Simple love

Exactly three people wished me on Valentine's Day. And I was caught off-guard all three times. 

The cashier who swiped my credit card at Chipotle.

A homeless man who made way for me to walk on a bridge that was all covered in ice and slush.

The campus security guy who asked me to wrap up work and go home.

February 14 is not on my list of the top-20 or even top-50 days I celebrate, so it doesn't matter to me. What matters is the human connection. 

In other news, the best thing I saw is a picture of my friend's little son standing by a calf, pulling it's ears and smiling lovingly at the calf with a caption about love knowing no boundaries.

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Sans Antonio, not sans love

San Antonio, Texas.

I shut the alarm at 5:30 am and went back to sleep again, getting late for day one of the conference. When I finally left the hotel at 7:30 am, I looked like a mess, feeling as if a train rode over me. I had to attend an award ceremony and looked like I was going to be late for my own ceremony. It was a bad start to an important day.

However, my 64-year-old Uber driver showed up looking like a total diva. She wore a cute flower hat and had other floral hats and decorative paraphernalia in the car. There was a carnival going on and she was returning to work after a night of revelry. When I complimented her about how cute she looked, she even got off the car and posed for me before writing me her number, in case I needed a cab again. A true diva she is. I named my Uber driver the flower lady. She had brightened my morning on my first day in San Antonio.

Some of you also know about my love for biryani. Whenever I visit a new city, the first thing I Google is [name of the city + good biryani]. I did find one restaurant with good reviews, but the trip involved three bus changes and an hour and half of a ride one-way. It was 15 miles away. So I let go. Looks like I was not going to have my biryani in San Antonio.

But then, I was texting the flower lady's pictures to her, since she had scribbled her number, in case I needed a ride again. That is when I had an impulsive idea. I did not want to eat my biryani alone. I asked if she likes Indian food and she said she had never eaten Indian food before. So I asked if she would like to join me for a meal, and she readily agreed, much to my surprise (we are complete strangers, we only know each other's names). She even asked me if I would wear a dress or trousers. When I said that I did not bring a dress since this is a conference, she said that she will also wear trousers, like me.

"Why?" I asked.

"It's a girls' outing. I love to wear dresses for an outing, but I want to wear what you will wear."

I found her adorable.

So we met up on one of my freer afternoons. She picked me from my Airbnb and gave me a flowery headband that she had handmade for me. We went to the restaurant, I had my biryani (it was quite good) and packed some back, she had her first Indian food, we chatted for many hours, and she dropped me back home. We even wore our flowery headbands at the restaurant. I did not know that I had so much to talk to a 64 year old Spanish-speaking lady I have nothing in common with. By the way, she wears an Apple watch, and was getting her phone calls on her wrist. I've never seen a more fashionable and tech-savvy dida/diva. Dida is grandma in Bangla.

It feels good, having that human connection in a stranger city, someone to share your meals with. She offered to drop me at the airport when I was leaving town. While leaving, she said, "Take care. Maybe we will meet in Vegas again."

I wanted to wear the flowery headband for my conference talks.  

I got a ride, I got great company, I got my biryani, and I got a headband too. It's a win-win-win-win situation. 

A few days later, she took off from work to drop me to the airport. She refused to activate the Uber meter and did not take any money. At the airport, she took my address so that she can write me hand-written letters. And she got on her tip toes and planted two kisses on my cheek before driving away.

There is something about sunny places. I think it makes people way more nice, warm and friendly.

On that note, if you could live anywhere in the US, where would you live? Other than Seattle, I would live in Puerto Rico. It is truly my kind of place.

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Of tea and coconuts

Our domestic help (wonder if there is a better term) in Calcutta knows that "didi" (elder sister, referring to me) lives abroad, and visits occasionally. I had never met her prior to a recent trip, but heard many interesting things about her. A woman in her twenties, she went ahead and had her system ligated after she was forced to conceive. These are stories you typically do not hear every day, even among the upper and empowered classes. 

Now this is not your average hourly help in the US who shows up in their car, cleans your mansion in silence, and leaves. Growing up with temporary help (those who do not live with us, but show up for a few hours every day) has been an essential part of my life in India. She is a little different though. She hates missing work. While every household complains of domestic help gone missing from time to time, this was surprising. I later learnt that every morning she arrives, ma makes fresh and hot rotis and curry, and feeds her a proper breakfast. Food is a great incentive, naturally. She was so happy to see us when we arrived from our week-long family trip earlier. "Chhuti nitey bhalo lagena tomar?" (Don't you like vacations?), I had asked. 

I am not a tea/coffee addict, and drink it only when I have company. She drinks a different kind of tea than the rest of my family. Her's is boiled with milk, spices, and ground cardamom, and I love that kind of tea. Every morning, she and I would sit and drink our cup of tea, chatting up. She talked about her family, her desher bari, and so many other things that I listened to with great interest. She now knows that I love coconuts, especially green coconuts, and she already got me some from the neighbor's tree. 

As I am getting used to the comfort of drinking piping hot cardamom tea every morning and chatting up, she disappears. She calls ma to inform us that her one-year old is suffering from measles, and she will have to stay home. This being a contagious disease, ma asks her to take her time until the little one gets well. With my tea drinking buddy gone, I have lost my motivation of drinking tea. I am leaving in two days, and will probably not meet her anytime soon. I miss her funny stories and her energy. I wish I could meet and say goodbye once.

As if hearing my thoughts, she rings the bell one morning. She is lugging a huge bag, and I rush downstairs to see what the matter is. She is looking haggard, like she hasn't slept in a long time. She is wearing her usual nightdress with the dupatta thrown in. It might seem a weird dress combination to someone not used to this, but this sight of wearing a nightie and throwing in a dupatta before you go outside is pretty common in Calcutta. She places the huge bag on the floor, careful not to touch me so that I do not catch measles germs. She knows that I am leaving soon, so she got me six coconuts. These are not coconuts really, but a stage between the green coconut and the ripe coconut (something she calls "laava", and not a daab or a narkol, although I have never heard of the word before). She got hold of the neighbor guy, bargained prices, and bought me six of these. These originally have a thicker shell that I am not so good at removing (I can break coconuts though), and she takes time to remove the shells, so that all I have to do is split these open. These have a very tasty, soft and white flesh (shNaash), and a lot of sweet water inside, much more than an average coconut does. She hands me these, wishes me luck, and leaves. I tell her that I have missed drinking tea with her, and she says that she hasn't even had the cardamom tea ever since. She has a sick baby waiting at home, and tells me that she felt conscious walking on the streets, not having combed her hair or preened up like she does. She still got me the coconuts though, taking me by surprise.

In my Calcutta trip, love has come to me in all shapes and sizes and ages and circumstances, and I have received it with open arms. Neighbors feeding me whatever they cook on a daily basis (kumro, chalta, tyangra), because I do not get to eat all this in Germany. Strangers (strangers to me, not to my parents) bringing me narkol naadu. People showing up to tie my sari, because I am not good at tying one. Friends inviting me home and cooking my favorite food. Friends calling me cabs because they have discount coupons that would save me some money. And I continue to accept love with gratitude, enriched by the daily life experiences of the immediate people in my life, collecting all the stories they tell me, creating memories, and feeling the magic of this place. 

Breaking a coconut to that.

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The language of love

My German lessons- I try to listen to 30 minute recordings of two people making daily life conversations every day. They keep repeating the lines, and that helps me learn German. 

However, listening to these conversations has also fueled my fertile imagination. It started with an innocuous hello, with the guy asking the girl if she is German, telling her that he is American, and understands only a little German.

Soon, the girl told him that his German is quite good. I smiled. Conversation flowed freely. Words were exchanged. The next time, he asked her how she is doing, and she said thank you, asking him how he is. I was not just learning German, I was also beginning to paint a rather hopelessly romantic picture in my mind. This was just lesson 3, and there were about a hundred of them. I wondered if they would be driving to see their grandchildren by the time I reached lesson 90. 

Then came the action verbs, naturally. Would you like to eat something? Maybe drink something? Yes, sure, at the restaurant by the Opera square. And they met again, and again. Sometimes on the Beethoven street, sometimes on the Goethe street. They ate dinner and drank wine. By lesson 6, they were asking one another if they would like to meet at the restaurant, or at their place. I was grinning broader with every passing day. Then, he asked her if she would like to do something. I winked instinctively. She replied aptly, saying that she would like to buy something. 

I went ahead of myself, and Googled how to say "I love you". I knew it was coming sometime soon.

Eat. Drink. Do. Buy. I kept hoping for more intimacy with every lesson. He was always asking, and she was more than willing. I knew that soon, they will be a couple, and travel Antofagasta together. Take a Flugzeug (airplane) from the Flughafen (airport). Until I reached today's lesson. He asked her again if she would like to eat something at his place.

"No."

"At 8 pm, or at 9 pm?"

"No, not at 8 pm, and not at 9 pm. Certainly not." 

"You don't want to drink something at the hotel?"

"Yes, that's right. I do not want to eat anything, and I do not want to drink anything."

Wow, that was harsh! Surely I learnt a lot of no-words today. No, don't want, certainly not, not at 8 pm, and so on. But I wonder what happened to her.

My fictional love story is beginning to see some friction now. 

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Life (and death) lessons

I heard the most poignant words from a friend who recently lost her husband of 5 years and friend of 15 years (same person). 

"How are you dealing with the loss?", I asked her.

She said that every day is different. She takes one day at a time and tries to live normally, rather than wallow in sadness or ask God why it had to be him. While most days are okay, some days are really bad. However, she celebrated Christmas with her family to retain a sense of normalcy, although he passed earlier that month.

And then came the most poignant part. "He was a good man. We had so many happy memories", she said. "While other men complained of shopping, he never complained. He took me shopping, and spent hours looking for clothes or shoes for me or the girls. He didn't like shopping as much, but he always went with me to make me happy."

"And whenever he went grocery shopping, he always brought home something especially for me. My favorite fruits, or my favorite vegetables." 

As she said this, she kept getting agitated once in a while because she could not find the right English word. Every now and then, she frantically typed a German word to find its English meaning. So she sat there pouring her heart out with Google translator open as I bawled unabashedly. She even handed me a tissue. 

They both found love for the second time when they were in their late forties. 

And as I listened to her fondest memories of him, I thought, I don't want someone who'd take me to Paris or Venice or do cross-country road trips. I've been there and done that. I'd rather have someone who brings home my favorite coconut and litchis and avocados, and takes German (or whatever language I'm learning) lessons and practices with me. I think that I'm willing to wait some more for that.

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April Snow (Oechul)

“If we met long ago or much later, what would we be?”

We find love in the most unexpected places, when we are least expecting it. I did too, for a man whose name I cannot say properly, whose language I do not understand, and who I am never going to meet. Yet he left me speechless with his acting in this movie I have watched three times in the last four days.

Sunday evening, I wanted to watch a movie, and was randomly browsing their “foreign movie” section when I accidentally saw the name “April Snow”. Intrigued, I read the synopsis, and started watching it. Two hours later, I had finished watching it, shaken to the core, sobbing, and knowing that my life would never feel the same again.

There are many famous, or not so famous movies you watch and like, and kind of forget. This, on the other hand, is an ordinary story narrated rather extraordinarily. Bae Yong-Joon and Son Ye-Jin are ordinary people, leading ordinary lives, when everything changes one fine day. Their spouses meet with an accident that leaves them in coma, and it is then that their spouses realize that they were having an affair. What we see over the next few weeks/months is how Bae and Son care for their respective spouses, and in the process of shared grief, they fall in love with each other. That is all that there is to the story. However, the way it is narrated is extraordinary. The first time I saw it, I was busy following the story. The next two times, I noticed all those subtle things that I had missed the first time. There are many things I loved about this movie. I’ll write down a few.

·         Snow: The story starts with a drive in the snow, and ends with a drive in the snow.

·         Cell phone: It makes them discover the affair, and the same cell phones, that unite the two at the end.

·         Ordinary people with extraordinary lives: Bae is a stage light designer for concerts, and Son does “household chores”. Unlike other movies, Bae is not a “hero” doing incredible stunts like beating up the goons, but an ordinary next door guy with glasses who could be your neighbor. A very hot neighbor. He does not wear fancy clothes, just jeans and a shirt (not tucked in) and a jacket most of the time, that adds to his appeal. Son is very pretty, but in a sad way. They show Bae crying in at least two scenes, one at the beginning in a bar, and one about fifteen minutes before the movie ends. This makes him seem more human.

·         The constant reference to the change in seasons, that perhaps marks the transition in their love life from winter to spring. Subtle references like the change in their clothes from heavy winter wear to spring wear, the way she buys him a plant (and not flowers) and asks him to make sure that the plant does not die. The way the plant is perched on top of the unopened boxes when he is eating dinner.

·         The utter lack of drama. They were both shocked to discover about the affair. There were tears too, from both sides. Yet it was all shown in a very dignified way. I love the scene where Bae tells his wife that at first he wanted to know, but now he does not. Because in the mean time, he himself fell in love with Son, and perhaps now empathizes with his wife.

·         Although Son has been portrayed as a very docile person, there are streaks of fieriness in her personality. Like when she enjoys running in the cold. And like how, despite hesitating, she decides to make love to Bae. Sure, there are tears, but there is no drama.

·         I love the little places in the movie. Like the motel they stay at, and the little eatery they eat at, with scrap papers on boards across the wall. And the corridor with floor to ceiling glass at the hospital.

·         My favorite scene in the movie is about fifteen minutes before the movie ends, when Son is at that eatery, looking at Bae from the window. Bae, who is in his room, has no idea that he is being watched, and in the next scene, he sobs uncontrollably. The musicthat plays when she is watching Bae breaks my heart every time I listen to it. At that moment, you pray that she steps outside, goes up to his room, and meets him. But she does not. Her husband died, his wife is out of coma, and she thinks that they will probably be reunited now, and she must leave them alone. So she walks out with her suitcases. Closely following this scene is my second favorite scene, where they walk by the sea after making love, and she asks him if they can take a picture together. Immediately, she realizes the gravity of it, and moves away, until he says yes. Once again, I see couples around me, flooding Facebook with their pictures together. Yet the couple in this movie took just one picture together, and it delivers a very powerful message.

·         Talking about favorite scenes, there is another one when the two are hanging out, peeling fruits. And Bae’s father-in-law knocks on the door. It is amazing, the way they act with composure, not panicking. She locks herself up in the bathroom, and later when he opens the door, she just says, “I’m okay.” And he goes and hugs her. One of the many many amazing things about this movie is how little the two people talk to each other, and how much they convey.

·         The most amazing thing is the open-ended ending of the story. As an optimist and a romantic, I would love to think that they united for life, but no one knows. I don’t hope for marriage or anything that screams a false sense of social security. I just hope that they got to be with each other for the rest of their life.

As you can see from my long rambling, I love the movie. This is the first Korean movie I have seen. I don’t know anything about Bae, I didn’t even know about his existence until three days ago. I don’t know how famous he is (although I Googled him, and found him dressed like a girl in many pictures, and I am really confused about that, because he is quite the hot guy in the movie). I don’t even know anything about his other movies. I know that he owns restaurants in Asia, and in Hawaii (that I definitely plan to visit someday). But I want to remember Bae as his character in the movie. Tall guy with glasses, loose jeans and a shirt and jacket, driving a powerful SUV and smoking cigarettes. I wonder why Hollywood hasn't discovered him yet. Of course I am listening to the music from this movie in a loop now. I also wish to go to Seoul now (the movie is based in Seoul), although going to Seoul doesn’t translate into meeting Bae. I just want to see that motel, that hospital, the place where they have dinner together, that walkway by the water where they walk in the night, and the city in general. I feel a connection with Seoul now. Because I have fallen in love with In-su, Bae’s character in the movie.

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Fools Rush In

Why is the sudden realization of love always followed by a hastily unplanned and usually futile trip to the airport? A trip where the “love has newly dawned upon me” person gets intercepted by traffic snarls, airport security issues, bad phone connectivity, and even something as clichéd as a corpulent security officer who personally escorts you to the plane once you convince them that these are matters of the heart? Bollywood and Hollywood, you have disappointed me again and again. Pyar to hona hi tha. Chalte chalte. Life as we know it. There are “n” number of movies where love went undiscovered until the end, which meant a hasty trip to the airport to stop the plane, usually a futile attempt where the person comes home only to discover that the guy never took the plane, but came home instead.

There are multiple things that seem fundamentally wrong in this situation. First, is love so unnoticed an emotion that it suddenly dawns upon you one fine evening? And once it does, why is it reduced to something as urgent as the urge to poop during a stomach upset, that one has to find a way to do it then and there? If I suddenly realized I am in love, I would call, email, text, even wait until the next meet. If the person lives in a different city, I would happily wait for the next time I can take a vacation. I don’t have to take a cab, be stuck in traffic snarls, or run to reach the airport, only to discover that the flight took off 3 minutes ago and my urgencies (to propose) are never going to be satisfied. If nothing, the laborious process of security check is going to be a huge deterrent. Remove shoes. Remove belt. Take out laptop. Remove sweater. Take out camera. Let the metal detector go off only to realize that you forgot to part with your keys. Repeat security process once again. Let the security officer fondle you for strictly professional reasons. Then remember flight number, find terminal, run to terminal, run the risk of colliding with kids who run around, bump into luggage bags, fall on unsuspecting strangers, and so on. Why can’t I just sit at home and call or email? If nothing works, I can send a message on Facebook (which I assume would be checked faster than missed phone calls or emails), and then write on his Facebook wall to let him know that I had to message him on Facebook because he wouldn’t take my calls and reply to my emails.

Naah, I guess I will never understand the fun of chasing someone to the airport, the adrenaline rush, the suddenly discovered hormones, the anticipation of pheromones, the evolutionary instinct to chase a potential mate, the thrill of stopping someone from taking a flight and letting them know about newfound romantic intentions, the fun of creating chaos, and so on. You are right, I will never get it.

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Good Mo(u)rning Mr. Valentine

It’s that time of the year again, and given the laws of relativity, it amazes me how soon the “this time” of the year comes. Today is THE day, your only opportunity to show how much you love your spouse/partner/girl/boy friend. So what if countries are at war, you are thinking of switching boy/girl friends, you hate your in-laws or you have realized this is perhaps a merger of convenience and not a marriage of love. This is your only chance to publicly show the expansiveness of your love. 

Tonight, there will be gifts, flowers, candle night dinners, and claims of husband taking half day off work, or better still, not going to work at all. Tonight there will be sultry love making, with all your half-baked and malformed teenage fantasies from the Harlequin Romances coming true. How do I know all this? From Facebook of course. Is there a better medium of showoff affluence display than Facebook? There will be 6 dozen “surprise” roses arriving at office during an unsuspecting moment when you are at a meeting and pretend you didn’t even know it is Valentine’s Day. Oh oh oh, I am so surprised, I just fainted. 

There would be bars and standards set in comparison to previous years, or better still, in comparison to what your friends got this year. Like the World Cup cricket, there will be live updates of the different stages and phases of the display of love. “Oh I just got a bunch of flowers at work and someone made sure that everyone in office knew about it before I did”. “Oh hubby is chopping onions and crying, in the process of cooking the “surprise” tandoori chicken for dinner”. “Look there he goes hunting for the matchstick to light the candle for the candle lit dinner”. “Oh now he is at Tiffany’s with his ex-college girl friend, deciding which diamond to buy for me (we are now all friends, you see)”. “Oh, I also got a phone call from someone who is not really my girl friend, but we are great open minded buddies you see. It’s all about being in love with everyone at the same time”. “Look, the husband just confronted the boss and told him how he doesn’t care that he is on pager duty, and he is taking off for the rest of the afternoon”.

Honestly, would you have much respect for a person who refuses to go to work because it is Valentine’s Day? I would actually, I will go swooning at his feet out of respect, wondering if he can differentiate between praise and sarcasm. With a bunch of carnations and an incarnation of Cupid for a husband, the only good thing missing in life would be a live documentation of the amorous life you lead. Facebook comes into the picture now and fulfills and surpasses all expectations of a live coverage of love, longing, hormones, pheromones, and expectation fulfillment in the name of “Surprise!!!!”. 

I was greeted by an email this morning that read, “Have you experienced that deep-rooted longing, the longing for a love that is big, beautiful, and blissful?” Of course I have, I muttered to myself, recovering after falling off my chair. With 5 core courses, 3 days/week workout, research work, homework, assignments, classroom observations, writing a bunch of papers, learning the new NVivo and SPSS software, and modeling logistic regression data, all I feel at the end of the day is a “longing for that big and beautiful love”. Hence I take a shower, tuck myself in bed, play a few rounds of online scrabble, cocoon inside the bed reading the book “He’s not that into you”, and before I know, I am snoring my brains out, and it is morning again, the alarm is shrieking with routine discipline, and it’s time to run to work. Isn’t that big, beautiful love? 

Maybe not. No, really, it is refreshing to see so many people view life and romanticism through a different lens, a lens where there is joy in not just receiving gifts, but in showing it off on a social networking site as well. I don’t know if it is age, hormones, or mental makeup, but who cares? At least you are not wasting and whiling your dhalti jawani setting youth hunched on categorical predictors and missing data handling. And don’t take my words seriously. Long before I saw doctors, I knew I suffered from the “Sour Grapes Syndrome”.

Happy Valentines Day you people. Keep the love alive, kicking, and most importantly, showing! For it isn't love if it doesn't show.

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“Rab”bing it in

Note: The reader is responsible for his/her own pinch of salt (s)he will be taking this with. The stuff you read is solely my opinion and it doesn't really matter whether you agree or disagree.

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In a world where truths like mate hunting, grooming, courtship, and shaadi.com exist, not necessarily in that order, the alternative school of belief that preaches that God takes care of your soul mate hunt is somewhat worth debating. Of course reverting to anything remotely related to God for things gone wrong in life is instinctive and age old. But I find it amusing that God challenges the evolutionary school of thought and thereby mocks the concept that man must find his own mate, and in the process, learn the basic skills of grooming, hunting, and courting.

It’s a relief for many I’m sure, especially those belonging to the frustrating, unmet and un”mated” life. A very starry eyed teenager preparing for my boards, I’d sighed in relief when Madhuri Dixit in Dil To Pagal Hai (DTPH) had beamed with confidence upon SRK’s question of how to identify if the person you just met was the one, pointing Heavenword, “Woh tumhe batayega” (God will tell you). I had happily gone back to my chemistry books, a heavily bespectacled and pimple faced high school aspirant, believing in Madhuri’s theory combined with ma’s theory that a good student always finds the right husband. And that too- on time.

Over and over again, Bollywood has tried resurrecting the belief that God is going to take care of something as important, and also as painstaking, frustrating and time taking as finding a mate. 5 years before DTPH, Kajol, in a similarly starry eyed role in DDLJ, had reverted to finding the “anjana chehra” and “jise maine dekha nahi” (The unknown face of the lover she had never seen). The force of God, and equally powerful being the force of the invisible and unknown, had surely made every teenager believe that the man of your dreams was the unseen, unknown stranger who’d knock your doorbell one fine morning, and was of course Godsent.

A decade after DTPH, Rab ne banaa di jodi (RNBDJ) once again tries to infuse similar beliefs in the name of God. Matches are made in Heaven, and are sent to us on planet earth in the most unlikely and untimely way. How else would you explain the wedding of the two protagonist right after the lady lost her fiancé and her father in a matter of days? Because God had made the match long ago in Heaven, and by some quirk of fate, had sent your mate on planet earth and had conspired a co-ordinate crossing in the most unusual circumstances.

I can think of many other movies that preached the concept of God match making and sending us out mates in a weird array of coincidental events. This was meant to be a relief for not just the ones who hadn’t found their mates (God will take care of it), but the ones with mismatched mates. The day you realized you’d married a buffoon for a husband, you could conveniently blame it all on fate and God, that it was God who decided the match, and the only thing important was, not money, not status, not the make of the car he drove, not the team he worked for in Microsoft, but the fact that “Woh tumhe deewanon ki tarah chahega” (He will love you insanely) (Courtesy: RNBDJ). Frankly, I once bought into this theory of God taking care of my single status and sending me the right man at the right time. Probably my stupidity explains the reason why I am still single, and highly run the risk of dying a spinster.

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Jab They Met

They didn’t realize how much they wanted to see each other till they actually met each other. It is strange how you spend years without seeing someone, and then the last few minutes of wait become unbearable. So she settled with her bags and baggage in the airport lounge, neatly arranging her stuff, nervously combing her hair, and waiting in anticipation. She was a little nervous at the prospect of seeing him perhaps. It had been years after all.

She restlessly tapped her feet onto the ground in rhythm with the music playing in her ears. She wondered which gate he would enter from, if he will show up from the front of the lounge or from behind her. Thus she waited impatiently, looking here and there every few minutes and then looking at the watch.

And then he appeared. He simply stood there, smiling at her. For a moment, she thought that she was transfixed. Here she was looking at the person she has flown thousands of miles for. All her resolve of a courteous hi and a civil hand shake was soon shoved away. For the moment she saw him, she dropped her bags and baggage, running head on, like a weapon all set to hit her target. Seeing her and knowing her all these years, he opened his arms wide. When she was done running more than half the way, common sense prevailed and she started to realize some basic laws of physics she had learnt back in school. If she did not start to decelerate in time, she would soon hit her target head on, and so high would be the momentum (which is a product of mass and velocity by the way) that it could cause disastrous effects which were clumsy and far from elegant.

She slowed down just in time to hit right on to his chest, and the moment she did so, he engulfed her into his huge frame. They knew not how long they stood that way, hugging each other and breathing in each other’s scent while time stood still and nothing really mattered anymore. She stood on tiptoe to reach somewhat up to his height, and stood there with her eyes closed.

How have you been?

Good good.

I’ve missed you.

So have I.

How was the flight?

Tiring, as usual.

I’m glad you made it.

So am I.

So what are you listening to?

Some random music playing in my ears.

Silence…………..

So are you gonna release me or are we gonna stand this way all day?

It is then that they both realized what a scene they made……

And they thought such events happened only in movies and in romantic novels…..

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In Fond Remembrance.

I don’t think I have ever spoken to you about my dadu (paternal grandfather). I was leisurely leafing through the family album this morning when I stumbled upon all of those childhood snaps of mine. Those were the days when everyone looked so young. One of the snaps had me sitting on my dadu’s lap, my face grumpy and my eyes red and swollen. I must have played a prank on my poor old dadu and ma must have punished me.

My early memories of dadu were that of a rather thin and short and swarthy man with an island baldness (where 90% of your head is bald surrounded by a thin patch of hair, the simulacrum of A.K.Hangal). Well, the baldness certainly suited him and age had nothing to do with it. My dad too had grown up seeing the receding hairline recede somewhat to the hinterlands of the skull. What amused me more was the fact that dadu would regularly apply talcum powder on the shiny surface after combing his hair.

Another thing I remember very vividly about him is the pinstriped shirt in blue and white he would wear. The image of that shirt is still so well imprinted in my mind that when a friend chose the same type of shirt in Westside for his placements, I exclaimed, “But this is the grandfather print. You would look so old in this.”

Many a friends of mine would boast of their grandfathers being freedom fighters who’d gone to jail during their time. My grandfather was just the reverse, the nervous types who’d faint at the sight of blood or violence (a trait I have rightfully inherited). But he was a famous classical singer. In fact, he had once got a chance to playback for a certain Bollywood movie (which never happened due to reasons unknown to me). I remember every evening, he would sit with the harmonium for riyaz for hours and I would be expected to sit besides him and pick up tunes (I was barely 5 then). What a punishment that was for me. This is one of the reasons I never wanted to learn classical singing despite ma’s wishes. I then wanted to go to a school that would teach me songs from latest Hindi movies, a far cry from the ragas and the man-mohan-ki-surat-pyari song he used to try to teach me.

I used to be a very naughty kid. I would never break windowpanes or break my bones. Yet I had this bad habit of talking too much, and saying the wrong things in the wrong places. I sometimes used to call dadu Dev Anand dadu (as he was born the same year Dev Anand was born in, and I was always so very full of such random information). And there was a private joke we used to share. I would crawl up in his lap and ask him, “Did you have a love marriage with dida (my paternal grandmother)?” to which he would deliberately mispronounce the word “love” as “laabh” (meaning gain in Hindi), look at dida and say, “Naah, not laabh marriage, nuksaan marriage”. (It’s not a marriage of profits but a marriage of loss). I would giggle happily.

Sometimes, he used to bring me back from school. And I would hate the broken Oriya he would use to talk to the rickshaw puller. He would always say “Kemiti jibu” (how will you go?) instead of "Kouthi jibu" (where will you go?). And he would always confuse the left turns with the right turns. After I’d get back from school and have my lunch (that was the time of his afternoon siesta), I would knowingly jump on the bed like a monkey, wake him up that way, lie in his arms and ask him to tell me stories. Dadu’s stories had taught me the difference between the varieties of ghosts and demons. A “rakkhosh” was the bad guy with mustaches while a “khokkosh” was bald and sans mustaches, with an olive-green skin (like that Onida TV guy). A “petni” (churail in Hindi) was the one who would live on palm trees and would sing in her adenoidal voice in the evenings. You could recognize a petni from a woman by looking at her feet (the petni would have upturned feet). A “cheledhora” was one who would walk down the streets in the afternoons with a sack, looking for children who didn’t listen to their parents and putting them inside the sack. And immediately after his stories ended, I would ask for the tail of the story. Typically the raakshash would die at the end, but a tail (addition) of the story would mean that the raakshash would wake up again and do a lot more damage before the prince finally killed him. Dadu would tell me stories in a bid to put me to sleep, yet I would be wide awake at the end of it while he would eventually doze off in the process.

I used to hide his glasses when he would take his bath. Knowing that he was a nervous man, I would hide behind the doors in the afternoon when everyone was taking a nap, and he would lose his sleep trying to find me (thinking that I have accidentally gone on the streets). He used to wear a few false teeth and once he wasn’t getting one of them. So the whole household had gone mad searching for them. One look at me and dadu told ma, “Your daughter must have hidden it”. Ma kept taking my side, arguing that why would a kid hide his false tooth. I kept quiet all the while. At last, tired after the tooth search, ma asked me if I has seen it to which I had taken her hand to the verandah proudly and had shown her how I’d thrown away the tooth right on top of the asbestos roof of the garage.

Dadu was addicted to the TV news at 8:40 pm. Yet I would always stand in front of the TV screen and start dancing when he was intently watching the news. Those were the days of Doordarshan when I’d picked up the tune of the Mala-D song. So whenever dadu would be reading the newspaper, I would sit on his lap and start humming- “Bol sakhi bol tera raaz kya hai”. I knew this was enough to make him go catatonic and give mom some good lambasting- “This is what you’ve taught your daughter?” I didn’t understand why would he make such a big issue out of that particular song. Nevertheless, I would enjoy the ruckus I created that way.

My cousin would visit us during the summer holidays and she was my competitor in getting dadu’s favors. I would not like her listening to all the stories dadu would tell me in the afternoons. So while dadu would recite the same stories to her, I would break the suspense in between and tell her the end of the story. She used to cry for silly reasons to gain all the attention and used to constantly sing to me purposefully- “Look, this is my dadu, not yours”.

Dadu had a very painful death. He had slipped in the bathroom and had had a cerebral hemorrhage. During the last few months, he had gone into coma and would constantly be fed through a bunch of plastic tubes shoved down his throat. Bedsores had infested his body and he never gained consciousness. Dida and ma would dress his wounds everyday (since no nurse would go near him, so unbearable used to be the stench). They used to use Cuticura talcum powder and that particular smell of his wounds mixed with the talcum powder still makes my stomach churn. I would often sit besides him after school, careful not to disturb him. However, he never really gained consciousness to recognize me. I was in the fifth grade then.

I miss my dadu. Even my sister, who was four then, hardly remembers him. I wish he was with us today.

I sighed and closed the family album. Snaps sometimes brought in a deluge of memories. Memories of the past that no longer existed. We live in the present. Yet a part of the past always lives with us. I wish I would not hide his glasses or trouble him. I wish I had not thrown his tooth on the garage roof. I wish he had not died that way. But then, I wish for so many things I cannot change.

sunshine.

My First Baby.

I still have faint memories of that rainy Monday morning. Nobody had woken me up or made me ready to go to school. When I woke up, grandma told me that a holiday was declared in my school due to the rains. Rubbing my eyes, I asked where mom was. She said that she has been taken to the hospital. Dad was there too. And I have had a little sister now.

That was way back in the first grade. Later that day, I went to see mom and my new sister. It was still raining heavily. I don’t remember much, but for the fact that my sister was sleeping wrapped in a bundle of clothes. Everybody was talking about what a healthy baby she was born. Even with my mom suffering from jaundice during her pregnancy, she was born a good 4 kg plus, and was very tall for her age.

The birth of my sis proved to be more of a disappointment for me initially. She would sleep or weep all day, she would not smile or recognize me; she would not say funny things or talk to me. I had expected her to at least ask me my name and my school’s name, or share lunch and dinner with me. But she did none of those. So when she would be sleeping and no one was seeing me, I would silently sneak into the room, tickle her tiny feet, and wake her up. They would not even let me take her in my arms.

With time, dad told me that she was my own kid. I would have to take care of her in every way. And from that day, my sis became my responsibility. I would help mom bathe her and feed her, I would funnily dance to songs in order to amuse her. She was so strong, she would crawl up to me and take a fistful of my hair in her tiny hands and shake my head. But I would never cry or complain. She tore my books, puked on me, and scratched my face with her tiny nails. When I was in the fourth grade, she started going to school with me. So I fed her food, arranged her school bag and carried it with me, helped her do her homework (most of the times I would do it myself while she would play), and made sure that nobody bothered her in class. She was a real lazy baby who would never be ready on time. So I would help mom in getting her ready for school as well. And when we would be real late, I would carry her in my arms, with the school bags and all, and run all the way from the school gate to her class. Most of the days, I would get late for my assembly doing all this. I always treated her as my kid, my responsibility.


sunshine.