A fin(garlic)king tale of crazy things I’d do for good food

Over the years, I've taken many things back home. Fancy chocolates. Interesting kitchen gadgets.

This time, I took home two pounds of unpeeled garlic! Yes, you heard me right.

My visits to Kolkata mean lots of good, rich food. I sometimes eat two breakfasts or two lunches on the same day. And all that food means my grandma chipping her nails while peeling a lot of garlic. If you have seen the almost two-dimensional, stick-thin garlic pods in India, you'd know how hard peeling garlic is. On the other hand, the garlic pods in the US are fatter than almonds and walnuts. The best thing I could bring home was garlic (my idea, completely).

Naturally, people at the US airport were not happy, although they should not care, since I was leaving, not entering the country. They eyed the garlic with a lot of suspicion. They ran it through scanners, tested with litmus lookalike papers. They might have wanted to ask me to chew some of them too. In their long experience of all the weird things they have seen people transport, the humble, innocuous garlic had never made the list. They did not ask me anything directly, but were holding up the line and had mobilized a tiny army of people to figure out what the hell was all this garlic doing here?

“I am attending the holy garlic festival in India this year. Have you heard about it?”

I got skeptical looks.

“You should look it up. Very pious festival. They ward off evil spirits.” As I said this, I held out my hands in front of my eyes to do a nomoshkaar.

And so, they let me go without any more questions, and off I flew thousands of miles with all the garlic.

The amount of good food I got to eat increased manifold as a result, and it might not be entirely my imagination. It did turn out to be a holy garlic festival in India after all. My own, holy garlic food festival at home.

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

The Bus Lover

My mom has taken her love for riding the city buses to a whole new level. She is crazy-obsessed about the bus, to the point that we often wonder if she had some feelings for a bus driver or a conductor at some point. Whenever we need to visit the other corner of the city, my knee-jerk response is, "Abar bari theke berote hobe?" (Do I have to step out of home again?), while hers is, "Yaay! Amra bus a kore jaabo!" (Yaay! We get to take the bus!)

Needless to say, mom and I are always fighting and arguing. I don't necessarily mind taking the bus, but a cab is faster, although mom questions what I will do with the extra time since I am on vacation. Then again, I do not fancy standing in a crowded bus, tucked between the armpits of people, smelling their sweat and perfume and whatever they ate for lunch, and occasionally getting a squeeze in the bum. She takes language classes three times a week, and loves commuting to the other end of the city (easily 2 hours one way) in a bus. For me, it is simple. I spend roughly €3-5 in Germany on bus fares every day. I can easily take a cab in Calcutta with that money. 

Earlier, mom and I used to waste a lot of time standing at the bus stop and arguing about this. She would say things like, "Chol na, raasta dekhte dekhte jaabo, koto hawa debe, koto lok dekhbo, poisha noshto korishna, taxi waala bodmaash lok hobe, onno kothao niye chole jaabe”, etc. (We will see so many people, it is breezy, the cab driver might abduct us, etc.). Then, she got smarter. She would say, "Yes, let’s take a cab.", and while we waited for the cab, me happy that mom has finally grown wiser and wondering why not a single cab is in sight, an extremely slow and rickety bus will crawl up at a snail's pace, the conductor inviting everyone with open arms to board it. Mom would get super excited seeing the bus, and like Chachi in the movie Chachi 420, she would run and hop on the bus and wave to me, "Aaye aaye shiggiri aaye, bus chhere debe" (Come quickly, the bus will leave). Talk about deception. Once she is on the bus, I cannot keep standing on the roadside, flagging cabs. I am forced to take the bus, fuming, and she looks at me innocently and says, "Look, it's so empty. There was no cab anyway." She has tricked me so many times now.

When she cannot argue anymore, she will say something like, "We are humble people. We have to travel like this." Once on the bus, she will nicely plug in her iPod and listen to music. Now, I find it hard to believe that someone with her collection of electronic gadgets comes from a humble background. Once, the family went for a wedding, and when I asked how was the wedding, she said something like- “It was great. We had a lot of fun, being decked up. And that bus ride was amazing.”

So mom goes to Sikkim and injures her spine. She is in a lot of pain, and cannot move an inch. We somehow manage to bring her to Kolkata, and get the doctor's appointment in the other extreme fringe of the city. I mean, this place is so far that I have never even been there or do not even know how to get there (I pride myself in knowing most areas of the city). We book a cab that picks us up from the doorstep. It being her birthday too, I try to pep her up and tell her how this will be a fun birthday ride, traveling in all this comfort. We suspect a slipped disc, a dislocated spine, and she is really nervous. When I tell her what a slipped disc is (having suffered that myself a few years ago), she is petrified and breaks down. She fears that she will never walk normally again. 

We go to the doctor's, who says that although it is not a slipped disc, her condition is bad. He recommends physiotherapy for a month, and gives her pills (10-15/day) that is expensive enough to blow big holes in the pocket. We have waited at the doctor's for almost 2 hours now, and in that time, I have managed to see what pain and suffering looks like. There is an evident stench of sickness in the air, and I have controlled my gag reflexes a few times now. We are finally done, and dad and I have managed to buy all the pills and understand how many she needs to take at what times of the day. Mom is limping a little less now, although the limp and the pain are very much there. 

"Did you hear, no slipped disc", she says.

"Yes, that's a relief!", dad says.

"So now, can we please take the bus home? Pllllease!"

She looked so heartbroken that evening, taking another cab back home.

sunshine

Landing in style

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sunshine

Misusing Music

Try saying “misusing music” a couple of times until your tongue twists and twirls. Coming back to the topic, why do I always do it to myself? It happens every time. I come across some random, unknown song in a friend’s car, on the radio, during random youtubing, or through any random source. I like it instantly, so much that I look it up and don’t stop to rest till I find it. I download it on my laptop and in my music player. Then the fun begins.

For the next 2 weeks or so, I am found listening to that song in a loop every waking hour. If I am in the lab pretending to work, I put my headphones on and continue listening to it. During those 3 hour long classes, I keep playing it in my head. I sing it in the bathroom. I eagerly wait for class to get over so that I can come back to my lab and start listening to it again. It’s time to go home, and during those 15 minutes when I walk or take the bus, I wait impatiently to get back home. I reach home, kick off my shoes, head upstairs without even saying so much as a hi to my roomies (letting them think that something as urgent as restroom deadlines have come up). I go straight up to my room, start my laptop, and listen to it a few more times. Then I go down, say a hi to my roomies, grab dinner, and I am back to my room listening. I listen to it till I am sleepy, I listen to it one last time before I doze off, and when I wake up the next morning, I make sure that I start my day listening to that song. And the cycle continues. Me and my latest favorite song are inseparable now. I miss it when I don’t listen to it. I play it in my head and experience something as divine as a turn on, impatient to start listening to it again. I stop socializing and working in public places if I am not with my laptop and headphones. I dream of every good looking man I have ever known singing it to me. I even dream of it when I am sleeping.

If you think I am showing visible signs of incipient lunacy, hold on. I need to tell you more. After about 2 weeks or so, I experience a phenomenon somewhat familiar to a post-marital disengagement (assuming I was married to my song all this while). I begin to feel a negative overwhelming of my senses whenever I listen to it. I no longer miss the song. By now, I know every word, every syllable, and every note of the song. You can start the song for a millisecond and I will recognize it instantly. Soon my apathy turns to antipathy. I can no longer stand the song. My problem has almost become psychosomatic. Play it once more and you will see me wincing in pain with a distorted facial expression, both my hands covering my ears or clutching on to my chest. I know I have reached the point where if I listened to it once more, I would throw up, fall sick, or even have a cardiac arrest. I am happy not listening to it for the rest of my life. And this is how it ends.

There was a time not many months ago when I used to only listen to “Only Hope” (Switchfoot). I had a 3 hour wait for my connecting flight at the Atlanta airport, and no prizes for guessing what I did those 3 hours. I once loved “Mast Mast Do Nain” (Dabangg) as if my heart would beat to its rhythm. Then there was “Rabba” from “Main Aurr Mrs. Khanna” and “Zara Sa” from Jannat. Not to mention “Aashiq Banaya Aapne” years ago from the movie with the same name. And “Tujhe Bhula Diya” from Anjaana Anjaani. I can no longer tolerate listening to these songs. I will seriously have a mental breakdown if you played it. Because these days, all I am listening to is “Aasma Jhuk Gaya” from “Kal Kissne Dekha”. I did not even know of the movie until the last 2 days. I heard the song on one of the hindi radio channels (Radio Teen Taal probably) while doing statistics homework, and suddenly my senses were all alert. I quickly wrote down the first few lines and looked it up. Some moron had posted it on Youtube claiming it to be a song from Love Aajkal. If this was from Love Aajkal, I wouldn’t have waited for 2 years before discovering it. I tried all possible word combinations and eventually found my song. I knew the familiar feeling creeping up as I hunted down the song, a feeling of impatience while I tried finding it. Eventually I found it, it is apparently from a flop movie that did so badly that it was taken off the theaters after 3 weeks. No wonder I never heard of it. But this song stands out like the proverbial lotus in the mud (Keechad mein Kamal). I feel sad knowing the ultimate fate of this nice song in 2 weeks when I would not be able to bear it anymore. But for the last 2 days, it has been a blissful life. Akshay Kumar has sung this song to me in my imagination a thousand times now while we were shooting for a movie in Spain. I have woken up and slept listening to this song in a loop. I have obsessed with this song, not listening to a single more song. 2 more weeks I know, and then this song would be gone, along with Akshay Kumar and my imaginary shooting location in Spain. Sighs !!

sunshine

Raj- The Savior

It was a perfect recipe for the biggest goof up. Well, come a certain Monday, I received my I-20 form (the document that allows you to get a visa interview date in the first place). I read it and re-read it for the umpteenth time, happy that things were working out finally. By Tuesday, I had paid the money to the bank, got myself a professional set of photos for the visa interview, compared it with my last set of visa photos taken 4 years ago, and thunked my head multiple times on the wall after seeing the massive havoc adipose tissue has caused to my face ever since. By Wednesday, I was looking at the set of dates available for the interview.

Available days: Monday. Tuesday. Thursday. Friday.

Monday was 5 days away. Tuesday 6. Thursday 8. Putting it off until Friday would surely cause me a nervous breakdown.

And then I remembered. My friend was visiting Kolkata from Bangalore for a couple of days, arriving on Sunday. I really wanted to meet and maximize my time with him. Guiltily, I weighed my options. Ideally I should have scheduled my interview on Monday. But that would mean being sufficiently engaged with the preparations for visa interview that I wouldn’t have enough time to spend with him. Although my foremothers would advice against doing anything crazy for a guy you are not going to marry (which includes postponing a visa interview by 4 days), I pressed the “confirm” button for the Thursday 8:15 am slot. Foremothers’ voices were put on mute for a while.

By Sunday, the Raj Mistry had sufficiently jinxed my plans of meeting my friend for the next 3 days. He decided to work under supervision starting Sunday and hence now I was not meeting my friend at all. The Raj Mistry by the way isn’t your next door Shah Rukh Khan look-alike guy from Karan Johar movies (though the name would suggest so). Amongst all the hilarious names prominently used by Bengalis like Pocha, Nadu Gopal, Joga (Jaw-ga), Keshto, and Poltu, Raj Mistry is what you call the craftsman who makes basic repairs in the house. Some home repairs had to be made at my friend’s place and he called to say he would not be able to meet me during this trip.

So now, I had just postponed my visa interview by 4 days for a reason that was not to be. Did I just hear the sarcasm-coated voices from my foremothers?

Sunday evening, I was bored to death. I tried making 4 different plans with friends but none of them worked out. Without sufficient preamble, getting hold of someone free enough on a Sunday evening turned out to be an impossible task. I wondered if the Raj Mistry was having fun with his chisel and hammer.

Bored, I resorted to my ever available friend- the internet. I logged on to Gmail and barely found anyone online. Need I be reminded it was Sunday evening and everyone was having fun outside? A friend from Florida logged in and I was glad to chit chat. His sister was just done with her visa interview and I asked how it went.

Sunshine: Visa is expensive. I just shelled out some INR 6.5k.

Florida Friend: Are you sure? My sister just shelled out INR 17k.

Sunshine: What !!!!

It turned out that there was a visa fee, and there was a SEVIS fee. They were separate. I don’t really goof up visa related things (or important things for that matter), but it seems senility is hitting me and I had this time. I don’t know how I missed the part where I had to pay the $200 SEVIS fee. I jogged my memory and remembered a friend of mine had done the same mistake and realized it on the day of the interview. The trouble was, it took 3 business day to get the SEVIS fee processed. I had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday was the visa interview. And here I was nicely sitting at home, happy that visa related things were taken care of, and cursing my friend and the Raj Mistry.

It’s been a while since I had felt such shock, and felt relieved at the same time that I had realized and hence checked the possibility of a goof up right on time. Things could have gone wrong at multiple stages. I could have decided to listen to my foremothers and got the visa interview scheduled on Monday. The Raj Mistry could have not shown up and then I’d be meeting my friend and not be online to talk to my Florida friend. Fate had conspired in a way to get all my plans of going out on a Sunday evening jinxed so that I’d be online and talking to my friend. It turned out, like always, that I had done the right thing but for all the wrong reasons.

sunshine

Body Of Knowledge

I experience what I think as, for lack of a better word, an obsession about knowing my body inside out. And I am not talking about the basic details like the number of bones that help me walk or keeping track of the number of milk teeth that went missing due to dental carries. I am referring to the very minuscule and the not so important details, like the individual functioning of my cranial nerves, my tactile skills, the percentage by which my lungs decrease in capacity every time I exert myself, or the angle that my tibia bone makes with the tarsal bones.

I think this obsession has taken wings ever since I got into the habit of roaming aimlessly around the corridors of my department. For I keep running into flyers describing weird studies where they need volunteers. And instead of bullshitting that I participate in these studies because they give me free goodies or pocket money, or because I have the cause of furthering science and research as a noble interest, let me tell you the truth. I volunteer for these studies because I am very keen to know about those silly and unnecessary details of my body.

Like yesterday I found out that I belong to the 20% category of humans whose middle finger will not twitch even if you passed electricity through it. Now what was that supposed to mean? I read about a study where people tie you up to a chair (okay, not really) put electrodes around your hand, and pass electricity through your hands to see your fingers twitch and thereby measure muscle fatigue. Now any sane, rational human being would have stayed miles away from this study. But like the usual me, I had to express keen interest in the noble cause of furthering science and research, and had to volunteer. The very next moment, I see a heavyset, dark man sticking electrodes around my hands. And instead of screaming murder and running away, I find myself staring with fascination into my fingers to see them twitch. Ironically, they kept increasing the current till every finger in my hand was twitching. But this heavy middle finger totally refused to move even a nanometer. Ultimately, I was discarded from the study. But at least I know now that I belong to those 1 in 5 people who cannot make a career out of being a middle finger twitching volunteer.

This is not an isolated incident of craziness. While people tell me that they love their bodies and thus keep themselves away from all these weird studies, I have participated in things like this before. There was a study where all I had to do was blow air out of my lungs as fast and as deep as I could. They were measuring the forced expiratory volume of the lungs or something. So for one whole hour, I kept taking deep breaths and blowing myself out like a balloon every 3 minutes while they plotted how much my lung efficiency decreased over time. Don’t ask me what’s the big deal in that. Now I can add this useful piece of information in my resume, that my lungs had an average of a 10% reduction in blowing capacity after blowing out air for an hour or so. If nothing, I can even make a living out of selling balloons.

Then, I have let dentists pour water on my tooth to see how sensitive they are to change in temperature. I have participated in studies to find out what angle my feet bones make with the tibia. I have found out that one of my cranial nerves, called the vagus nerve is weak in nature, hence I might faint if I ever push too hard. I have learnt that there is something a little weird in my parasympathetic nervous system. And I have answered all kinds of weird interview questions for studies. I once remember how the lady asked me on the phone if I have been sexually active for the last 3 months for a study on caffeine intake and migraine that she was conducting. I proudly tell her that no, I am an Indian woman with oddles of cultural values and all that, and no, no alcohol, beef, or sex for me, thank you. The next moment, she tells me that I am not eligible for the study and hangs up. So much for celibacy !

I am sure you have your own little obsession stories, of things you like to do that would otherwise be considered inappropriate or unnecessary by most standards. And that is why even though we all have 206 bones and 12 cranial nerves and 33 vertebrae, we are all so different.

sunshine

Slim-Phone & Fat-Treat

The upheaval created by the launch of the new iphone 3G last week astounded me. At the apple stores around the city, one witnessed a long queue of people snaking into invisibility who had actually base camped for hours to buy one of these phones. They could have spent the summer weekend hiking, fishing, or even peeling potatoes and watching TV at home. Yet they chose to half cook themselves in the blazing sun for hours, reminding me of the queues in front of the ration shops or the puja pandals in Calcutta to catch a glimpse of the much hyped pandals that looked like the Louvre museum or a casino in Las Vegas.

My friend, who happened to be one of the iphone maniacs, argued that while the previous model sold a million copies in 74 days, this one sold a million copies in 3 days. A quick calculation told me that in 3 days, one out of every 300 people in the US is a proud owner of an iphone 3G. Impressive. But the tech challenged and the often ridiculed clumsy cohort of people’s category that I belong to, all I ended up asking was- “What is the big deal about possessing a device whose primary function is to make people talk?” Seriously, I failed to realize the reason for this craze. I mean one could easily wait a couple more weeks and then buy one of these when the madness had somewhat subsided. True, it had the cool built-in GPS and great storage and stuff like that, but I’m sure my laptop combined with google was pretty capable of fulfilling the same needs of mine.

Sure the phone is great to touch and great to look and even greater to possess. My friend was quick to shrug off my thoughts as those being chronically an extreme version of insensitivity and ignorance. He actually looked hurt that God had not programmed me to be able to find an iphone cool. He himself stood in line for a good 3 hours in the blazing sun on a weekday, and at the end of it, all I saw was smiles and excitement on his face. Sure he hasn’t seemed this enthusiastic about checking out the chicks inside a store. What was that English word describing this syndrome? Hype? Don’t we call it “Hujug” in Bengali?

Anyway, the main point of this post is not what you have read till now. We shall talk of more important things here. The important thing being-

What happens when one fine day you become the proud owner of an iphone 3G?

You end up spending 22% on treat taxes.

Good for me, an iphone craziness survivor.

sunshine.

Bonding.

Over a cuppa coffee (not with KJo though), I thought-
What chemistry had biochemistry brought into my life? Mugging up the equations and formulae, being able to recognize and draw the structure of every amino acid, as if it would help me make better shrimps. The prof expected me to eat biochemistry, sleep biochemistry, dream biochemistry, and to permanently sleep with the text book as a pillow. Even if I did that, I would never bring myself to like biochemistry. I felt no bonding with it.

Wait, what did I say? Bonding? B-O-N-D-I-N-G? Carbon bonding? Nitrogen bonding? Oxygen bonding? Valence states? Bonding? Bonding? Thinking of bonding over a cup of coffee?

B
O
N
D
I
N
G
?????????
Paper and pen. Here I go. Scribble scribble. Scratch scratch head. God, I felt like a scientist at work.

B
O
N

D
I
N
G
Here I go-

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.