China Rose

On my way to work this morning, I picked up this flower. Bangla naam- Jawba phool. Scientific name- Hibiscus rosa sinensis. The two names have very different meanings for me. I taught a class on post-structural feminism recently. It took me a long time and multiple attempts of hitting my head on the wall to understand what is post-structuralism, what is feminism, and what is post-structural feminism in this context. However, it did help me develop an appreciation for the symbolic meanings of language once I vaguely understood the concept well enough to be able to teach it.

Jawba phool reminds me of Ma Kali. Of Shibpur, Howrah. And hajar haath Kali (goddess Kali with thousand hands, you should look up her picture. It gives me goosebumps, she looks so jagrata, so alive). All these are memories from my childhood, visiting hajar haath kali mondir in Shibpur and coming home to my grandparents’ place armed with two big bags of steaming hot boma. Boma means a bomb, and Chondi'r boma is the best alu’r chop that you will ever find. The story goes that Chondi, the inventor of boma, uses a secret spice recipe that no one else in the world has been able to replicate, and this humble family business over 3 generations did so well that he built a three-storey house. I do not know how much of this is true, but I do know that my mom spent years of her childhood bonding over boma with school friends, and I haven’t had it in decades now. So if anyone could get me hot bomas from Shibpur, you are my best friend for the rest of my life!

I don’t know how I jumped from jawba phool to boma, but the other name, Hibiscus rosa sinensis, opens up a whole new world of memories for me. I am in the ninth grade and Mrs. Khurana is our biology teacher. She has just taught us how to eviscerate the flower along its longitudinal axis to expose the reproductive contents using a dissecting needle. The catch is that during the practical exam, you only get one flower and one try to get it right. Sometimes, even surgeons are not as skilled as is expected of a 14 year-old. This would be followed by my vague attempt to neatly draw and label the parts of the flower, something I hated doing. I am so bad at drawing and sketching, I could not even draw a pumpkin, forget drawing the private parts of a dissected flower. I spent a good few months of my childhood surreptitiously plucking red flowers from the landlord’s garden and practicing my surgery skills on them. I might not know how to cook biryani or write R codes, but I can surely show you the reproductive parts of this red flower.

And of course now, the flower reminds me of the three-year old grandson of our neighbor who religiously sings me “mayer paye jawba hoye” in his mellifluous voice every time we meet. It is a devotional song dedicated to Ma Kali which means something like- I will be the flower of your feet.

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Irrfan Khan

My life is a little richer because I have Irrfan Khan movies to watch. About his brilliant acting, there is nothing I can add that people haven’t already said. I love his movies because the moment he came on screen, I felt that everything will be alright. He will take care of everything. It's a feeling I cannot fully explain, I do not know what would be fine and what he would set alright. His movies had that kind of a calming effect on me.

 

I loved him in all his roles. A lot of people remember The Namesake as their favorite. I have a slightly unconventional choice. I absolutely loved his small role as the slightly eccentric guy, Monty, in Life in A Metro.

 

Life in A Metro released around the same time that I was meeting a lot of guys with the possibility of marriage in mind. It was a strange stage in life filled with annoyance, uncertainties, disappointments, and hopelessness. It would be fair to say that I disliked almost everyone I met. Twenties are also the time when you are not quite sure about who you are and who you could be. You put up with a lot of bee-ass in the name of societal conformation (I love the thirties that way! They are so freeing!). So many of my evenings were spent in faltu, never-ending chain of mindless conversations and small talk. Looking back, I hated all of it, but I digress here.

 

Watching Monty at 28 had given me a lot of hope. Here is this character from a movie who has met 29 girls so far, who is real, as real as it gets. Remember him ogling at Shruti's boobs and later telling Shruti, "gaadi garage se nahi nikalogi to pataa kaise chalega ki light green hai? Take your chances!"-- "How will you know the light is green unless you take your car out of the garage?" Or when Shruti professed her love for him while he was mounted on a horse for his wedding ceremony, all he could come up with was- "But the blouse and petticoat have been stitched for the other girl, why didn't you tell me before?" No matter how bizarre the situation was, he always said or did the right thing. I had connected to that character like no other.

 

I watched Life in A Metro again after I heard the news of Khan’s passing. When Rajesh Khanna passed, both my mom and grandma spent every day binge watching his movies and crying. This went on for a month. I don't typically cry while watching movies, but I relived the feeling of that hope that he gave me as Monty. I celebrated his life through his movies. He will live on among many of us forever through his movies.

 

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Car-Ma

I was recently invited to speak at Princeton University. The organizers there treated me really well. I have been invited at other places too, but Princeton clearly stands out as classy. They put me up at one of the best hotels, the food was excellent, and the invitation letter and all was once again, a class above the rest. But the icing on the cake was my mom's response to something they did. Yes, a mommy post again!

Princeton got me a chauffeur-driven limousine for the 50-mile, hour-long drive from the Newark Liberty International Airport to the university/hotel (I was planning to take the train/dinky). My jaws dropped open when I read the letter. I, for one, have never been in a limo before. Forget the limo, I am used to taking the public transport, and for a good part of my life, I have lived in hostels and crashed at people's living rooms to save money during travel. The world of upscale hotels is very new to me, but the limo ride was something I did not see coming.

I was very excited, and when I told my ma, she was excited too! I do not know how much she understands cars, but based on my response, she could sense that it is a big deal. Very sincerely, she said, "This is so exciting. Is a limo as comfortable as the Toyota Innova? Innova'r thekeo bhalo gaadi?"

It reminded me of my first year in the US. G drove a Honda Pilot then, so the Honda Pilot became my standard of excellence, "my" first car in the US. As our friendship grew, my emotional connection with the car grew too. A year or two later, I got onto a friend's SUV during a road trip to San Diego and sincerely told her husband, whom I was meeting for the first time, "Very nice car. Love the Honda Pilot!" To which, I got a very dirty look and a clipped response, "It is a Lexus!"

Oh, well!

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"We are going to Kolkata!"

This is a vivid memory from my childhood. I must have been around 5-6 years old, definitely not more than 8. We lived outside Bengal, and once or twice a year, we boarded the Madras Mail (an overnight train) as a family to visit Kolkata during summer or winter vacations. There, I spent significant amount of time in my mamar bari (my mother’s parental home). We were all a “joint family” back then, a family where parents, children, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, everyone lived under one roof. They show a lot of that in Greek and Italian movies.

My dadu or grandfather had two elder brothers, Boro dadu (boro means bigger or in this case, elder) and Mejo dadu (mejo means middle). They all lived in one huge, two-storied house in Howrah with their spouses, children, and grandchildren. The house had a “dalaan” or an open central courtyard that led to the well. There was a large wooden table in that dalaan. The table was so high for me that I needed support to prop myself and climb it. It is the same table where every male member of the family ate their breakfast before leaving for office. The table had a deep gash on one side and a nail sticking out on another. Even when I close my eyes now, I can still remember the feel of the table. For it was my favorite spot to lie on my belly, prop my chin with my hands, and watch the ongoing of the entire household; my three didas or grandmas lighting up their stoves to cook, the smell of burning coal that still makes me cry out of nostalgia, the domestic help, “Mongola’r Ma,” scurrying around to get chores done, my uncles busy eating rice and fish curry before leaving for work (always finishing the meal with “ombol”), and the neighbors dropping by to spread or garner news. 

I was too short to reach the wooden table, so I would use the adjacent chair to climb. That chair had a history too. “Buri pishi,” our widowed grandma (grandpa’s sister) sat there in the mornings, the two of us (the oldest and the youngest) being the only ones not in a hurry to get anywhere. So we sat side by side, buri pishi on the chair and I, belly flopping on the table, both of us with all the time to observe the world around us. Buri pishi often tickled my feet, catching me unaware, a constant source of annoyance. Till date, I hate anyone touching my feet. Given my size and height, the table offered an excellent vantage point to keep an eye on the ongoing of the entire household.

Sometimes, boro dadu or mejo dadu decked up early in the morning, wearing a fancy dhuti (a garment tied around the waist), a smart, cream colored shirt buttoned all the way without tucking in (unlike trousers), and dab generous amounts of Pond’s talcum powder on their face and chest. My own dadu never wore dhuti on a daily basis unless it was a wedding. He mostly wore a lungi or pajama. Anyway, the dadus would preen themselves, put on their best shoes, tuck a huge black umbrella under the armpit, and sit at one corner of the huge table for brunch before leaving home. Still lying on my belly, my chin propped on my hands, I would ask, “Where are you headed, dadu?” To which boro dadu or mejo dadu would beam proudly, “I am headed to Kolkata. I will be back in the evening.”

These words always made me giggle. I found this conversation hilarious. What do you mean, I am headed to Kolkata? We were already in Kolkata, weren’t we? How could one go to Kolkata while living in Kolkata? Back in our home, my mother used to tell everyone, “We are visiting my parents in Kolkata for the vacation.” To me, everything was Kolkata. I now understand the difference. We were technically in Howrah, a twin city to Kolkata separated by the Hoogli river. When we visited Victoria Memorial, we were in Kolkata. Whenever we took a bus and crossed Howrah Bridge, we were in Kolkata. When we ate moglai porota at the Shibpur tram depot, we were in Howrah. But in my little mind, technicalities were irrelevant and borders were non-existent. Everything was Kolkata, a nice and big city we visited during vacations or family weddings and met all the long-lost first, second, and third cousins, a place where a lot of people lived in one big house. Specifics did not matter to me back then. Demarcations were but only in the mind.

I have somehow held on to the trait even now. I continue to believe that Harvard University is in Boston although I have been corrected many times that it is in Cambridge. Seattle and the eastside are the same to me, one big place I call Seattle (unless I am in Seattle and have to go to Bellevue or Redmond).

“Where in Seattle do you live?” I have often asked people, only to be corrected and told, “We live in Issaquah/Bellevue/Kirkland/Redmond.” I know the difference, and I always laugh out loud when corrected. Little do they know that sometimes, I even refer to Portland as Seattle, although it is “just” 175 miles away. To me, Seattle means all of these- UW (which is actually in Seattle), my ex-office in Redmond, Inchin’s Bamboo Garden, Mayuri in Bellevue, and the amazing waterfront in Kirkland. Mount Rainier is in Seattle. Olympic National Park is in Seattle. You get the point. It is not that I cannot tell the difference. It is just that when it comes to Kolkata or Seattle, peripheries become all-encompassing and borders become non-existent.

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What the readers are saying

If you notice, there is a green link called “ShortSurvey” on the right hand side of this page. Sometime back, I had requested regular readers to take this survey so that I can get an idea of who they are. Blogging can often get isolating in this age of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where it is very easy to have a real-time, two-way, instant conversation. However, I am old-school, am neither on Twitter nor Instagram, do not restrict my thoughts to a certain number of characters, and still find that blogging is the best way to express my thoughts. I do agree that interaction becomes delayed and one-sided, and I am not really the best at replying to comments. But about sixty of you filled out the survey, and your responses were enlightening. I promised not to identify people or publish personal comments, so I’d rather post some generic findings. I am all about the stories that data tell, so thank you to those who took the time to respond to the survey. You can still do it.

Sixty percent of those who filled the survey are women.

Sixty-three percent of those who filled the survey live in India. Twenty-eight percent live in North America, and the rest in Europe.

Seventy-eight percent who filled the survey are in the age range of 30-40 years. Eighteen percent are younger (20-30 years) and a very tiny sliver of those who sent me their responses are in the range of 40-50 years.

A good number of those who filled out the survey live in Bangalore.

I do get some of this information about geographical locations from the trackers on my blog. I know that till date, the US, India and Russia are where I get most of the traffic from, closely followed by Germany, UK and Ukraine. I do not know anyone from Russia, UK or Ukraine, and would love to know who they are and how they got here. For example, are they Indians living in other countries, or are they Russians and Ukrainians?

I know that I get a lot of traffic from Sayesha’s and Ovshake’s blog. Thank you!

I also know that a lot of you end up here while looking for “green veins in legs”

Now some more interesting findings. A whooping sixty-four percent of those who filled the survey said that they have never shared any post of mine with the others. Only 8.6% said that they have shared, and the rest responded “Sometimes.” I wonder, why?

Some more interesting findings. Forty-eight percent of those who said that they share said that they do so by email. In this day of quick information sharing using Facebook and Twitter, I had not expected emails to be the prime mode of sharing.

Now onto some interesting comments. There is a question where I ask you if you have any questions or comments for me. There was a time when I had a fancy pair of red shoes as my header. Those are my favorite shoes and I still wear them. Someone commented that it looked like wearing shoes inside a temple. It was hilarious. However, I thought more about it, it did seem like wearing shoes inside a temple. After much deliberation, I removed them and made my blog shoe-free.

Someone said that they don’t like that I have self-esteem and that I have become more stubborn over the years. I don’t know how true that is, but coming from people who mostly know a slice of my life though my own writings, I was definitely amused. What is wrong in having self-esteem?

It was also interesting that most of you said that you started reading me 10-12 years ago. There were very few of you who were recent readers. It does say a lot about the loyalty of readers. Thank you for that as well.

Some of you wanted to know my name, where I live and where I work. I have nothing against these questions, but over all these years, I have tried to maintain anonymity as much as I can. I never share my own posts. I know that people connect more to writers when they have seen their picture or know their name. However, I have shied away from revealing personal information to complete strangers. This was a deliberate decision after a string of harassment and internet bullying episodes I experienced long back. The internet can empower a lot of people with both good and bad intentions. One of you asked for a picture and I did share a picture, only to receive a hilarious response. The person said that they were expecting a much older blogger but I look much younger than what they thought.

One of you asked me a very interesting question. “In a world without work visas, what would you do?” I absolutely loved that question. If I haven’t already, I plan to blog about it sometime. If I have already done so, please remind me. With the amount of writing I do, my memory fails me at times.

One of you also asked if I have ever made friends through my blog and if I have met them. Plenty. Definitely has to be more than fifteen. Okay, maybe that is not a lot, but given the level of anonymity I maintain on my blog, I would think meeting fifteen people over the past twelve years is a lot.

A lot of you mentioned finding my blog through Munnu’s blog. He is one friend I am glad I met during my initial days of blogging. We used to be close friends, although I have no idea what he is up to these days.

For reasons not clear to me, I saw that my blog readership started declining sharply since May of this year. I do not know why it happened, and the numbers keep falling. That has made me wonder how worthy it is to put my time and energy into blogging. Reflecting about it has also made me realize that at the end of the day, I am writing for myself. I am aware that I do not do it that often, and if I could, I would write a little snippet at the end of every day before going to bed. However, no matter how infrequently I write and no matter how much readership decreases, this blog is my own personal nook that I enjoy hanging out at. Sometimes I read old posts, as old as a decade ago and fondly remember those times of my life. My family does not know about my blog, but maybe I could write it in my will so that they can read it if I pass before they do.

All that aside, thank you for reading the blog over the years and also to those who filled out the survey. I have recently added a few more features on the right so that it is easier to contact me and leave a feedback or comment for me one-on-one. So don’t hesitate to reach out in whatever way, by writing to me, commenting, sharing, and helping me keep my blog up and running. You could also tell me anything you would like me to write about, and if I feel enthused enough, I will do it. Some of you did not like a recent template I was using and I changed it after I realized that I do not like it as well. So yes, I do take comments and good feedback seriously. I have toyed with the idea of writing more about academia from a faculty’s point of view, since I am one now. But I also wonder how interesting that would be for readers not in academia. I am a compulsive story teller and I itch to tell stories about my life, things that I see and things that I find interesting. This blog is the longest commitment and longest long-term relationship I have had with anyone or anything.

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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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Power-less

I wake up with a start to a strange, sticky feeling on my skin. It is semi-dark, and I am not sure where I am. Instinctively, I grope for my phone and squint at the time. 4:15 am. The birds outside know no Sundays, they are chirping loud enough to wake the entire community up. Something feels very wrong within my body, but I am not quite sure what. Still lying on the bed that is soaking wet now, I stare blankly at the ceiling. The blades of the fan are still. They are not moving. Suddenly, it dawns on me. I am in the throes of a power outage on a hot, Sunday morning.

Nostalgia soaks me some more. I haven't felt the discomfort of a power outage for years now. It's amazing how the body remembers every little detail of how the discomfort felt all those years ago. Before inverters or emergency lights were in vogue, I studied using lanterns (we used to call them hurricane lamps) during long power outages. The planned power outages used to last an hour everyday during the summer months, but the unplanned ones due to faulty wires or storms lasted hours. In between, homework and exam preparations happened. I never got a note to school saying that assignments were not done on time due to a power outage.

As if on cue, a mosquito buzzes somewhere close to my right ear, lightly fanning the skin there. Out of sheer instinct, I slap myself hard enough to kill the arthropod in one go. Looks like that's a skill I did not forget either. Studying by the fire used to happen 20-30 years ago, and it was nowhere as romantic as candlelit dinners. I continue to stare at the ceiling fan, wondering how this indefinite power outage will affect me. Without power, there is no internet. Stored water will soon run out, and so will drinking water. Should I take a shower now, or assume that electricity will be restored in a few hours? Should I hurry up and finish breakfast at 5 am? Should I finish doing the dishes and other household chores that require water? How can I prioritize the things that require water? Almost everything requires water. Thanks to jet lag and the time difference with the US, I was working till well past 3 am, hoping to wake up late on Sunday. Yet, an hour's worth of sleep is all I get. It's so still outside, not a tree branch moves. Remembering the bamboo fans we used to have handy, I reach for an unbound textbook to fan myself, praying that I eventually fall asleep in the process. But sleep eludes me.

Suddenly, I decide to put my physical discomforts past me. Yes, it is summer and there will be surprise power outages, lack of water and internet, attack of the mosquitoes, and many such things. Yet, I see a ray of hope. Rather, I smell a ray of hope. It is perhaps not in my imagination and even amid all this discomfort, I can detect the faint but familiar smell of a fruit. I stop staring at the ceiling fan, get out of the bed, walk to the kitchen, and grab a big bowl. I wash two of the ripest fruits and head towards the balcony. There, I sit on the floor and enjoy the sweetest, freshest and ripest mangoes. No frozen mango, not from Mexico with preservatives galore, but plucked right from a tree probably within a ten-mile radius of where I was sitting. While summers sometimes bring power outages, may summers continue to bring me these mangoes.

Hello from Kolkata!

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The lamb shank

A few weeks into my new job took me to my first out-of-town work trip. I was going to stay in a hotel overnight. Being the true researcher than I am, I had looked up a nice place to eat dinner. It had very high ratings, the reviews were stellar, and it was not too far from my hotel. I had even checked the menu beforehand, making sure I knew what I was going to order. I landed all tired, checked in to my hotel, dropped off my bags and headed for dinner.

I ordered the braised lamb shank, skeptical about how tough or tender it would be. I asked the waitress if there will be a bone and she said yes. However, she assured me that separating the meat from the bone will not be an issue. I didn’t quite believe her since I have eaten lamb before, but I went ahead and ordered nevertheless. I didn’t want to create a mess, struggling to use my fork and knife.

And while I was at it, I went ahead and ordered a glass of sangria too. I am not your average alcohol drinker, but I thought that would relax me after a long day. I had spent an entire day at work and then taken the bus for another two hours to get here.

The first sip of sangria sent me spiraling down to Heaven. It instantly relaxed my muscles and made my eyes droopy. I had first tasted sangria earlier this year and loved it. While the cheaper ones were, umm, cheap, the more expensive ones were a gateway to Heaven.

In between, my order of lamb shank arrived, all wonderfully flavorful.

As I put my knife and fork on the meat, ready to cut it, it came out of the bone on its own. It was so well-done that I did not have to struggle with it at all. I spent the next hour or so enjoying the most tender meat I have eaten amid sips of sangria. The meal was very expensive by my standards, and I absolutely knew why.

At some point, the sangria must have hit my head. For I was suddenly engulfed with a sense of guilt. Only a month ago, I was a penurious postdoc. I hardly earned anything. Since I traveled a lot, I traveled on a low budget. I took trains at odd hours like 3 am just to save some money. I made sure that I ate inexpensive food, which was often roadside Turkish food. Although Europe is considered food Heaven, the only time I had eaten at an expensive restaurant was during a Christmas celebration when the department took us out and paid for it. If I was going to be traveling all day, I made sure I was carrying home-cooked food. I ordered the cheapest food, skipping drinks and dessert. I always kept two apples and two bananas in my bag, in case I got very hungry. I realized that I was carrying two bananas in my bag even that day, more out of habit than need. Here I was eating one of the most expensive things on the menu, but still had emergency food in the bag. I even paid a fat tip that day.

The hotel I was staying at was a standard American hotel. It usually means a huge room, a huge television I never watch, a king bed, most of which goes unoccupied, half a dozen pillows never used, half a dozen towels in the bathroom never used, and so on. If you have stayed at one of these standard chain hotels in the US, you will know what I mean. The only noise came from the whirring air conditioning in the room. As I looked out of the window at night, I saw a parking lot, silhouettes of huge cars parked, concrete and cement, and not a soul in sight. This is in complete contrast to the hostels I was staying in even a month ago, sharing my room with travelers all over the globe. I usually had a twin bed and a pillow, and sometimes had to climb ladders to get to my bed. It would be buzzing outside with tourists, local musicians playing live music and what not.

It hit me that day that I will hopefully never have to live in penury again. But that also brought in a feeling of sadness. In the next few weeks, I learnt that money begets money. 

As a postdoc, no one sent me to professional development seminars (that would have helped me find a job sooner), and if I went on my own, I had to pay out of my pocket. As a faculty, not only were they sending me to professional development events, but were also paying for my transportation, food, and hotels (although I can easily afford it now). 

As a postdoc in Europe, I never owned or rented a car, I always took the public transport. Now, if I had to rent a car for work, my university reimburses me. 

I had to buy my own health insurance in Germany. Now, the university pays for my health insurance, although I can afford it. 

I had to buy my monthly bus pass in Germany. Now, the university gives me a free one.

I now have more rights and benefits, although I needed them more as a postdoc. It was a sobering realization, and a sad one too.  The hotel and the expensive food is a nice, kind gesture. But somewhere deep down, beyond this formals wearing faculty lives a poor traveler, happily walking the streets of Europe, eating cheap food, staying in cheap youth hostels, and enjoying live music from streetside performers.

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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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For the love of language

A conversation heard in a crowded bus gave me goosebumps recently (a big reason I prefer taking the public transport rather than driving in isolation is the variety of people I get to see). In a tiny North German city, of all things, two people were conversing in Oriya!

You see, I am Bengali by ethnicity. Sure, we speak Bangla at home. However, I was never raised in Bengal. I was born in Bihar, and spent the first 16 and formative years of my life in Orissa. That's more years than I have lived anywhere else (9 in Kolkata, 8 in the US, 1 in Germany). I learnt to read and write the language in school, and used to speak fluently until I left Orissa. In school, most of my friends were native Oriya speakers. I was one of them. They were one of me.

We did not start growing roots in Bengal until my father decided to buy an apartment in Kolkata in the early nineties, forcing me to spend lonely summer vacations there. I had no friends. The topmost-floor, west-facing apartment that remained locked rest of the year was unbearably hot and smelled of concrete and cement, and the few highbrow, big-city coevals I met made no qualms in letting me know that I was not one of them and I was not welcome (although I spoke perfect Bangla with them). So I spent the summers reading voraciously, learning my Bangla alphabets at home, and finishing math chapters ahead of time. Oriya had such deep and comforting roots for me that the moment the train entered home (home being Orissa then), I would get dizzy with excitement seeing the Oriya letters imprinted bold black on a yellow background at the railway station.

It is not surprising that hearing the language after so long gave me goosebumps. A person who raises you is as much your mother as a person who gives you birth if they are not the same people. Although Bangla is my mother tongue, it is Oriya that raised me. I had barely started school when I said my first swear word (ghusuri, meaning a pig) in Oriya, long before I knew any Bangla swear words. Somehow, the other languages I spoke always stayed with me. Bangla, I speak everyday with my family or close friends. Hindi, I hear every day because of my addiction to Bollywood movies and music. But somehow, Oriya left me. I was never able to find people I could converse with on a regular basis. Suddenly, I was swept with nostalgia. I longed to visit the towns, the homes and the schools I grew up in. The guava tree where the monkeys lived and regularly invaded our home. The mango tree whose branches we used to hang ropes from, swinging with cousins in the summery afternoons. The huge black gate wherefrom our physician landlord used to enter in a bottle green ambassador every day. Such is the power of language that it took me on a 34 year long road down the memory lane.

My parents (both Bengali) have similar relationships with other languages. My mother with Hindi, and my father with Bhojpuri, because both of them spent significant years of their childhood in different places of Bihar. I wondered what language my children would yearn to hear, like I am doing for Oriya. Other than Bangla, they might grow up learning German. Or American English. I don't know. The deeper our roots grew, the wider our branches spread, the more we embraced different cultures. Maybe someday, I would feel similar nostalgia hearing German. The next time I am in Calcutta, I might make a trip to my childhood places. Walk the streets I haven't walked in 18 years. Touch the walls. Get excited reading off movie posters stuck on the walls, like I used to do as a kid. You see what havoc two strangers I heard speaking in the bus today wrought? They opened floodgates of nostalgic memories for me. They enlivened chapters from my childhood I had almost forgotten about.

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Grand Storytelling

A gentleman once boarded a crowded bus on a wintry morning, traveling with his wife, and two cauliflowers. Freshly plucked, he had bought them from the grocer near the Howrah Station for an excellent deal. A pair of huge cauliflowers with ripe florets weighed down his arms while he stood in the crowd. With her tiny frame, his wife had somehow managed to find a seat in the bus. However, he kept standing, making small talk with his fellow passengers, like he always did. 

For the rest of the ride, he held on to the bus rails with one hand, beaming and recounting to the fellow passengers how he had struck gold by managing to find these cauliflowers for ten rupees only. The fellow passengers nodded with interest. As the rickety bus continued to navigate the cobbled streets of Howrah, the gentleman continued to chatter, telling people about the wedding ceremony at home. His nephew was getting married soon, and the cauliflowers would be cooked for lunch by the women in the family. The three brothers lived together in a big house, with their wife, sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. The daughters and sons-in-laws were visiting too. Caterers were not in vogue back then, and the women in the household cooked together for every ritual before the wedding, although there would be a designated group of thakurs (cooks) hired for the main wedding spread. 

The fellow passengers listened with feigned interest as the chatty gentleman talked. When the stop arrived, the gentleman and his wife got off the bus. And so did one of the fellow passengers. Without preamble, the passenger shoved a ten rupee bill in the gentleman's hand, grabbed the cauliflowers, and vanished in the crowd. Just like that. The gentleman looked at the ten rupee bill, too confused to react quickly. Didn't he just carry the heavy produce all the way in a crowded bus, so that his family could cook it for lunch?

His wife misunderstood what happened, thinking that her husband just handed the cauliflowers as a good Samaritan. She bickered. He lost his temper, his ego already bruised. He argued back. And like children after a fight, he just started walking faster, using long steps. The house was a good fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop, and her four feet ten inches were no match for his six feet one inch frame. Not used to walking alone on the busy streets, she was hurt and confused, and wiped tears as she walked as fast as she could, trying to catch up with her husband. Still angry, he soon disappeared into the crowd. 

She crossed the dhopa'r maath (washerman's field), the narrow bylanes, and the pond, taking the final left to enter the corridor to the house. A movement caught her eye, and she turned to find her husband strategically hiding himself behind a tree, so that he could watch her walk back safely without her knowing it. She ignored him and entered the house, bursting into tears, managing to summarize the basic details of the event as she wiped tears. The brothers, sisters-in-law, nephew and nieces scolded him for acting childishly, while he stood there all grumpy until his anger melted. They did not eat cauliflowers that day, but still had a good lunch. 

My grandma just recounted this autobiographical story back from the nineties, for the umpteenth time. I have heard this story many times now, but still ask her to recount it. This is because I love my grandma's knack for storytelling. And once she did, I summarized it here. This is an ordinary, commonplace, inconsequential story from one day of my grandparents' life. Nothing life-changing, nothing spiritually awakening. But I still love it. I think that grandmas are the best storytellers, giving you a glimpse of a world where you either did not exist, or were too different to relate to. I have many friends here who grew up in different countries all over the world. I am curious about the stories all your grandmas told. And while I hope that you share some, I will try to document my share of stories, from my grandma's point of view.

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Poster Child

I was in the bus, on my way to work this morning, watching people, when a bygone memory from more than two decades ago made me nostalgic. We used to live in a little town, little enough that very few buses took you around, but big enough that the ride to school took about 45 minutes every morning. Every day, my sister and I would hop at the back of the cycle-rickshaw, enjoying the cool breeze and lack of traffic very early in the morning. And all through that ride, our favorite pastime was to count the number of cinema posters of Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, the two prominent actors in Bollywood. I was a non-supporter, but since sister was an Aamir supporter, my default poster counting went for Shah Rukh. 

We had rules too. Big time. When one of us would be losing, we would make impromptu rules, like the actor has to be visible on the poster to count. Or, we could not count posters that were old, and hidden beneath newer posters. And there was a way of counting too. Whenever we spotted one, the person would shout- Aamir 1, or Shah Rukh 12, making Raju Bhai, the rickshaw puller chuckle. Sometimes, when we felt generous, we would help the other person locate posters. But if we were our default mean selves, we would just say- "Hey, you just missed that poster on the wall, but since you cannot see it now, you cannot count it."

I do not see any point to this game now, but for strengthening counting abilities (it was already strong, I was in the eighth or ninth grade, my sister in the second grade), getting familiar with movie names like English Babu Desi Mem, Guddu, and Zamaana Dewaana, and just staying engaged during the long ride. The game was so pointless, so without any agenda, that it was good. So good that years later, I think about it and feel nostalgic, wishing that I could still be counting movie posters on my way to work now.

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Bare Walls

The bare walls in my home are a testimony to how my life has changed over the past decade with these cross-continental moves. The homes where I grew up never had bare walls. They had framed and garlanded pictures of the Gods and Goddess, and the deceased people in the family. The walls had calendars too. Every year, the new ones would replace old ones, just like life. Other than the few smaller ones, there was one single-paged, huge Dey's Medical calendar we hung every year, just like every average Bengali family did. Holiday dates were marked in red and bold, a huge red cross in the middle of the page. Then, during the Bengali new years in April, every local Mishtanno Bhandar (sweet shop) gifted us smaller calendars rolled with blue/black rubber bands along with a box of sweets. These calendars were smaller, less overbearing, and had Bangla font (and Bangla months) with pictures of Ma Kali or Ma Tara. The design and the fonts changed every year, but the subjects remained the same- Ma Kali, Ramkrishna Paramhansa (Swami Vivekananda’s guru), or Baba Loknath sitting on a lotus.

Eventually, as we grew older and Archies inundated the markets, calendars stopped being free and Ma Kali was substituted by other forms of Mother Nature. Scenic waterfalls and snow-capped mountains from unknown lands. Birds, flowers, and bees. As the science of photography improved, every hue of the sunset, the ripples of water, and the yellow and black stripes on the bee's abdomen became even more distinct. We saw lands and flowers and insects that were not familiar, not local to us, and reveled in it. By the end of the year (and with parental permission, which was very important), I would remove those calendars, taking a pair of scissors and go snip snip, making wall hangings, collages, book covers, and bookmarks out of them. Calendars made excellent book covers, although the laborious act of covering every book I read died with me finishing school.

I wonder how many of us use wall calendars these days. Technology has shrunk our entire worlds (including people) inside our smartphones, computers, and online Google calendars, taking away with it the excitement of flipping through and changing the pages of the calendar every month.

Even after all these years, my heart somersaults in joy whenever I see a stack of calendars. I sometimes pick them up although they no longer make it to the walls (hammering nails in the wall takes effort). The calendars just get lost somewhere amid piles of textbooks and research papers. As for the walls, they continue to remain bare for me. Unlike my friends, I do not hang pictures of anything anymore, even my family or my photography. After moving to seven different homes in four cities across two countries and two continents over the last ten years, I have decided to go minimalist. I no longer accumulate stuff that I will not be able to carry to my next home. Not only is accruing stuff laborious, the act of getting rid of stuff is emotionally painful. So my walls continue to remain bare, with only a tiny, rectangular Seattle magnet on one of the iron rails of the heater. The Ma Kali calendars are a relic from the past, something I only get to see and relish when I visit the local dry cleaners in Calcutta.

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The train named nostalgia

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

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

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

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

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

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