Rotten brinjals and forgotten mangoes

For better or for worse, contrived or by co-incidence, I lack situational awareness beyond a point that helps me to work peacefully, do my research, design my online classes, and move on with life. A few things I look forward to everyday are watching the banana flowers sprout rows of raw bananas from my kitchen window every morning as I make breakfast, count the different sounds the birds outside my home make, and of course my cha and shingara every evening. I have managed to stay away from reading the deluge of emails where my colleagues are fighting and arguing everyday (unless they concern me, which they don't), the information overload due to people sharing dozens of COVID-related popular articles everyday, and constant online arguments over whether we should allow 900 students on campus this year or simply go online (or let them in and still teach online).

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I understand that we all have many unanswered questions, but arguing over emails everyday is not going to yield answers. When there were three COVID-positive cases on campus, people lost it and started sending all kinds of weird emails. All I can say is that I am glad I am not the dean or director of an institution right now and do not need to pacify people or reply to their strange emails (including a question like if one of the faculty gets COVID, who will teach the rest of the course?). "Stay home and don't get into people's business" would have been my standard template of a response anyway.

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My sister, however, has come to my rescue multiple times.

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"Didi, do you know, Irrfan Khan died. Rishi Kapoor died."

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And there I looked it up and spent the next few weeks watching Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor-movies after I read about the news of their passing.

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"Didi, your city has the highest death rate per million in India now."

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Me: "Oh, really? Let me read up!"

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"Didi, Sushant Singh Rajput died by suicide!"

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Me: "Oh, really? I just watched PK yesterday. Wait, let me read up."

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And now, "Didi, are you okay?"

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I thought she is asking me this question after I told her yesterday that two of the brinjals bigbasket delivered were rotten.

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Me: "Of course I am, I even made brinjal curry with the rest, why do you ask?"

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"Uff... there has been an earthquake close to where you live. Don't you know?"

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Me: "Ummm... no!"

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"Uff, what were you doing? It's all over the news!!!" she asks me, sounding very annoyed.

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"Err.... I ordered 3 kg mangoes and bigbasket delivered 6 kg by mistake and asked me to keep them all. So I shared some with the Myntra delivery man who was very surprised. I was looking at all the mangoes in the fridge and wondering what to do with them!" I replied, somewhat sheepishly.

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I don't think she thinks very highly of me anymore.

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That deadly concoction of motherly love!

One of the big, big things about living in desh (country) is that I am only one short, direct-flight away from baadi (home). Given the law of averages, this had to happen after 12 years of hopping trans-continental flights for 36 hours and going through multiple immigration and security checks. I have visited home about ten times in less than a year now, and every time, I come back with bags full of cooked food that lasts me a few weeks. If you ever want to know what you could and should not bring in an airplane, ask me! But more on that later.

This time, I came back from a crazy mom slaving in the kitchen for days to cook up a feast-to-go and running after me to take it all. My Aviation-IQ went up after a comically dark stint with the mango, and if there is one piece of advice I could give, it is to NEVER take aam pora’r shorbot concentrate (raw mango concentrate) in an airplane.

Amid a crazy morning after momma and grandma painstakingly packed me food for an army, she looked at me with puppy-eyes to take that raw mango concentrate that I was resisting, the one she had prepared with a lot of love and spices (pepper powder, mint, and a gazillion other things). I was arguing that I will not carry anything in a yellow water bottle with something she made to shield me from the 45 degree Celsius weather and prevent me from getting heat strokes. I have extremely low karma ratings as far as being a nice child is concerned, so I finally gave up.

I don’t know all the chemistry that went into whatever happened, but that bottle passed airport security miraculously. That same bottle would have led to a 3-hour long interrogation in a dark room in the US, leading up to them labeling me a budding terrorist and denying me entry for the rest of my life. But I digress here.

I boarded the plane and settled in with a rather steamy novel that I was going to read in the next few hours. As I was stuffing my backpack in the overhead bin, something prompted me to take that bottle out, lest it leaks. I imagined everything that could go wrong, and the worst circumstance that came to my rather unimaginative mind was a loose lid and spillage. I placed that bottle in between my feet while the airplane took off.

I knew there was a pop-sound as soon as we were airborne, but I thought it was someone goofing around and recklessly popping open a can of soda. Looking back at life in slow motion, most things often make perfect sense. Within the next 5 minutes, just when Jack was about to kiss Stella after 2 months of abstinence following a one-night stand, there was a louder pop-sound. This time, I looked below, and to my horror, the bottle had popped open with enough pressure to spit raw mango pulp all over my white clothes. An onlooker would have wondered how scared I was of flying that I could shit all over myself publicly in the middle of the day, the one of the semi-liquid kind, with telltale signs of the yellow spillage all over me.

I rushed to the restroom, the bottle in hand. It broke my heart to throw it in the trashcan, but I could not have salvaged it. I spent the next 20 minutes wiping the yellow goo off my clothes and sat through the rest of the plane ride shivering from wearing wet clothes as well as getting dirty, judgmental looks from the passengers. The swag with which I had entered the aircraft was all gone. I sat nervously like a mouse for the rest of the ride, praying that I do not hear another loud pop-sound from the restroom with some poor soul inside freaking out with their pants half-on and the pilot rerouting the airplane because there was yellow goo all over the ceiling.

Looking back, I can see why it was a bad idea to bring something that releases gas in a pressurized cabin. Mom does not fly, but I do. The rest of me and my food made it safe, and in case you are dying to know, it had chicken curry with posto, jhinge posto, potol posto, uchche bhaja, lau er torkari, lichu, jamrul, ruti, half-a-dozen gondhoraaj lebu, and even the bhaja jeere moshla for the mango drink. All this because I have a crazy mom who gets powered up listening to stories of people carrying things like ghee made out of barir gorur doodh (unadulterated milk from a cow someone keeps in their home), kilos of maach bhaja, and dhoka’r dalna, and tries to outshine them!

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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.

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Because Seattle will always mean homecoming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Of granulated garlic and maternal conspiracies

510g of granulated California garlic might seem like a very unusual gift to take back home, but there is a story behind this.

The day my grandma heard that I bought my tickets to Kolkata, she packed her bags and parked herself at my parents’ home. It didn't matter that I still had 2 or more months for the trip. Grandma wanted to have front row seats to the show of my arrival.

My best conversations with grandma are those where she tattles against Ma. Grandma is a great conversation-maker (unlike my Ma, who either speaks in monosyllables, or asks me one of the two questions, no matter what time of the day it is-

খেয়েছিস?

অফিস যাচ্ছিস?

Have you eaten? Are you on your way to work?.

Grandma told me about a conversation she had with Ma, deeply disturbed.  She said that ever since she arrived, Ma has stopped cooking.

Grandma: রান্না বান্না করছিসনা, বসে টিভি দেখছিস, কটা রসুন ছাড়িয়ে রাখনা, মেয়েটা এলে রান্নায় রসুন লাগবে তো।

Grandma: You haven't been cooking ever since I arrived, why don't you at least peel some garlic while you watch television? We'll need the garlic for cooking when the child (me) visits.

Ma: ছাড়ো তো, ও  এসে রসুন ছাড়াবে। ছুটিতে আসছে , ওর অনেক সময়।

Ma: She can peel the garlic when she arrives, she will be on vacation and will have lots of time.

Grandma is very concerned that Ma refuses to help in the kitchen, and wants to pass it on to me. Now, I do not have any problem with peeling garlic. Just that the ones you get in Kolkata do not have fat cloves like the ones in the US. They are only a tiny bit fatter than angel hair pasta. I have spent hours trying to peel them and chipping my nails in the process, my prehensile capacities seriously compromised after that.

It was time to confront ma. "Ma, is this what you said?" I asked. To which, she confidently answered, "I thought you love peeling garlic. Especially the ones that go in kosha mangsho, spicy dry mutton curry."

This is what emotional manipulation looks like. To think that very soon, my usability will be shifted to peeling onions, peeling thin garlic cloves, filling drinking water in the bottles, and opening the door when someone rings the bell. From the world traveler and leader and grant money negotiator and international collaborator and faculty and book editor and academic mentor and motivational speaker and the other different and cool hats I wear, I'll soon be the designated onion and garlic peeler, door opener, weight lifter (the person who lifts heavy grocery bags up the stairs), and the drinking water collector.

Forewarned is forearmed, and grandma has done her job well. The next challenge is for me and grandma to fight the evil forces around us together. Hence 510g of granulated California garlic- the first thing I packed in my suitcase to take back home.

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24 hours in Berlin

“Sushi on conveyor belts looks the prettiest. Colorfully decked up, as if going to a Halloween party,” I thought, sitting at a Japanese restaurant at the Hauptbahnhoff and eating an early dinner. I have just arrived in Berlin for my visa interview the following day. A little hungry, I wanted to finish off dinner before heading to my hotel. I saw the usual around me, a McDonald’s, Burger King, Turkish kebab place, and a coffee shop. None of them appealed to me. I was craving for something hot and soupy. That is how I found myself at Tokio, devouring a steaming hot bowl of udon noodles with seafood as my mind went in ten different directions.

“Berlin has always been a city of necessities for me,” I further reflected between mouthfuls of body parts of sea animals I did not recognize. I only visit the city when I needed something. Berlin never gave me a chance to woo her.

I sadly reminisced about my life in Germany for the last two years. This trip was like getting closure. I had first planned to visit Berlin in 2010. The trip never happened. I injured my leg on the streets of Sicily, pulled a muscle, and after covering a dozen different places in that first Europe trip, Berlin is the only place I did not visit. I went there for the first time last year, to get a US tourist visa. I had a whole lot of things on my mind then, including why I am visiting the US as a tourist. I did take an extra day and saw some of the usual suspects, but I never saw Berlin extensively. Over the next year, I went to Berlin many times, but every time to catch a train or plane to somewhere else- Budapest, Hamburg, Poland, Croatia. I never stepped outside the very coolly designed Hauptbahnhoff with four different floors of trains and restaurants. My ICE trains always arrived in the basement floor. The U-Bahn and the S-Bahn and the Regional Bahns (different kinds of trains) always left from other floors.

Post-dinner, I had to take the S-train and then a bus to get to my hotel. Déjà vu, I was not only in the same hotel, but also in the same room I stayed last time. I had an 8 am interview the next day, so I tried going to sleep early. I wasn’t even carrying a laptop or camera. I have been practicing living minimally and traveling light these days. Even without the internet distractions, it took me a long time to fall asleep. This never happens, I am usually asleep even before I hit the bed, and wake up much after it is time for me to wake up. But tonight was different. I had a hundred different things on my mind.

I went there armed with everything I had, my passport, every degree and accolade earned since high school, my 80-page long petition, a CV, and of course my knowledge. I was prepared to talk about anything. The future of research. Women in science. NGSS. NCLB. The training process in medical schools. Grant writing. My next five papers in the pipeline. Full form of ERIC. H-index. How tenure works. Why I think I deserve this job. The names of Native American tribes. The future of education globally. And a 5-minute synopsis of the history of the United States. I was going to rock this visa interview.

And the only question they asked me was, "Your tourist visa was in your stolen passport. Did you report it to the police?"

"Of course," I said, taken aback. How else would I get the new passport they were holding?

"Visa approved," they said rather impassively, momentarily throwing me off-guard. I kept standing there, expecting them to ask at least some questions from my HLM class.

"You can go home now," they said, their voice laced with impatience. "Next?"

Seems like my passport thief in Greece was more on their mind than understanding the intellectual mind of a budding faculty member.

And as for going home, of course I'll be going home now. A new home in a new city to start a brand new chapter of my life.

I was inclined to see a little bit of the city, since my train back was not until evening. However, I was carrying all important documents except my passport, and did not want to risk another robbery attempt. I have seen 16 new countries in the last two years, including 10 new ones in 2016 alone. I was kind of done traveling and sightseeing for now. I paid four times more for a new ticket and took an earlier train back home.

People have different favorite memories of a city. Berlin could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. To me, my personal little haven in Berlin will remain that triangle between my hotel, the US consulate, and the nearby metro station. Those are where I have most of my memories of Berlin, of getting visas, walking those streets, taking the bus, drinking coffee, or eating. In a strange way, this is where I got closure. This is where my journey began, and this is where it is ending after fighting a long battle of finding my way back to the US being exactly who I aspired to be.

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Remembering last week

A few days ago, I wrote about the stark differences between Kolkata and the western world that hit me whenever I visit my family. Within no time, I not only got used to those changes, but also immensely enjoyed my time there. It’s been a little more than 24 hours since I came back to Germany, and those differences are popping up again. Yes, there were these entire ranges of differences I immediately noticed. It was raining and much chillier. I was no longer sweating like I used to. I was suddenly surrounded by entirely different kind of people around me, all White, sharp-featured and much taller than I am. I almost scalded myself after having forgotten that even a slight left in the faucet ejects extremely hot water in the bathroom. My dilemma for dirty bathrooms outside and wet bathroom floors at home in Kolkata is gone. Every little change that had happened in my life a few weeks ago was reset. It’s as if, these differences did not even matter. However, there are two things that hit me hard. Really hard.

1. Being surrounded by silence and the utter lack of sounds.

Sure, I heard the cars zoom by on the Autobahn through whatever I could hear from the thick window panes of the bus, but I am talking about human noise. Hours went by, and I heard not a word I could understand. The immigration officer and the cab driver are the only two people I spoke to very briefly, mostly thanking them. As I put the key in my door and stepped in at midnight, the utter lack of any kind of sound started to get deafening. I involuntarily opened my jaws, thinking that my ears must have popped and I could not hear well. Still, nothing. Not too long ago, I was surrounded by people who came to mostly talk to me- my family, friends, neighbors, even strangers. I had recently befriended a young fruit seller who often fed me kalojaams for free as I talked to her. The few times I took a cab, I chatted up with the driver. I even chatted up with one of the crew members in Emirates, in Bangla. We briefly spoke about traveling trends and why the flight was running empty. And suddenly, all these people in my life are gone. They will only exist henceforth in my memory, or on blog posts.

I woke up jetlagged and really early the next morning. It was little past 4 am, and the sky was just beginning to lighten up. Hundreds of sea gulls filled my head with their rather shrill and cacophonic voices. I drew the curtains to see the beautiful view of the sea. There was no one to ask me what I want to eat. Grudgingly, I dragged my feet to the kitchen. It wasn’t until I reached work that I had a real conversation in a mix of broken German and English. I realized I was dying to hear Bangla.

2. Being surrounded by foreignness.

It didn’t take long for me to get back to the zone where I understood absolutely nothing of whatever little people spoke around me. I don’t know why the immigration officer asked me to remove my glasses in German. When the airline agent in Dubai wished me “Guten Flug”, I was momentarily surprised after all these weeks of hearing Bangla. So I mustered a weak “Danke” with a smile. My flight, and later the bus were filled with people who spoke German. Naturally, I was transformed to a distant foreign spectator from someone who actively conversed with strangers with no difficulty. Even if I understood an occasional word or two, there is no way I was going to be a part of that conversation. The same happened at work. Colleagues spoke animatedly with each other in German, but stumbled and slowed down as they struggled to speak English with me. Naturally, I did what I always do, shut myself in office and work.

When I checked my mail after getting home, I was not surprised to see a bunch of letters waiting for me, all in German. Trust the German efficiency, the Ausländerbehörde (Aliens Office) sent me a 5-page letter (in German), scheduling my next appointment with them in August where we will discuss about extending or not extending my visa. They have no clue that I will hopefully not be here in August. My bank continues to send me credit card statements in German, totally oblivious to the fact that I have specifically asked to send me emails and mails in English. Although these are routine struggles for me now, I am still not used to them. At work, I got three wrong number calls. Even before I could ask them to switch to English, all three of them spoke volumes about something, someone they wanted. On asking them to switch to English and that this is a wrong number, all of them politely, but curtly apologized and hung up. I was tempted to ask one of them, “Do you speak Bangla? I am rather homesick. I could talk to you for hours.”

I have a core group of friends from different parts of the world we speak to regularly. Technology came to rescue as we chatted up on Skype. I am doing things I haven’t done in weeks, like listening to my own music as I go to work or Skype with friends. There was no time for all this in Kolkata. Last time this week, my life was very different. I was walking random streets near Chandni Market or Southern Avenue, sampling street-side food. I was chatting up for hours with my mom’s professor, having met her for the first time. I was on the terrace every evening, watching sunset with grandma and asking ma and kakima to join us. I was being fed like a royal, not just by family but by the neighbors. Ma has packed me food for a week. Only last week, I was taking the metro and buying kalojaam and custard apples in kilos. I was having tea every morning and chatting up with our domestic help who spoke of a life I had no idea about. And now, instead of these people, I am surrounded by a whole lot of work, data I am supposed to analyze and papers I am supposed to write.

I never cry while saying goodbye. While ma and grandma cried buckets at the airport, not a drop came out of my eyes. I am always alert and cautious, trying to remember if I have taken my passport and travel documents. It was much later, suspended at 36,000 feet in a cramped airplane bathroom that the first tears came. And I let them. I cried like a baby, but not just for leaving family and close friends behind. I cried for leaving a whole way of life behind, a way that is familiar, and my own, and a place where I will never need to justify my visits through visas and travel documents. I usually read myself to sleep every night. As I shut my book, switched off the bedside light and closed my eyes, another tiny drop of tear involuntarily came out before vanishing in the pillow. For work or for vacation or for whatever it is worth, I cannot wait to go back to Kolkata.

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Homelessness

This morning, I re-signed my rental lease, shortening it to the end of July. An immediate and familiar feeling of fear hit my stomach. My paperwork for the US visa is taking forever, and it might happen that by the time my documents arrive and I have to go to the US consulate in Germany, my German job contract is over and I might not have a place to live in anymore. Am I looking at potential homelessness post-July again? It has happened before. The first time was for 3 months when I was transitioning back to graduate school. For months, people in Seattle opened up their homes as I spent my time babysitting, cat sitting, even house sitting. The second time was right before moving to Germany when I had spent 4 weeks on the road. Every day, I slept in a new place, in supercomputer labs at universities, people's homes, seedy hotel rooms with names scribbled on distastefully done wall papers in the hinterlands of Wyoming, and even sometimes inside my car. Every time a major transition in my life happened, I became homeless, although momentarily. However, that was the US where I have hundreds of friends, where G will open up her home and kitchen indefinitely in return for digging up her garden, doing yard work, painting the walls, cleaning the garage, breaking coconuts, lugging heavy grocery from Cash n Carry, freezing myself while getting milk cans from the Costco freezer, and accompanying her to every temple within a 200-mile radius (I have done it all). Germany is different. I hardly know anyone in Germany, especially outside work. Without a cell phone, it will be even more fun.

However, these transition periods also open up possibilities of newer, unique experiences. With no paycheck and not much money to stay in hotels, I might go backpacking and sleep in overnight trains (some of those trains in Prague have showers too). I might start sleeping in my office and use the emergency shower in the biology lab. I might invest in a tent, backpack and sleeping bag. There are nice benches in the park right outside my home. If nothing, there is always Kolkata to go back to.

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Homegrown wisdom

When my cousin was about two years old, she had said some words of wisdom beyond her age. She had probably gone to see the Durga Puja festivities with her parents, and came home exhausted beyond her limits. When they opened the front door, she, all of two, heaved a sigh of relief and said, "Uff, bari firei shanti!" (Translation: Sighs! Nothing as peaceful as returning home at the end of the day!)

Everyone had laughed out loud, since she was too little to be sharing such pearls of wisdom. But that became like a family mantra for us to repeat whenever we got home all exhausted.

Although I had a lot of fun in my almost 2-week long stay in the US (good conferences, great food, catching up with old friends and meeting new friends, etc.), I started to feel homesick by the end of the trip. I couldn't wait to get home. However, the travel back home took forever. The ride from Baltimore to the Dulles airport involved a car, two metros, and a bus. A 7-hour wait at the airport was followed by a 9-hour long red-eye flight to Turkey followed by a 3-hour wait, another 3-hour flight from Istanbul to Germany, and then another long car ride home. I picked the flu from someone on my way back, and every now and then felt that I was going to collapse. As I put my keys in the front door, the door seemed familiar. The smell of the carpet seemed familiar. The light switch felt familiar. I entered home and said out loud, "Uff, bari firei shanti!"

It's like the comfortable king bed, the huge rooms I stayed in, and the nice food I ate outside paled in comparison to this tiny room, tiny bed, and the comfort of some home cooked food. I woke up still exhausted and feverish, to this familiar view of the water from home. Nothing has ever felt better than coming home at the end of the day and watching the ships go by.

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Flying to my German home

Even after all this while, two things always stand out when I land in Germany, or my part of Germany at least. One, how fast and efficient the immigration (or everything for that matter) is, and two, how White this part of Germany is. It was past 7:30 am, and still dark by the time I landed. The airport is so familiar that it has slowly started to feel like home now. It took me a while to get there though. The immigration took a little less than three minutes, and this I know because I timed it. Sometimes, the immigration line for foreigners like me is much shorter than that for the citizens. Last month this time, I was navigating a 45-minute long and grueling immigration at the Liberty International Airport, checking forms, showing documents, and answering dozens of questions. It's amazing the amount of security checks that happen while going from Germany to the US, and the total lack of it while coming back. I love Germany that way. Not one form filled. Not one question asked. 

Everything from there was just the way it always is- timely, efficient, and hassle-free. The luggage arrived on time. The bus left on time. No bad surprises. The good surprise was, our bus driver actually spoke English for a change, and was very happy talking to me in English. When he looked at my luggage tag and said, "Welcome to Germany. Your first time?", I actually replied, "No, I live here." If language and the lack of social company was not so much of a barrier, I could actually see myself living here long-term. Germany grows on you that way. 

I saw some authentic signs of winter during the 1.5 hour long bus ride next. What I experienced in Seattle this time was balmy weather. As our bus sped through the autobahn, it started to snow. Flurries that turned into thicker flurries floating towards me, caught in the beam of bright lights from the bus. Miles of countryside covered in white, like a pretty coconut cake, with picketed fences and horse barns decorated on the cake. I even saw a dozen handsome horses and a few deer run in the snow. The homes look different, and more European, for lack of a better word (not only prettier, smaller, and non-cookie-cutter, but something more). I saw no sun though. Everything looked grey. The bus ride was followed by a shorter cab ride where I spoke exactly half a dozen words in German- Good morning. My address. Right. Left. Thank you. Eight. Good bye. And I was home. Flying halfway across the world, from one home to another, after a car ride, two flights, a bus ride, and a cab ride. G had painstakingly packed me a lot of homemade food that will last me for many days. She kept making excuses about cooking for the upcoming Hindu festivities, which is only partially true. And of all the things that I could buy from Seattle, I got very excited during a certain Costco visit, and while lecturing G about going minimalist and consuming less, ended up buying 16 packets of weed. Seaweed actually. The green stuff that covers the rice on your sushi. 

There was a time when I would return from a trip Monday morning and show up directly at work. Not anymore. I am glad I came home Saturday morning, which gives me two whole days to recover. I soon fell into an 8-hour long, deep, dreamless, comatose kind of sleep, only to wake up in the evening and wonder where the kids are and why is it so silent. For a change, I did not wake up to the sound of something breaking, or someone shouting- "Drink your milk! Get ready soon!" Jet lag will afflict me tonight. And tomorrow night. For company, I will have the comfort of home cooked food (one of the many things she made me is Cholay, because she wrongly heard me talking about Sholay and thought that I'm craving Cholay). In fact, I even sneaked in a goat from Seattle, in the form of some goat biryani.

sunshine

Rules from a different era

As I rode the cab back home a little after 11 pm, I was reminded of so many late nights from a different era.

In my family, dad has always been the stricter one, laying out rules that we were supposed to obey and not break. I am sure every middle-class, conservative Indian family has those. Mom was more chilled out and malleable, and gave us more freedom, as long as dad did not come to know of it. For example, sleepover parties were a strict no-no, even if it was my best friend who lived a few blocks down the lane and our families knew one another well. I could spend as much time as I wanted to with my best friend, but I was supposed to come home to sleep. Being the rebellious one, I had tried to coax and cajole, and ultimately rebel, but no good had come out of it.

Dad had a strict rule, that the children should be back home early, preferably by evening. Now the good thing is, dad himself used to work somewhere faraway, and usually took the last metro home. So mom had made this amendment, that as long as I was safe and arrived home before dad did, and this socialization did not affect my grades, it was fine. She is pretty cool that way. But when dad made rules, there was not much room for negotiation.

I have gone through different phases of introversion and extroversion in life, and college was a phase when I had suddenly turned into a gregarious kind. I used to attend biology classes in southern Calcutta, and instead of immediately taking the bus or metro, I used to hang out with friends and walk to the metro station before taking a later train home. Some days, I used to spend some time walking with my best friend, having fuchkas, exploring the shops, and chatting up before coming home. That was also the time when I was taking an active interest in knowing the city, so I used to accompany my friends to Howrah, Maidan, College Street, Gariahat, and where not. The expectation was always the same- Be home before dad is home.

Now those were the days of a struggling, penuriousness student. I could not afford a cab, so I had to take the bus or metro back. While taking a late metro, I used to dread bumping into dad. Instead of walking, I often used to run, hop, and scramble my way home during the homestretch from the Mode (the home bus stop) to the apartment, a good 10-15 minute walk (I did not have much money for taking a rickshaw either). My heart racing and adrenaline rushing, I would pray that I reach home before dad did. I was rebellious enough to not follow his rules, but wanted to be respectful of mom too, since she let us have a lot of leeway. Sometimes, when he took an earlier metro, mom would text me, and make up a story like I was just 15 minutes away, fetching groceries for home. I do not know if being an overprotective dad was a gender thing, but I am not going to judge or analyze, especially after all these years. If nothing, it taught me that wherever you are, whatever you do, there will be rules, and it is best to play by the rules to avoid conflict.

Anyway, I graduated, moved out, and forgot all about rules. In the US, I no longer needed to come home at a particular time. I partied late night, stayed over at friends', went to Bollywood dance nights, traveled for work and fun, took late night flights, rented and drove cars at night, took off to other cities or national parks Friday nights, without being answerable to anyone. 

So that day, after a decade, I was coming home late (late by our family standards), and it felt like reliving my twenties. The only difference is that this time, I could afford a cab, and I was visiting temporarily. I usually do not stay out late at night in Calcutta now, I am just too lazy or jet lagged to beat the heat and traffic and go anywhere. As the cab stopped at the traffic light, I could feel my heart racing, me impatiently looking at my watch and wondering if dad is home. My own present response to memories more than a decade old made me uncomfortable. I don't know why I was worrying, it was probably old programming. I'm older, just as wise as in my twenties, and totally independent. But I hopped off the cab and scrambled upstairs, wondering if dad would be mad at me after all these years.

As expected, dad was home early from work. However, he never said a word about me being late, leaving me a lot relieved, and somewhat confused. Some old habits die hard. His did. Mine clearly did not.

sunshine

One Year of Homelessness ‎

Written on September, 2010

I have never been a homesick person. In fact, I admire people who set out with a backpack and explore the world. There is a thrill in eating out of packets and sleeping in a tent compared to dining with expensive china and sleeping on a comfortable mattress day after day. However, my perception of home and what it means to me has changed drastically over the last year.

Last September, I realized that I was in for a big change in life. My apartment lease didn’t get over for months. Hence, I sublet it and moved to G’s empty house (G was traveling then). I had G (and other friends) graciously open their arms and their homes to give me a place to live. For the next 3-4 months, I lived at G’s place. It is multiple times the size of my apartment and more comfortable. But, it wasn’t my home.

Earlier this January, I moved back to my apartment to spend a month selling furniture and other stuff, and got back to sleeping on the floor again. My apartment didn’t look like a home anymore. There was no longer a nook with my favorite books and a relaxing chair, a place where I could sit and eat dinner, or a bed where I could crash. Random strangers who contacted me on craigslist showed up, left me some money, and marched out with my favorite stuff without so much as a blink. The year before, after I started working, I had spent quite some time and money getting expensive furniture and little things to decorate my home. Now I was packing my life into little boxes and giving away whatever more I had.

Come February I was back to living with G. Baby Kalyani gave me company and kept me happy. I once again had a bed to sleep in, a family to live with, and everything I needed. My life still was packed in little boxes. It was home in a different way. It wasn’t my home. In March, I moved to my architect friend’s house while she travelled. I had a housemate this time, a cat I volunteered to take care of. I had to feed her, ensure she was safe and comfortable, and clean cat litter (a first time experience). I missed human company, and the evenings were depressing. I longed to have my own place. Seeking company, my fear for the only other life in that house (the cat), changed into gradual acceptance. One fine day I had slowly picked up the cat and cuddled her. I was still not a big fan of quadrupeds who licked you as a sign of love, but with my cat’s mommy gone, we learnt to accept and enjoy each other’s company.

April onwards, I was in India for about three and a half months, but it was no longer home for me. It was more like a place where my parents lived. I refused to call it “my home”, much to the annoyance of everyone. I had transitioned from that phase where my family’s home used to be my home too. True I grew up in that house and had many memories associated with it. Yet I was living elsewhere for the last 4 years, and after having made a home for myself somewhere else, I no longer saw Kolkata as home. As usual, my father propositioned me shifting base and moving to Kolkata to live in “my home”. Although I was thankful, the idea wasn’t very tempting. Although I was practically homeless then, Kolkata wasn’t home either.

For 2 weeks in July, I set on a globe-trotting experience. I visited four European countries, lived in a different city almost every day, a different country every few days, and every night, I would sleep either in a different hostel bed or in a train on my way to the next destination. Some mornings, I used to wake up confused about where I was. Try waking up in a different place every day and you would know what I mean.

By August, I was back to Seattle packing my stuff for the big move. The last few days, I mostly lived at G’s home, but sometimes I would stay over at other friends’ homes too. Packing and moving took me a while. Finally sometime in mid-August, I moved to my new home. It didn’t seem like home at first, having lived in 17 homes, 8 hostels and 5 trains the last one year (just random numbers). But things changed eventually.

The first thing I did was make a list of basic things I would need, and spent some time shopping for them. This included a bed, a desk and chair, a book shelf, china, lamps, stuff for the kitchen, and so on. These were the basics, yet I did not wait to find something used on craigslist as most students would do. I went ahead and bought them new. This depleted my bank savings substantially, especially since a used bed on craigslist could cost you $20 but a new one from a showroom would cost you at least 30 times more. Yet something in me refused to use something that someone else has used before. The day I discovered bed bugs in my room, or woke up with a back ache every morning, I would realize that my time, effort, and money wasn’t worth it.

I made a new beginning for myself, getting everything I needed for my student life. And it was the right thing to do. In 2 weeks time, I had furnished and decorated my room from scratch, making multiple rounds to shops and stores, choosing and bargaining and deciding, assembling furniture toolkit in hand, learning to use a hammer, screws, and nails without cutting myself, learning to read manuals and follow instructions, deciding on themes and colors, making multiple trips to stores to compare price and quality for bedding, and so on. It was an arduous, but a fun project nevertheless. Although I am way lazy to go shopping and buy stuff, I did this because one year of living in different people’s homes had taught me the value of getting my own little corner, nook, and space, my own little room that I could call home. If you have ever been homeless, even for a while, you will see how it changes your perspective about having your own little space. Why homeless, try going on a week-long vacation to Hawaii. The day you come back and step home greeted by the familiar sight and smell of your mess home, you will say, “Wow, it feels great to be back home”. That is what our personal space does to us, give us a sense of belonging, and a sense of security and familiarity, so much so that even using the faucets or the bed in someone else’s place will seem “different”.

sunshine

Half way across the world

Some things take their own time to come to you and when they happen, they do in a jiffy. My trip to India got postponed due to various reasons for three and a half years and when things finally worked out, it happened in a week. In seven days, I had mentally prepped myself that I was finally visiting India, got myself tickets, made enough rounds of Target, Ikea, and Walmart to buy goodies worth the airline baggage weight limit, packed them in the two huge suitcases dad had dowried while marrying me off to America, sorted through my wardrobe to discard all the cleavage, ass, or leg accentuating clothes that would not pass the family censor board, and packed myself some decent and boring clothes to bring back.

Thankfully my ex-company paid for my return ticket, so I didn’t care about the airline or the route. I left my car and valuables behind because with half a dozen PhD admits from various schools, I hope to come back to the US soon enough. I had personally asked the travel agents to get me window seats so that I could spend my time admiring the topography of half the world while there was enough sunlight. My first leg of the journey started with the five and a half hour long Seattle-New York flight at 6 in the morning. Reaching the airport just a little after 3am, I was dutifully whisked away from airline to airline only to be informed that the flight was operated by a different airline and was overbooked, hence I wasn’t assigned a seat and would have to wait to see if there was a seat available before I could board the flight. I gritted my teeth, mentally preparing myself for the obvious discomforts and hassles that were to come my way in the next 30 hours until I reached Kolkata.

Fortunately enough, I was able to board the flight, only to get a middle seat flanked in between two old women, one Russian whose animated talks I understood nothing of. I was so tired after days of adrenaline and lack of sleep that I fell asleep even before the flight took off. In 6 hours, I landed at the JFK airport in New York, only to observe the stark difference between the east coast and the west coast of US in terms of topography, people, structure of buildings, and the overall look. New York sometimes looks and feels like a mini-India to me.

After 30 minutes of walking and terminal hopping, I found my Air India terminal where I was to secure my boarding pass. While I waited for the formalities, I craned my neck to look at the people about to be my fellow passengers for the next 16 hours of my flight from New York to New Delhi. Mostly Punjabi uncles, patiala style salwar kameez clad aunties, and their children wearing GAP and Aeropostale 1987 sweatshirts whose faces showed the same “I-don’t-want-to-go” expression that must have been reflected on my face. In addition they carried very desi style samaan (luggage), consisting of not just suitcases but big cartons, bigger stuff that looked like dead bodies wrapped in sack, and hard covered suitcases they must have bought 50 years ago when they immigrated to the US. I was dead sure I was not getting a window seat as usual, and would be spending 16 hours of flight from JFK to New Delhi sandwiched between people.

I got an aisle seat. Good news for my bladder that wouldn’t cry out in pain as I made my way to the loo through snoring co-passengers. I boarded the flight to be greeted by saree clad air hostesses and the background music of “pal pal dil ke pass tum rehte ho”. The interior of the flight already seemed like miniature India. I had a seat at the rear end of the aircraft, and by the time I reached my seat, I had heard at least 5 different languages I recognized being spoken on the phone, all meaning similar things like I have boarded the flight- Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya, Tamil, Hindi. Bad news, I was placed next to a woman and her baby boy who was already shrieking. What is it about desi babies, their unbearable crying skills and the indifferent parents who barely flap an eyelid or take measures to ameliorate the chaos desi babies cause? Was this what my music entertainment system would be like for the next 16 hours, I thought as I scanned for a pair of ear phones. 20 minutes down the line, the lady and the baby thankfully moved across the aisle to sit with the husband, and the seats were replaced by 2 innocent looking sardarjis- safe, less noisy, low maintenance. In the next half an hour, my flight had taken off the American soil, and I bid a silent bye bye to America and dozed off.

The next few hours seemed excruciatingly long and the few things I remember are my neighbor sardarji offering me his share of gajar ka halwa since he didn’t like it, the baby by that aisle howling and pulling all possible stunts while his mom showed slow but clear signs of disengagement, looking indifferent to the noise pollution the baby caused in the aircraft as she ate, slept, talked to hubby, or read. I was dying to crane my neck out of the window and look at the landscape below, but takeoff was followed by lunch, followed by everyone pulling down the window blinds and napping and snoring. Trapped between snoring passengers and shrieking babies, I stared at the screen that mapped the route of travel, looking at figures like miles travelled and local time at various places like London and Beijing absentmindedly. I fiddled with the entertainment system and for the next few hours, ended up watching Aa Dekhen Zara, 500 days of summer, big bang theory, and a couple of Punjabi music videos I understood nothing of. I was kinda hungry, thanks to the difference in time zone. I had skipped breakfast while taking that 6am flight and by the time I reached New York, it was 2pm New York time. I barely had time to change terminals and take that flight, hence now both breakfast and lunch were skipped. The flight left at 5pm local time and they immediately served dinner, my first meal of the day barring the cans of fruit juices and pretzels I had gulped down in the previous flight.

16 hours of tossing, turning, hearing others snore, falling half asleep, swollen legs, and intense physical discomfort later, I landed in Delhi. The first thing that hit me was the wave of heat on my face. Even having grown up in India, nothing prepared me for the first bout of heat. It felt strangely familiar- the sights and sounds around me, a goods train passing nearby, a tractor, shorter buildings, and a different looking viewscape. 4 hours of wait later, I took my last leg of the flight from Delhi to Kolkata. This time it was the window seat, but it didn’t matter anymore. It was dark outside, and I fell asleep the moment I buckled my seat belt. A few more hours and I had landed home, after three and a half years of staying outside. I am dying to update so much more. It seems I will have a lot of blogs to write the next few weeks.

sunshine