, and the one and only time I managed not to mess it up, it looked like this.

This was when I made rice for the first time. I added lots of vegetables and mushrooms to it, and then went ahead and actually let the cooker whistle five times before I turned it off. Needless to say, it turned out to be more like the gooey liquid you’ll feed your newborn.

The bread pulao I once made tasted okay and looked like this.

And so did the noodles.

One thing I do a good job is of making salads. That is provided my mood is good and I am not too impatient to notice the size and shape of the vegetables I cut.

Once, I also made a fruit salad with lots of sweetened strawberry flavored yogurt, black grapes, apples, and chocolate sauce.

I love to make Maggi (instant noodles) with lots of vegetables thrown in. So much that the so called 2 minute dish takes me about an hour to cook.

The sweet and sour mushroom and baby corn curry I made once turned out to be very tasty.

But then, I messed up the chicken by trying to add sugar in order to make the onions brown, and throwing in so much of sugar in the process that it actually became more of a sweet dish.

But the egg curry I made was quite decent. Here take a look at the slits I made on the eggs to let the spices seep in.

And this is one of those nutritious “ready in 5 minutes” corn salad with lots of vegetables thrown in and served with a dash of lime.

My over ambitious plans of making fish curry resulted in frying the fish excessively and thus breaking it due to accidental injuries with the spatula till the fish was powdered into something I called a powdered fish salad. It tasted amazing, but there was no fish.

The Bengali potato curry (alu dum) in fact turned out to be very nice.

And so did the lemon and spicy chicken I made the other day.

If you have noticed, I always start cooking something that eventually turns out to be something else. And yeah, ask me about a particular dish, and I would not be able to tell you most of the ingredients or the actual measurements. I cook by instinct. And yeah, my food always looks much better than it tastes.

Well, that in a nutshell is my cooking exploits in this country. Only in these times you do remember how your mom had a hard time asking you to learn to cook. These days, I have an idea of what not to put where, though I still try to figure out what to add to what. And as usual if the food isn’t to my liking, my neighbor ends up eating it.

Still trying, still learning, in bits and bites.

sunshine

It happened to me.

Ever seen nightmares and then woken up in the morning happy to be alive and realize that it was just a nightmare? And what when you wake up one fine morning to realize that the reality is much worse than the nightmare?

For one of the strategies I picked up from my engineering friends despite my non-engineering background was the fact that one was supposed to attack lessons the day before the exams. I know it is nothing to be proud of, but that is the way it works. It wasn’t that I’d touch my lessons only the evening before my exams. I would make notes (and I proudly claim, I make some very good notes), collect materials, highlight the important stuff, and keep everything ready. But the day prior to the exams was meant for cramming. 

Of course every time I have written an exam, I have pledged that henceforth I am never going to cram last moment again. But laziness afflicts me. 7 days before the exams, I knew I had a week to prepare. 6 days before, I knew it was too early to touch my notes. 5 days before, I thought that I would anyway forget stuff so early, so it is better that like buying vegetables, I did the job of cramming FRESH. 4 days to go, and work started in my lab at such a spree that I had time for nothing else. 2 days to go, and my prof from another course wanted me to rewrite a paper. And then, there was just a day before the exams.

But then again, when you work with living systems in the lab, cells do not grow at your convenience, and there are always instances when you have to rush to the lab or get things redone, despite the time and situation. The day before the exams, I had to go to the lab to work on my cells. Work continued till evening and by the time I came home, I knew I had no time to study for the exams. Once I reached home, I actually made a mental time frame. 5 minutes and I am done with checking my mails. 15 minutes to change and shower. 10 more minutes to heat and eat my dinner. 5 more minutes to make coffee. Things were going fine, just that I wish I could crash instead of studying after a hard day. Looking at the watch that showed me 8:30pm, I decided that a 90 minute nap would do me good to recharge my batteries. The night was going to be crucial. So I set my alarm to wake me up at 10 pm, and went to sleep. A quick mental calculation told me that I would still have 15 hours for the exam, and 8 lectures to cram. I should be fine.

So I closed my eyes, trying to sleep for a while. The alarm clock lay beside me. Purposefully, I slept on the sleeping bag, lest the comforts of the bed make it more difficult for me to wake up. And then, slowly, I was ensconced in the arms of Morpheus, the sleep God.

The next thing that happens is that I wake up to admire the faint shades of blue in the sky. What a beautiful morning, I think scrubbing my eyes as I look through the glass windows, twisting in my sleeping bag. What time is it? I rummage through my stuff for my wrist watch and squint at it- 5am? A little early in the morning to wake up. But wait! What day it is? Wasn’t I supposed to wake up the previous night and study? Holy shit !!

I was too confused, and past caring if the alarm didn’t go off or did I not wake up. I got myself an extra 7 hours of sleep instead of studying for the exams. For a brief moment, I wondered if I could complete the preparations at all and appear for the exams. And then there was this inexplicable thing, the fighter instinct that makes you struggle to breathe, the survival instinct that doesn’t let you give up, that told me that I could do it. I didn’t dare to eat, or drink that day. I approximately had 7 hours, and 8 lectures to cram. 

Thankfully I had my self made notes that made things a little easier for me (perhaps). And for the next 7 hours, I studied with an intensity I have seldom seen in me. My brain wasn’t an organ anymore, it was a huge sponge that soaked in all the information that poured in. It is amazing how we desperately seek survival strategies in times of stress.

For I remember how I crammed rote information. There was a gamut of effects to describe when exposed to a particular pesticide that would have taken me eons to remember. But suddenly, I found connections, made words using their first alphabets, arranged them in a sequence and learnt them. Here take a look at this-

Vitamin “A” depletion.

“B”ioaccumulation

“C”ardiac dysfunction.

“D”eregulation of lipid metabolism.

“E”nergy impairment.

I somehow managed to arrange these parameters in alphabetical order. I arranged words, found weird connections, visually imagined the radicals screwing up the organs in a certain process to cause cell death, and compared to mechanisms of cell injury and cell death to accidents and fatal accidents. Good mechanisms and bad mechanisms were compared to love making and molestation. I couldn’t possibly explain the ways I found to remember what I learnt. And those have been the worst 7 hours of my life. But somehow I managed to cram and revise and re-revise before the exams. I remember buying myself just a bottle of juice from the wending machine so that I had my blood glucose levels high and didn’t faint in the course of writing the exam. And of course the whole 7 hours of sleep the previous night had recharged my batteries enough to improve my concentration.

My only 2 concerns were to get all the known questions in the exam and to be able to remember everything. That I did. I hope I did well in that too. But this incident would remain etched forever as the nightmare that happened to me in real life. If you ask me, it was a traumatic experience to wake up on the day of the exams, having overslept and still not prepared a bit. It would only have been God and something inexplicable that made me remember all those stuff in so short a time.

Study in advance! Don't procrastinate!

Make sure the alarm clock is not screwed up. 

If needed, ask someone to wake you up and kick your ass every time you dozed off.

And stop believing that the more ahead of time you learn, the more ahead of time you forget.

sunshine.