Po(o)p culture

Looks like it's not just moms who obsess about baby poop. 

All I did was ask if everything was alright, since I heard concerned voices on the phone. Although I am so glad I do not understand German.

"What is the big thing you do?", she asked, trying to explain.

"Research?", I asked proudly.

"No, big thing in the morning."

"Umm... potty?"

"Yaaa, potty!"

So looks like kitty isn't shitting right. The potty looks somewhat like, "Kuchen. Cake. Kind of flaky."

The potty sample went to the vet, who called to say that everything looked fine. But kitty started throwing up too. She suspected that the breakfast "grain" might be causing all this. So now, she is trying a different "grain" every day, collecting the potty, and describing it to the vet.

I mean, I didn't even ask for details. Friday nights, when people are busy attending kitty parties, I am writing about kitty potty. And looks like I will not be able to bring myself to eat cake for a long time now.

Bhashkor Banerjee, I can feel your spirit hovering around me!

sunshine

Your Old Faithful Travel Guide

I am generally known to be a level-headed, not-usually-hyper, rational person. But sometimes, only sometimes, I do things that befit this description. I do stupid things that befit my age, and maturity. I realize that I just wrote the concluding paragraph without even starting the post.

I was on my way to Seattle during the winter holidays. I was flying on Christmas eve, hoping to reach Seattle just in time for Christmas. When I was checking in at the airport and the machine at the kiosk asked me if I would like to board the next flight in return for a $200 travel voucher, I should have taken the hint and said yes. I did not. I was in a hurry to reach my most favorite place in the world. Which I did not.

There were weather related issues, and by the time I reached Denver, I had missed my connecting flight to Seattle. I could neither reach Seattle on Christmas eve, nor could get the $200 travel voucher. I spent the night at a hotel in Denver, and had to be up by 4 am to take the 5:20 am shuttle to be on time for the 6:00 am flight to Seattle. In the fear that I would oversleep and miss my flight, I mostly did not sleep at all. By the time the alarm went off, I had already showered, packed again, and was ready for the airport.

A few years ago, this lifestyle and not sleeping at night suited me fine. But I can see that I am reaching that age where I need my full 8 hours of sleep at night, need my bed, and cannot do red eye flights anymore. It spoils my entire next day, when all I do is sleep. So I boarded the flight to Seattle, texting my friend that I need some Ghoom 3 (Dhoom 3 had released that weekend, and ghoom is Bengali means sleep). Sometime during the flight, probably after I had my complimentary apple juice without ice (I always have that in flight), I put down my head on the serving tray and dozed off. I slept on and off, being very uncomfortable in that cramped space, and somehow managed to have a dream that I was visiting Yellowstone National Park.

Suddenly, I woke up with a jolt and looked outside the window. To my amazement, I saw that we were flying over the Yellowstone National Park. It was quite possible, since the route from Denver to Seattle goes through that area. Now how did I know that this is Yellowstone National Park? Because I saw the Old Faithful geyser erupting below. I have been to that national park once, 4 years ago, and loved it. How lucky one can be if one gets to see the bird’s-eye-view of such a world famous place, for free. I have traveled over Arizona, hoping to see the Grand Canyon from the airplane, but nothing I saw looked like the majestic Grand Canyon. And here, I could see the Old Faithful geyser right below my nose.

Ecstatic, and still a little groggy from sleep, I took out my camera quickly, changed lenses, and took some pictures. Barely able to contain my excitement, I told this to the neighboring two girls sitting by me. “Hey look, we are flying over the Old faithful geyser in Yellowstone”, I beamed. To my confusion, they looked initially surprised, and even tried craning their neck to see the view, but lost interest in the few seconds. I mean, how could one not be excited about the view? Maybe they have been there enough number of times to not be excited anymore? Maybe they had never been there, and did not know what they were missing? “Crazy people”, I said in my head, and looked outside, taking a few more pictures of the geyser that was slowing fading to my right now. But something about their reaction bothered me. Something in general bothered me. Why was the area around the geyser flat? I tried to remember what it looked like 4 years ago. I am pretty sure that I had seen many tall and rugged mountains during that trip. Something just did not seem right.

I kept wondering for the next fifteen-twenty minutes, when I saw the Cascade chain of mountains appear. Ten minutes later, I had landed in Seattle.

Given how quickly Seattle arrived after I saw the Old Faithful geyser, and given how flat it was around the geyser, the only rational explanation I can think of is this. Brace yourself, for I may be right, and it will shock you. We were flying above the Pullman area of eastern Washington, and what I mistook to be the world famous geyser, was a tall factory chimney which was billowing white smoke. We were hundreds of miles away from Yellowstone, both geographically, and figuratively. That explains why we landed so fast. That explained the first confused, and then irritated look those women gave me (as if they were saying to themselves, are we idiots?). And that explains how age is catching up with me, and how a groggy, half asleep state of mind makes my imagination go crazy. This is so embarrassing that sharing it in the anonymity of this blog makes me feel only marginally less stupid. I cannot imagine sharing this with my friends, who know me for my passion for travel.

For the rest of the plane trip, which was not a lot thankfully, I did not make eye contact with my fellow passengers. And you know what? Someone out there is laughing really hard with her friends, recounting how a sleepy woman mistook a factory chimney to be the Old Faithful geyser.

sunshine

27 and Unmarried?

This is a work of f(r)iction, and should not be confused with the author’s intentions of documenting her subdued desires of getting hitched, or claiming that she is 27, when she is long past that age.

"27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Are you romantically challenged? Kuch gadbad hai kya? Aren’t most girls your age already married?"

You know what shaped my romantic conditioning while growing up. The fantasy world I created from reading hundreds of Mills & Boon (MB) romantic novels, and Harlequin romances. Crumpled yellow pages, a cover best hidden in a newspaper jacket. No matter how much I tried to look indifferent, the size of the book and the fervent way I skimmed through the yellow pages always gave away what I read. Yeah yeah we all know about “the lack of variety in plotlines and their inevitable happy endings”. So what?

The problem is- my imaginary world of romantic hunks sauntering half naked in towels became more real than my real world and the men I met there. In school and college when my friends were mate hunting, I drowned myself in books with these fantastic men, vicariously deriving my romantic stimulus from them. A decade later when my friends have found their mates, I have woken up to the realization that I am perhaps running a good 10 years behind schedule. I haven’t been able to find someone on my own, and the random men I talk to every weekend as a routine of this arranged marriage drill, barely live up to my expectations.

My Indian forefathers had turned in their graves when at 14 I was convinced I was marrying an Italian. To my understanding, all my fantasy men resided in Italy, Greece, and France. Brought up with middle class values and dozens of Mills & Boons hidden between my text books, I have always wondered why the fantasy men I read about were so different from the real men around me - lovers, non-lovers, ex-lovers, buddies, colleagues and the ones I talk to these days, hoping that I would end up marrying one of them. Why was it that the Kamal Kishores, the Venkat Rajans and the Obhrokanti Kumars never stood a chance to these Jakes, Lukes, and Nicks?

No prizes for guessing that the fiction writers had transported me to this imaginary world of men who didn’t exist in reality. But it didn’t make the fantasy men any less appealing. You know why? Because they are self made. Born with a silver spoon, yet a go-getter. Exceptionally tall, always towering and above 6 feet (something which Bengali men rarely are). My mother never really understood my need to tiptoe to the man I marry, and still makes me talk to these short men with the notion that “a good character and a secure job is more important than height”.

My MB men are always dark. Brooding. Broad chested. Very angry with life. It seems every woman wants to chain him down, though frankly, I don’t know why none of his flings ever made it to the altar. His charm and virility increases as an exponential function with age. Very devoted to his huge family of 4 generations residing somewhere in Italy. Usually Greek or Italian (but never Indian). He travels all around the world and he owns a chain of art galleries or Victoria’s secret stores. Drives Porsches and Ferraris. Sleeps in boxer shorts. Doesn’t snore or fart or scratch himself like a hairy porcupine. Well toned. No hanging pot bellies or a receding hairline. Never found shopping in Walmart, IKEA or Target. Unparalleled sartorial elegance. He doesn’t do menial jobs like – coding, writing software, or cloning animals in the lab.

Reality bites. I remember talking to a doctor as a part of my mate hunting routine. I placed him in the genre of medical romances where the doctor always fell for the nurse. Then I discovered that the man got his kicks describing gory details of what went in the operating rooms. He was too engaged in conversation to notice me cringe as he described the entire process of childbirth over a cup of coffee. Who did he think he was, Dr. Gregory House? I mean, for all my dreams of him undressing me mentally, who knows if he was dissecting me mentally. No, things never really went anywhere with him.

My MB man owns private islands in the Bahamas, while the common man, even after topping the JEE, the IIT, and ending up as a software luminary, spends his entire life paying off mortgages for a house in the outskirts of Seattle. My MB man always gets attracted to the plain Jane no-non-sense girl with oodles of self esteem. In fact, I never wore makeup for years, just to live up to the plain Jane image. My MB man always initiates the first kiss and is never slapped for such unwarranted animal lust. Sometimes, my MB man is the father of the baby he never knew existed because he did not want to be tied down to marriage despite his miraculous procreative abilities. Sometimes, he is the only employer in the vicinity and offers marriage when you are least expecting it. Sometimes he is that man you find in the desolate island where you went for your last field trip. Soon, you are thrown into a situation where neither of you can do without each other. A hurricane strikes the island, he discovers a secret of his life you are the key to, or he simply realizes that you belong to an exotic species naïve enough to not use contraceptives during these accidental, unplanned acts of passionate love making.

I grew up firmly believing that the man I marry would be like one of these characters. The ones who would pin me down against the wall to initiate the first kiss. Not the ones who describe how pancreatic cancers are cured. My world of romantic fantasy came crashing down with every relationship gone haywire. Tainted are those, marred by the gory wrath of society, who are unable to sail through the trials and tribulations of a socially acceptable relationship. I saw this train filled with potential grooms leaving the station while someone pushed me frantically to run after the train. I thought of my MB men and my make-believe world in Italy and how happy I was there. I wondered why I didn’t find the Indian version of my MB man. While the world eagerly awaits Mr. Right’s arrival to put an end to my miseries of singlehood for life, Mr. Right is a split personality, who in his other personality, is a mama’s boy brought up with good values who only listens to mama.

My conflicting worlds confuse me – the one with the Jakes and Lukes, the one with people pushing me to get married to whoever was smart enough to make it to the US, and the world of these prospective grooms sitting in a train, one of which might be kind enough to marry me someday. While these worlds of mine collide, I bear a heavy burden on my chest, traumatized at the thought of dying an old spinster. My feelings remain unresolved so far- call it tragedy or consider it comical. Like my friend says, “27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Aren’t most girls your age already married?”

sunshine

A Big Fat-(free) Lie

At some point of my life, roughly 83 hours and 52 minutes ago, I got tired of hogging on all the Rasgulla, Gulab Jamuns, Rabri, and all those deep fried masses of sugars and calories. Nothing triggered it, it just happened. I guess it’s like giving up on smoking (or getting rid of that loser of a boyfriend you should have left 5 years ago). You have been thinking of doing it for a while, and every time you try, you just fail. Then one fine morning, you wake up and just do it. I think the same happened to me. I have been unhappy with the way I have put on weight for the last few years. From being a person who jumped at the center of the screen whenever I spotted a camera, now I started shying away from the camera, finding a comfort spot behind somebody so that my paunch was hiding. Paunch I could still hide wearing appropriate clothes, but where would I hide my face, a big round blob of fat now with chubby cheeks? It’s been years since I’ve seen my face oval, the original way God designed it. Anyway I will rant about my body and looks some other time (I promise I will). I will not spare you, I will even rant about my huge biceps, till you are bored to death. Anyway.

So one fine day I just decided to give up on the empty calories. This was the least I could do, since I wasn’t committed to gymming and working out big time. The mangoes looked at me from the fridge expectantly and I looked back at the mangoes with pain. The neighbor who makes awesome “Patisaptas” (sweet crepes stuffed with coconut and jaggery and sometimes condensed milk filling) was promptly asked not to make those for my goodbye dinner in 5 days. Convincing mother wasn’t a problem since she has always been after me to lose weight, but convincing neighbors and relatives who believe in increasing their good karma by stuffing another Rasgulla into your mouth became a big problem. I turned down two dinner invitations feigning a stomach ache because it is futile to argue and explain to these people why I will not hog on the coconut cream based prawns, the deep fried potato tikkis, and the four courses of dessert following a five course dinner. Not that I have slimmed down overnight, but I still intended to stick to my decision of not eating rubbish.

So I went to visit my ex-student’s place. I taught her Math for 4 years and though she sucked at Math, we became great friends. Ironically I was the one who told her that Math isn’t everything in life, but as long as she studies it, she should do it well. I go visit my student after 4 years, and aunty (her mom) gets me a huge brown chocolate pastry and a tall glass of chilled iced tea. Poor aunty is familiar with my eating habits four years ago when I used to religiously devour every sweet she put on my plate (I don’t just have A sweet tooth, my entire dentition is sweet !!). Today I had already reached the stage when I was having sugar withdrawal symptoms, a little dizziness in my head and a very irritable temper caused by it. Not that I was starving or dieting, I just decided not to hog on high-calorie, low-nutrient stuff.

My plea of neither touching the chocolate pastry nor the iced tea fell on deaf ears. I promised I was more than happy sipping on a glass of cold water, but she wouldn’t understand. I tried reasoning with her, feigning a stomach ache, but nothing worked. Poor aunty must have been worried what she would offer me instead; maybe she didn’t have too many options. When nothing worked out, I had the most innovative idea. The only problem with that was, well, I can plan a lie beforehand and deliver it well, but when I make up an instant lie, I usually get caught.

“Aunty, please don’t insist. I have been diagnosed with high cholesterol”.

I don’t know why I said it, but it was one of those things you say first and think later. It sounded odd to my ears, high cholesterol at 28?

“Oh dear, sorry about it”. Aunty promptly put back the goodies away.

So we sat in an uncomfortable silence the next few minutes, aunty too shocked to ask me to eat anything and me too scared to speak lest I am caught.

“So how did it happen?”, she asked. “Family history?”

Now something in me refused to malign my impeccable family history. I was already feeling guilty for making up illnesses I do not have.

“Uh, not really. Just a bad American lifestyle. Not eating well and all”.

So the conversation drifted to normal soon. We spoke about this and that.

“Where did you get your tests done?”

I must admit I was totally unprepared for the question that caught me off guard. I was about to say our family doctor’s name in Kolkata, but something in my head was screaming our family doctor is aunty’s brother-in-law too.

“Aa- aa- bbb- bbb….”

Aunty stared at me stammer.

“Bbb—bbb--- Bellevue clinic”

“Which one? In Kolkata?”, she asked.

“No no, the one in Seattle? Bellevue clinic in Seattle”

“Oh.. okay”

“My memory getting bad aunty. These days I forget names so often”, I explained lamely.

The chocolate pastry stared at me from the corner of the room for the next 30 minutes, untouched. I came back later that night and had healthy roti and subzee for dinner. I wonder if aunty ever realized I gave her some instantly concocted lie. Even if she did, I’m sure she would know it was an innocuous, fat fat-free lie.

sunshine

Raj- The Savior

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

Available days: Monday. Tuesday. Thursday. Friday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunshine: What !!!!

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

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

sunshine

A Logophile’s Faux Pas

It has happened to me so many times now. Many of you who know me well enough also know that I read a book, a magazine, or even a pamphlet with a dictionary besides me. Unknown words get me restless, jumpy, and nervy, they keep ringing in my head in various tones and voices till I go check their meanings. This has made me by far one of the slowest readers, barring the time when I have tried to master the Ainu language from northern Japan. The Ainu part of the last sentence was a joke by the way.

So I read this word CANOODLE somewhere when I wasn’t close to a dictionary, or a computer with an internet connection. The word kept ringing in my head, and I remembered it at weird hours, when I was definitely not close to a dictionary or a computer. I finally tried breaking it up etymologically, telling myself that it is probably a kind of noodles. Further, it is possible that the noodle was either sold in cans, or was made the Cantonese style. So I convinced myself that canoodle was a variety of noodles made the Cantonese way and sold in cans………
Till I actually looked up the dictionary.

sunshine

(Role)ing On The Floor Laughing

Some professors have this amazing way of teaching in class. Slideshows, video clips, whatever works. I remember my days in India when a conch-shell bespectacled prof would come and make us write notes for a full two hours till our biceps threatened to fall off. If the prof was especially a woman, she would hold the bunch of brown papers back from the days of Akbar’s rule so close to her bosom that any unsuspecting individual would suspect she was holding confidential FBI reports. Anyway, things are different here, and professors device new methods to ensure that people like me do not doze off in class. Sometime back I was in a class on asbestos and lung cancer, and the prof spent an hour’s class passing samples of asbestos in different forms so that we knew what he was talking about. And no, he did not hold the asbestos samples close to his bosom like the confidential notes in the previous case.

So I am taking this class on the health of mothers and children in developing countries, and we had already spent a few classes looking at the live videos of childbirth. While my fellow mates stared in amazement and excitement, I clenched my hands together, almost on the verge of passing out. Trust me, it might be very touching, but not really exciting to see clips of childbirth, especially when you have a history of passing out every now and then.

This being done, the prof told us that the next class would be spent enacting a skit. There would be a particular maternal health situation and the students will take on different roles to present a short play. Now this was a cool idea, since although we were not very clear about the scripts, we were told the various roles people would have. There would be big officers from the government agencies who are involved in policy making and implementation. There would be renowned doctors and skilled birth attendants. I mean, all these roles would be enacted by different students in the class. So after class, the teaching assistant came up with her list of who was gonna be what. Though it seemed like child play, suddenly I was very excited at the prospect of participating in this play. You see, barring the “scared of bloodbath” part, I have always thought that being a doctor is a cool thing to do in life. So even if not in real life, I could at least act the role of a doctor in the play.

Teaching Assistant (TA): So X, Y, and Z are gonna enact the role of policy makers from the WHO. (X, Y, and Z do a somersault in joy).

A and B will act as representatives of the World Bank (Same reaction, more somersaults ensue).

P, Q, and R will be health workers (I started to wonder when she would tell me about my role. Which by the way I was sure was going to be that of a doctor).

C and D can act as birth attendants.

G and H will be nurses.

K, L and M would be doctors (What !!! I am not a doctor? Then what am I? A sinking feeling started to dawn on me).

Anyone else remaining?

I raised my hand in anticipation. The TA smiled. I started to breathe easy.

TA: Oh yeah, we forgot you (She looked at the list in her hand).

I: So what will I be?

TA: You’ll be the patient.

I: What? What patient?? (I was already disappointed).

TA: A pregnant patient.

I: Ohhh !!!!!! (Suddenly, my world had become very dark).

TA: We are dealing with health issues due to multiple pregnancies here. Developing nations need to know the harmful health effects of producing too many children. You will be the woman on her 5th pregnancy who already has four kids.

Everything had suddenly gone irrelevant for me. Pregnant with the 5th child, of all the roles? I don’t know why, but all I was reminded of was the white rats in the labs that reproduced in litters. If each of our lives was a movie, I am sure everyone was the protagonist, the hero and the heroine in their own lives. I did not care about the “pregnant” silence and my “labored” breaths as I refused to take the bus and walked back home instead. Punning was the last thing on my mind, believe me.

sunshine

Faux Pas.

I don’t know why it always happens to me.

My friend and I had met for dinner after a long long time. He is incidentally the guy who had volunteered to pick me up from the airport the first day I landed here. We were catching up on all the latest happenings in our lives. Since I had met him last, he had graduated from school, and got great job offers from the top places. Instead, he decided to be a faculty at the school and I was intrigued by his reasons. So while we ate our dinner, he explained to me his different options and why he did what he did.

“So congratulations then! It must feel great to be an assistant professor at the age of 30.”

Suddenly, the atmosphere got tensed while he stopped eating and looked at me. I failed to understand if I had said something inappropriate out of the blue. Naturally, I looked confused.

“Errr…. Did I say something wrong?”

He continued to give me that disgusted "ab main tere ko maar dalunga" (I'll kill you now) look while I debated whether I should ask him or just ignore his looks. I was thoroughly confused about the sudden tension in the atmosphere. I mean, we were having a great conversation until now.

Finally, he spoke.

“I am 27.”

sunshine.