The Danger of a Single Story

Somnath bhai is happy to see me after many months. While splitting a green coconut, he asks me multiple times if I no longer live here and why have I stopped visiting him. I have grown so used to the little favors, like how he taps individual coconuts to find the best ones for me, with sweet water and a thin layer of flesh. I am very hungry today. I have had no lunch, and this is all that I am going to get. So I stand there for some time as he splits multiple coconuts, some to drink and some to take home. In between, he tells me that he has spent most of his life in the city. He shares that he is 24 years old and has been married for three years now. I find that a little surprising, since he does not look a day past his teens. I jokingly tell him that but he takes my comment seriously. So he starts browsing his phone to show me pictures of his wife. He shares that his wife is a nurse whose family lives in a nearby city. 

What's your wife's name? I ask him. He smiles sheepishly while showing me her pics but says nothing. I drink some more water while he browses some more. He finds a picture of their wedding card where their names are written. He points to her name. 

Don't you take your wife's name? He nods shyly, telling me that he has never taken her name. It's a sign of love and respect. He is blushing profusely, to my utter surprise. So what do you call her?, I ask. He shares that his niece's name is Aarushi, so he calls his wife Aaroo ki chachi (Aaroo's aunt). He reinstates that till date, he has never called her by her name. 

I remind him that there was a time when he was addicted to playing PUBG on his phone all day. One could steal a few coconuts from his rickshaw and he would not even notice. He nods in agreement and tells me that all that has changed now. He is married and takes his responsibilities seriously. True, I no longer see him on his phone. 

As I walk back reflecting on this dissonance, I am reminded of a beautiful TED Talk about the danger of a single story by the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. All these years, I had pictured Somnath bhai's life based on the little I saw. He sold coconuts in a trolley rickshaw all day, come rain and sun. His clothes were sometimes dirty. He is really thin. Once, he had accidentally cut his hand while splitting coconuts and the memory of all the blood he lost has scarred me more than him. 

I once asked him if I could donate some old tee shirts to him and he readily agreed. He had told me that he suffered a huge loss during COVID-19, and once, the local goons and a competitor coconut seller ganged up against him, beat him up, and damaged his earlier rickshaw, so he had to change spots where he did business. I had always imagined him having an impoverished life, a difficult life full of lacking. And that single story biased me and made it so hard for me to believe that he could have a life of plenty too, that he could have a family and people he loved. That he could get really shy talking about his wife and had values that made him not take her name. Perhaps they went to the riverside on the weekends and hung out. Perhaps they ate falooda and paani puri at the chowk on special occasions. There was a possibility of such endless stories and all of them could be true. I looked at his clothes closely. He wore a smart shirt buttoned up all the way. Maybe his clothes being dirty and stained had been a figment of my imagination too based on that single story I had of him in my mind. 

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Why I am not likely to fly Qatar Airways again

There are mistakes. And there are expensive mistakes. 

The shortest life span of a US-India airplane ticket I bought was 4 hours. Things in my life changed in those 4 hours. I had to cancel my ticket.

Flights from the US usually come with a free cancellation clause for up to 24 hours of initial purchase. I have done that with Emirates and United. You just cancel your ticket online and get a full refund in a few days. No questions asked. This is the first time I was flying Qatar.

Apparently, Qatar Airways works on a different model. There is a button "Hold Ticket for 24 Hours" that I never saw. It could be that I was distracted, stressed, or maybe it was written strategically so that a first-timer who does not know will not notice it. Large business, after all, care about making money. They do not care about customers. Perhaps they design their websites accordingly.

When I cancelled the ticket after 4 hours, the system said that it will refund me the price of the ticket minus $305.00. It seemed odd. I called customer service. Apparently, Qatar Airways does not have a 24-hour customer service either. If you do not call within normal business hours for eastern time zone, congratulations, you have just been screwed. Again, the customer service is not really meant for serving the customer. 

By the time I could have talked to a human the next day, I might have crossed the 24-hour mark. I had to decide quickly. Note that I still had not realized that I have overlooked the "Hold Ticket for 24 Hours" button. How would I? When I had bought that ticket 4 hours ago, I had every intention of making that trip. I was doomed the moment I bought the ticket. Whether I was stuck to the plan or not, my money was stuck there.

If you watch air crash documentaries, it is never one thing gone wrong that brings down an airplane. It is usually a combination of different things, a chain of events gone wrong, often combined with human error. My situation was something like that. 

It took a couple of email exchanges and phone calls the next day to even understand what had happened. I admitted my mistake, told them that I am a first-timer with Qatar, it was a weekend and I could not talk to a customer service agent to understand what was going on. They train their staff well to maintain a robotic voice and keep apologizing for my inconvenience when they are far from being apologetic. For every line I said, they kept apologizing for any inconvenience. 

I wrote to the E-commerce support. I explained what had happened and said that it was my fault. I wrote about four emails in a week. In every email, I admitted to my mistake for not noticing that “Hold Ticket” button. Yet, after a week, I got a vague, impersonal, copy-paste email with words like “we regret to inform you,” “as per policy,” and “we look forward to welcoming you on-board on one of our flights soon.” I wonder if policy is meant for people, or people are meant for policy.

My final reply to them was short. I wrote that I hope this profit of $305.00 will supersede the loss of a customer, and hopefully, they never have to welcome me on-board.

Here was an opportunity for the airline to rise above their policies and make a lasting impression. I even told them that I was willing to buy a new ticket with the correct dates right away, a ticket that would cost me 5-6 times this $305.00 penalty. The math was simple. The intention to help was never there in the first place.

Sheryl Sandberg, in her convocation speech at MIT this year, said something that hit home. To quote her:

“They [the community leaders] understood that the most difficult problems and the greatest opportunities we have are not technical. They are human. In other words, it's not just about technology. It's about people.” [Link]

It’s about people only when the intention is to serve people. Technology forgets. Human beings don’t. My first impression of Qatar Airways will always be my lasting impression.

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Across the Atlanta(ic)

I am in Atlanta, GA right now. I have a MARTA metro card and take the metro to the conference every morning. I am really enjoying the perks of temporarily living in a big city where the metro runs well past midnight. I can hear the metro from where I am staying, and sometimes when I am up and working past midnight, I feel like I have company. In some ways, the little metro card that I purchased for some $20 and carry in my wallet everyday is my temporary connection to this city. 

When I am not busy at the conference, I have taken it upon myself to visit every Bangladeshi restaurant in town. It has something to do with food, but it has a lot more to do with the language. It feels comforting to be chatting with the restaurant people in Bangla while eating rui maach and telapia maach. It is comforting to read the menu card, with the names of the dishes printed in English font in Bangla. I did not even know that there is a dessert called Laal Mohon. And there is something about Poneer Tondoori that Paneer Tandoori does not have.

At Panahar today, there was Robindro Shongeet playing in the background. And at Purnima the other day, the television was playing Bangladeshi news channels showing Sheikh Haseena, looking graceful in a shaari. I am so used to seeing either Trump or Modi on television that this feels like novelty. The hegemonic influence of Bollywood is not lost on me. I have met so many people who think that Bollywood is Indian cinema. Bollywood is only a small subset of Indian cinema.

When I declined bottled water at Purnima and asked for a glass of tap water instead, the owner told me, “নীতিগত ভাবে আপনার সাথে আছি।” (I support you in principle). People here do not say “Goodbye,” “See ya,” or “Take it easy”- they say, “Bhalo thakben.” And it thrills me. People from Bangladesh are way more aware and proud of their linguistic heritage than the yuppie, cosmopolitan crowd of Indian Bengalis (including those living in the US) whom I meet. And I am/was among one of them. I know what Feb 14 is, but I did not know for a long time what Feb 21 is, and the contribution of Bengal to Feb 21. I only came to know of it when I met a few Bengalis in Virginia, originally from Bangladesh, who were celebrating Bhasha Dibosh or International Mother Language Day. One would think that Feb 21 is more significant in my life than Christmas, Thanksgiving or Halloween.

I continue to think of these things on my three-stop metro ride every day. I know that I am tipping way more generously than I do, justifying, “বাঙালি করে খাচ্ছে, খেটে খাচ্ছে, গর্বের ব্যাপার।” I keep meeting people from Dhaka and Sylhet in a different, far corner of the world. And I think of my need to belong to a city, albeit temporarily. Yes, I gave a few research talks in fluent English. But nothing makes me happier than a stranger making small, inconsequential talk, telling me a few lines in my mother tongue, Bangla.

On an unrelated note, I absolutely loved the Parsi food at Botiwaala too. I love food, and since there are only so many breakfasts, lunches and dinners one can eat in a lifetime, I want to eat all that I can eat from my land. This includes the filter coffee and the coconut rava dosai I had yesterday at Madras Mantra.

Life should be all about eating well, giving research talks, and building new experiences in new cities and countries.

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A random day of my life in Kolkata

Somewhere between pre- and post-2014, my perception of Kolkata changed. Pre-2014, I would visit Kolkata from the USA where I drove a car and was used to a certain individualistic lifestyle. Naturally, ma and I used to spend most of our time arguing over what mode of transportation to take, sullying the joys of going out together. I refused to take the slow-moving rickety buses, the dangerously-driven autos, or even the metro. My ma does not believe in taking cabs, classifying all cab-drivers as kidnappers, and we would often stand at the bus stop arguing about this. She later grew wiser, so instead of arguing, she would suspiciously nod and agree that we should indeed take the cab, admitting that buses these days are not reliable anymore. However, as soon as we reached the main road, she would hop on a slowly oncoming bus, shrugging and telling me that no cabs were in sight. She would be standing on the footrest motioning to me by vigorously flailing her hands, "Chole aaye, chole aaye, taxi paabi na." or "Hop on, you won't find a cab." The thing is, she didn't even wait for 5 minutes for a cab to show up. I see her innocent face and I know that I have been tricked. So now I can either stand my ground in which case ma leaves in a bus and I stay where I am, or give in and take the bus. At this point, the conductor joins her too in screaming and asking me to board the bus, "Chole asun didi chole asun." I give up, take the bus, and see a broad grin of victory on ma's face. "Shona meye amar, ma'er katha shunte hoy." "Good girl, you must listen to mommy." I promise never to travel with her again.

Post-2014, I am older and wiser, somewhat. I now live in Germany and do not drive anymore. I haven't even renewed my driver's license. I take the public transportation all the time. I know that it is convenient, environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and the right thing to do. So as I board my flight to Kolkata, I tell myself that I am only taking the public transportation. No more cabs for me. If I want to see interesting people, I must take the metro. My ma has never been prouder.

So one evening, I decide to meet a friend in the opposite end of the city. Kolkata metro is fast, convenient, and connects the city north to south. But taking the metro involves walking for ten minutes to the main road, taking an auto to the station, walking under the bridge and hope that no flying missiles from moving trains of the nature of used cloth diapers or flying excreta land on me, and then taking the metro. The humidity is killing me, my clothes uncomfortably sticking to me. I haven't even bothered to put on makeup. I was wearing a light rain jacket in June even last week when I was in Germany. And now, my sluggish sweat glands are working overtime. I take the metro and luckily find a seat in the reserved "Ladies" seat. I get busy trying to read a third-grade bestseller highly vouched for by my sister that was written by a celebrity-wife who clearly did not know what to do with her time. I am trying to focus on page 2, giving it a fair shot before judging my sister. I have a long way to go. The train stops at the next station, and I see a woman walking fast out of the corner of my eye. "Chepe bosun, chepe bosun," she instructs everyone sternly. I am hearing this phrase after such a long time. It means please squeeze in a bit to make space for me, and is said twice for added emphasis.

The thing is, obesity has significantly risen in the last decade or so with the Americanization of Kolkata. The booming "shopping mall culture" is a long rant for another day. While I am old-school and more used to being invited home and fed home-cooked food, people these days prefer hanging out at malls, walking aimlessly and looking at overpriced stores, taking selfies and partaking in Subways and McDonald's. Imagine flying all the way to Kolkata to watch people overdose on American junk food with gusto while I crave for two tiny shingaras, kochuris, and some jilipis. And I continue to embarrass myself in more ways than one. Recently, when someone asked, “Acropilos jaabi? Have you been to Acropolis?" (a recently opened mall in the southern fringes of the city that I had no idea about), I proudly beamed, "Gechi to. I was there last month, that is where I lost my passport." Before this Kolkata trip, I only knew of one Acropolis, the original one in Greece.

Back to my metro rant. While eight voluptuous women easily fit in a ladies seat 10 years ago, wriggling babies and hanging bags and all, the same space can now seat seven women, and a mosquito or two. The others look at each other clueless, feigning an act of wiggling themselves to fake an act of making space for the lady. But there is hardly any space left to make. Our warrior lady is getting impatient. So she screams louder, not even bothering to mask the underlying threat in her voice with courtesy. The other women feel perturbed now. However, I decide to play cool, and instead of looking up, continue pretending to read this horrible book where the writer talks about some first-world problem of her driver not showing up on time and she having to take an auto rickshaw. There is some action going on right next to me with some elbowing, rubbing sweaty arms, and muttering expletives. The warrior lady has made some space for herself finally, all of 2 inches that can barely have her touching her bum to the seat. As if on cue, the driver slams the brakes, breaking her inertia and making her real angry. So she walks over to me, and in that little space we had for 2 mosquitoes, she seats herself. What it means is that she is half-sitting on my left thigh now. And if that is not enough, her right hand, all bare and damp in her sleeveless blouse, comes and rubs mine. I immediately forget my book and with electrifying speed, try to shrink myself to half my width, almost wincing at my physical proximity with another sweating individual (with a fiery temper). As if traveling in a stuffy, sweaty metro was not enough, I now have a woman on my lap threatening me with her "Chepe boshun bolchi kintu!" while the metro sways at speed and makes me conjure traumatic images of getting a lap dance. I am repulsed beyond imagination. I try to think of my choices, or whatever remains of them. My book is long forgotten. I look at the woman on my lap, half-sitting on me and refusing to budge. I contemplate telling her, “Chepe boshte parbo na” (I cannot squeeze in, sorry and thank you). However, I don't think I have the courage to do this. Meekly, I obey her and jiggle myself some more, and when that does not work, go stand and offer her my seat. 

After 30 minutes of standing in the crowd, my nose precariously pointed at several armpits jutting from sleeveless blouses women love to wear, I get off the train in one piece, my lap still bearing the traumatic memory of the pseudo lap-dance it had recently received. Thanks to learning yoga for one semester in grad school, I had managed to stop breathing for most of my ride. I still have an auto rickshaw to take before I can reach my destination. I am smelling of 50 shades of sweat, and I do not even know which shade is mine. I try to squeeze myself in the right extreme of the backseat of an auto. However, my ordeal is far from over. A family of man, woman, and child come running, push me aside, and grab the entire last seat of the auto before I realize what is happening. The mustachioed man with a baby face is the first one to get in. Wow! There was a time when chivalrous men used to offer the back seat to women while flanking the driver. People have taken gender equity really seriously these days. So carefully arranging my half-flowing clothes, I seat myself by the auto driver, confident about smelling something new now- perhaps hair oil. In the next twenty minutes, the auto driver becomes a reincarnation of Keanu Reeves from Matrix, squeezing his vehicle in the lanes in between speeding buses and cars, zooming through approaching traffic in T-sections, making me sit even tighter to him, much to my dismay. Given a choice between falling of an auto rickshaw on the road or sitting uncomfortably close to stranger and smelling his hair oil, I prefer the hair oil.

I get off at my destination and try to enter the mall. However, I am stopped by two female security guards who deem it proper to pat my boobs with the metal detector before letting me in. From getting a lap dance to giving one to the auto driver to having my assets patted, my friends will never know the huge price I have just paid to commute from point A to point B. Ever since, I feign a heart attack whenever someone asks me to meet them at a mall during peak traffic. If that does not work, I just tell myself that 5 Euros (my bus fare in Germany everyday) is close to 377.87 Indian rupees. So once in a while, when I am not craving for any sort of adventures on the road, I just take the cab.

sunshine

People are talking

Funny first-things people said on hearing about my new job:

1. What? They only pay 9-month salary every year? What kind of a job is this? (Ma)

2. No vacations during Durga Puja? Why not? (Grandma)

3. Thank God my chauffeur will be back in the country. (Close friend and my road trip buddy who hates to drive)

4. You owe me $75-80. I prayed and donated money at every temple in Seattle this past year. My mom did the same in the Chennai temples. (Religious close friend)

5. So you will be working under a professor now?

Me: No, I am the professor. (Friend who does not get it)

6. I collected kitchen utensils for you for a year, hoping that this would bring you back to us. (Hoarder friend; I have no idea what am I going to do with a huge box of utensils now, I didn't even ask for any)

7. I'm so excited you will be back.

Me: You didn't even ask me what job it is.

Oh sorry. Didn't strike me. I'm just so happy you will be back. (Close friend)

8. Good you got a permanent job. Now you can work less and just relax. (Friend who does not get it and cannot differentiate between "tenure-track" and "tenured". Permanent job? Relax?)

9. Just relax in Kolkata for 3 months every year from now and enjoy the mango season. (Ma)

10. The first day I saw you in class 13 years ago wearing dark eyeliner and a green kurta, I knew that you are very smart. (Old and close friend and classmate from Calcutta with amazing memory)

11. Is there a Sephora store nearby? (Sister)

12. Is it a one-year position? (Gentleman with a mysterious sense of humor)

13. Just imagined you wearing a sari, going up to the board and writing with chalk while your students giggle behind you (Childhood friend with a Main-Hoon-Na sense of humor; we used to giggle together back in the days)

14. I'll show you a lovely, 3,000 square feet house. You totally deserve a nice place now. (Local realtor who doesn't get it and is getting no business from me)

15. I'll show up at your place with a tiffin carrier full of idlis, sambar, koottu, and kuzhambu every weekend. (Close friend who will not be entertained henceforth)

16. Now you will not have trouble finding a guy and getting married. You can comfortably settle down. (Concerned person who just doesn't get it)

17. I am coming now. With your dad. For 6 months. No one can stop me anymore. (Ma, who sounded like she is going to reach the US even before I do).

18. You will not be my school principal! (7-year old Baby Kalyani. Since she doesn't understand professor, I told her that I will be her school principal, and the first thing I will do is make it compulsory for all her teachers to learn Bharat Natyam, Bhangra, and Carnatic music)

And the list grows ...............

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Funny things said and heard

Five funny things said and heard during this trip:

M: Are you hiking in Seattle this time?

sunshine: Just from my room on the 2nd floor to the kitchen on the 1st floor at night, and back. This is when I stay up late and work and get very hungry. And you?

M: I am climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on my 50th birthday.

Respect!

At the store, while trying out a poncho that totally hid my hands, I looked at the mirror and remarked to myself a little loudly, "Boy, I so look like Sanjeev Kumar in Sholay."

"What did you say?", screamed a familiar voice in a shrill pitch from the other aisle. It was G’s voice, "Sanjeev Kapoor is making Cholay? Where?"

Being hard of hearing is one of those things I still haven't thought would afflict me or my friends someday. It's all in the package of getting older. And it's definitely coming soon.

One evening, G complimented me on my writing. 

"You write very well. I thoroughly enjoy reading what you write. It's totally not like Jhumpa Lahiri material. It's not poetic and not like a novel. There is no language intricacy. You know, novels are written in a certain way. The story builds up. The reader anticipates about what will happen next. Your writings are so simple, about such basic events. There is nothing to anticipate. Anyone would understand it."

Me: Umm... So what part of your long speech was a compliment? 

G's "compliment" reminded me of what my mom said once. "You write so well, you should author a book. In fact, you write so well that half of the time, I do not even understand what you are writing."

Once in a while, I get into these face-palm moments where I try to say something totally smart-ass, and things backfire, leaving me with no choice but to laugh at my stupidity. 

I meet a friend in Seattle after 6 long years, and go out for dinner with him. We are having a lovely time, catching up after so many years. He asks me more about my work, and so do I.

"So where do you work now?", I ask, genuinely interested.

"Skype", he says.

"Great! Great to meet someone in Seattle who doesn't work for Microsoft!", I say, all confidently. 

His expression was priceless. And so was mine. 

Heard the weirdest mother-daughter conversation:

"Remember, Lord Vishnu is watching you. If you don't drink milk and don't practice music daily, he will go and complain to the tooth fairy."

Who knew Lord Vishnu and the tooth fairy all knew each other?

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Pants down Hands down

The other day while crossing the subway in one of the metro stations, I saw a man peeing 2 feet away from where people walked. Not a single person stopped to complain.

While traveling in a metro, I have found puke on the floor on 3 occasions now. Someone must have overeaten and felt unwell in the stuffed underground metro and have thrown up. While I sympathize with the person, I don’t understand how the person just got off the train and walked away without informing the authorities to ensure it was cleaned up. People made a face, but no one really did anything about it.

But what happened today surpasses everything. I was on the train when I saw a bunch of women and children get in the train. One of the women sat next to me, a toddler in her arms. A few minutes before the train started, much to the horror of everyone, the woman pulled down the child’s pants, instructing the child to pee right inside the metro compartment. The child obliged. Within minutes, there was a pool of water on the floor. The woman looked unperturbed.

People, myself included, watched in horror as the episode unfolded. I felt like retching. Unable to control myself, I confronted the woman. To which she argued about “What was I supposed to do? Get off the train? The child would have peed anyway”. People got some entertainment for the next few minutes, some even smirked and made a face. Worse, a man joined the argument, supporting the woman and alleging how I could behave so insensitively with a child. Still, not another person had spoken up. Finding support in numbers, the woman and the man (a stranger to the woman I think) kept shouting, arguing, and asking for sympathy from other passengers, asking them “How could this woman behave this way with a little child. The child had already done what she had to do, what was my fault in this”.

I haven’t gotten myself into a confrontation with strangers for a while now, and I don’t know what I could have done differently. First, it was a deliberate attempt by the mother, not an “accident” like she kept claiming to get sympathy. And to see something happening and people watching silently, having some drama and fun it in their otherwise boring life, I couldn’t imagine things have come down to this. Was I wrong in raising my voice? Could I be a silent spectator and watch as the woman instructed the child to pee right in the metro compartment? And a man, a rather creepy one indeed, telling others what an insensitive woman I was to misbehave with another woman and her child?

I wish I had taken a cab today. The reason I didn’t is because metro is fast, economic, and environmentally friendly. But is it conducive for everyone to let in people who have no civic sense? And for a society that reacts at the slightest provocation with slogans of “cholbe na cholbe na” (won’t do, won’t do), a city that has seen three bandhs in the last 3 months, for a society that is vocal and opinionated about everything from politics to football, I wonder if the people had lost their voices when I was the only one confronting the woman.

I won’t really conclude by saying something like “India has gone down to the dogs”, or “No improvement can happen in Kolkata”, and I insist you don’t do it either. Perhaps the metros should have public restrooms. Maybe such actions should be reported and heavily fined? Or maybe you could argue, “But what could the poor woman do? She cannot afford diapers, and she could not afford to get off the train”.

I don’t really know. All I can say is, I am deeply disappointed and disturbed.

sunshine

Gratitude with an Attitude

About a year and a half ago, my friend called me while I was working on a health litigation case. The plaintiff was demanding a large compensation from the company who fixed sewage lines after a particular mishap when the restroom commode exploded and shit literally hit the fan, leading to a prolonged fungus contamination and related health effects. My friend was inconsolable; she said she had no money and was a week away from an international trip to India. I had lived the life of a poor graduate student for two years by then. She even offered to carry chocolates for my parents back home.

I wondered why a graduate student needed one month’s salary as a loan. This friend had previously plagiarized my statement of purpose after asking to read it, changing her name and the name of her department and school. She made it to the US and vouched that it was all her effort.  

I sent her a check, never asking her why she was in a financial crisis. People who let go of their pride and asked for a loan must be in dire need for money, and there was no need for me to compound her discomfort by asking for a reason. In return, I got a lot of phone hugs, a promise that my family would get a box of chocolate truffles, and her word that she will return the money as soon as possible.

I waited. And waited. And waited. I am still waiting.

Six months later, I sent her a reminder. She told me what a scumbag her PhD advisor was. The grants she was working on was put on hold and she was living hand-to-mouth.

I also noticed an update on her Facebook album where she and her boyfriend held hands in Florida.

Nine months later, I lost my job. I asked once more for the money. I did not get it back. However, there was a Facebook update a few days later about how excited she was planning a trip to meet her boyfriend in California.

One year later, she said that she will be visiting me in Seattle. I was impressed that she had decided to personally repay the loan. When she arrived, she told me that she wanted to visit Mount Rainier National Park. The money was never mentioned.

After a-year-and-a-half of asking, being unemployed for eight months, and going through her adventurous Facebook tourism updates, all I got were grieving emails about how bad it is to be a poor student. Imagine a poor person telling an unemployed person this. Then arrived the letters with enclosed checks with instructions that I should not deposit the checks since there was not enough money in her bank. Then came another set of letters telling me that I could deposit the checks in instalments. There were another set of checks that were claimed to be Fedexed but never reached me. Finally, I got an email from her.

“Just a quick (quick??) reminder that you can deposit the checks now. I am happy to be able to re-pay your loan and grateful for your help and patience”

The email felt nice till I came to the last sentence.

“Now that you will be a student and I will have a job after graduating, don’t hesitate to ask me if you ever need financial help. Love”.

For someone who stole my statement of purpose, asked me for money and did not repay it despite all the fun Florida/California, a boyfriend and family members in the US for help, and for someone who was helped without any questions asked, the last sentence of the gratitude email was something. I never replied to it.

sunshine

Bars and Barriers of Language

My aunt from Chennai (G’s mom) decided to visit us in Kolkata a few weeks ago. I was ecstatic, given that I’ve always been close to G’s family, her mom, and her daughter (baby Kalyani). There are people you meet in life and develop an instant bonding. This was one such family.

My mother however was a little reluctant because of the language barrier. My mother speaks reasonable English and Hindi, but feels most comfortable communicating in Bengali. Here she even assumed that aunty cannot speak anything other than the language of andre pandre (Tamil). My mother’s worries was based more on the lines of if she would be able to be a good host, how would she communicate with someone who speaks Tamil, if aunty would like Bengali food, etc. It’s a different story that my mother soon discovered for herself how well versed in Bengali aunty was. The moment my mother heard it for herself, they were inseparable buddies, constantly conversing in Bengali. I have never seen two strangers bond so quickly. Language was no longer a barrier, since one of them spoke the language the other understood.

My mother’s reluctance to meet someone she assumed she wouldn’t be able to communicate with got me thinking. How do couples in inter-caste marriages cope? What if neither understands or speaks the other person’s language? Where is the level of comfort then? Are couple okay communicating in a language each understands, but is not necessarily the native language then? Like a Bengali married to a Tamil speaking in English and Hindi for the rest of their lives? What language do their children speak then? All the languages involved, or none? Do they just resort to speaking the comfort languages like English or Hindi?

On similar thoughts, have you ever wondered how babies communicate to the world around them without knowing any of the languages? Without speaking a single word, babies deftly communicate their needs- hunger, anger, sleepiness, pleasure, and more. As baby Kalyani is growing up, she has developed her own special language to communicate with the rest of the world. A little more than 19 months old, with 6 teeth in all, she can tell you all about what she needs with her body language. She will scream “daadan” if she fancies something. So you take her to a shopping mall and she likes a particular dress, toy, even a little boy (yes, I am not kidding), and she will stretch out her hand and scream “Daadan”. She once wanted to hold a newly born and screamed “daadan” while moving towards the baby. We prevented her in time before she leapt at the little one.

These days, baby Kalyani has a special way of communicating that she wants to be taken outside. She will tell you “Bye shikkin” (probably her version of a bye bye trip, or her way of saying bye, see you). So when G is done bathing her and dressing her in her spring dress, smelling of soap and powder with neatly combed hair, she will demand to be taken outside for a drive. I once called G when they had just finished dinner and the little one demanded to be taken for a long drive at 10 pm !!! All I heard was screams of “bye shikkin”. On another occasion, they had barely boarded the train when the little one wanted to be set free so that she could run about inside the train. How successfully she communicates what she desires in life !!!

While some of us hesitate communicating with others from different cultures, not wanting to appear like a fool or be misunderstood for having said something inappropriate, nothing matters to little babies. Communication is instinctive for them, they know they will make their voices heard and their demands catered to, no matter what language people around them understand. Babies will make you understand their language.

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The Others

While growing up, I have witnessed a steady traffic of strangers aka temporary residents in our house. These were the uncles and aunties who came and stayed with us for a couple of days, weeks, maybe months. Frankly, I never did like the unknown faces that lived in the house, ate with us, and laughed with us. Some of them were office colleagues who were trying to find temporary accommodation, some were distant relatives trying to find a new home or job in the city, and some were even more distant relatives who according to me had no business of staying with us. This is one thing about dad, that he never did turn down anyone, never told a no to anyone. Anyone and everyone was welcome to live with us.

More than two decades later, I don’t think I am doing anything different. First, I hosted 2 people who were interning here and happened to be my cousin’s friends. Then I am currently hosting a new student who is starting school, till she finds a place to call home. 3 years ago, someone hosted me, helped me get used to the ways of the new country, and made my adjustment a lesser bother. I try to do the same by hosting someone at my place every year. And what do I get out of it?

Company. Friends. Observing someone at close quarters, seeing how similar and how dissimilar our lives are. I get to talk about so many things, learn so many things from them. It is not quite as having a roommate, it is better. With a roommate, there is a compulsion of staying together, even though you want to tear your hair or beat your head against the wall every time you saw them. You don’t have to be diligent about taking turns cooking. There are no such rules per se. You can still lead your normal life and have temporary company at the end of the day.

So far, I have enjoyed temporarily hosting people at my place. Yes, there were times when I longed for my own space, longed to come home and not see anyone. But the fun of living with someone has outweighed my solitary life cravings. Maybe we all are lonely, and desperately seeking company in whatever form. Who knows?

sunshine

Cold Treatment

March 4, 2009

I find most people’s behavior in the US to be exaggerated and  melodramatic to the extent that it almost becomes obnoxiously comical. Talk about how your stupid kitty gulped down a bunch of carpet fur and got sick, or about how the man you were dating ditched you, and women will grab their chest and make a contorted facial expression, almost sinking to the floor saying “Oooo I am sooo sorry”. I mean, what is there to be sorry about a fat stupid glutton kitty eating fur or about a screwed up man who decided not to waste your time? 

People will get melodramatic for things as trivial as you getting on the wrong bus or your morning alarm not going off. It is nyakamo in its own way- ask any Bengali if you don’t know the word, I couldn’t come up with an apt translation, ooo I am soooo sorry (clenching my chest). 

You must be wondering what pissed me all of a sudden about the mannerisms of people. The move and the weather took a toll on me, not to mention my office colleague who was suspiciously sneezing for a while, and I caught one of the nastiest cold I can remember ever since I came here. It started with a choked voice and relapsed to get back to full-fledged chest congestion, sneezing, and a terrible migraine. While it was still benign last week, I was making myself some tea in the office kitchen while I coughed. This alerted my colleague, who asked me if I was doing fine. Showing her the bunch of Kleenex tissues I was holding, I told her how I thought I might be coming down with cold. 

This woman immediately flung her hand in the air with all her melodrama, made a funny face (only she thought it was funny), and exclaimed- oooo stay away from me, I don’t want to catch it. 

In India, this would be considered condescending. You don’t want to show that you put your interest and well-being before the person who is ill, even if you feel that way. What I am used to hearing when coming with a cold is- ahaare bechaari, kheyal rakhish (poor thing, take care of yourself) and not something to the effect of what she said. I understand that it is infectious, yet the first thing I would get a cold, I would derive great comfort holding my mom’s hand and going to sleep. Here, people would put you in an isolation room, especially if you have just travelled and arrived from India. 

People think India is infested with lice and rats and mosquitoes and viruses. Some believe that there is an Asian version of every disease, which you get when you travel to or from Asia. Ever heard of Asian chicken pox or Asian dermatitis? It is ridiculous people should believe such diseases even exist. So I decided to stay home on sick leave and went back to office only when I was done with most part of the flu. I still made it a point to carry disposable Kleenex tissues and not the Indian-style handkerchief to blow my nose. I was weak, had a terrible headache, and didn’t look that good. Instead of applauding me for not staying home for something as trivial as a flu, the girls in office again started moving their limbs and contorting their faces in a way that it would seem they have been electrocuted. It’s not that I was rubbing shoulders with anyone. I quietly stayed in my room, occasionally going to the kitchen to grab some tea. People dropped by to see how I was doing, and when they saw me sniffle as if a toad was stuck in my nose, acted a false run as if a mad dog was released to bite them in their you-know-where. Ooo--- stay away from me, I don’t want to catch a cold and miss work. That is what they told me. Frustrated, I just continued to work. I hoped they would spare me the melodrama and leave me alone instead of making me feel I had some STD. I wondered which was it that caused me more headache, my flu, or the paranoid melodrama it caused. It seems people have no faith in immunity, or the healing power of the body. 

sunshine.

Supper With Sunshine

Monday mornings are lazy mornings, with the weekend lethargy still suffused into you and the mind not being able to clear up despite consuming galloons of coffee. On a dreary such Monday morning, I switched on my office computer, not expecting a lot of fun during the week ahead. As I punched in my password, I looked far out of the window, hoping for a rainbow, a snowfall, or something remarkable to happen. Talking about remarkableness, the password clicked, and I told myself like I always do – “You’ve got mail”.

Skimming through the email subject lines brought my attention to a certain email that forms the basis of this post. A few lines of introduction about the person, and I was wondering does this guy need feedback about his GRE preparation, or is writing about the list of schools he has selected, and seeks my opinion even though his specialization is something totally different like robotics (I often get such emails)? A few more lines and I was wondering does this guy need a favor from someone big shot I know? An extremely respectful but lengthy email got me thinking while skimming through- “What does this guy want after all?”

Well, it seems that he is a regular reader of my blog, is visiting town for some official work, and wanted to meet up. Meet up fine, but to ensure credibility so that I do not misunderstand his honest efforts as that of someone wanting to make franship, he had the foresight to send me his resume, website, his research interests, picture galleries, and a couple more details. The only things missing were names of references I could call up and verify the existence of the reader. Phew ! So much for a meeting.

My readers know that I have never met a blog reader except that one time when we ended up becoming inseparable buddies, and we proudly continue to do so. Otherwise, I have never met any of my readers in person, not as a rule, but more because no one has asked me to. So influenced by Koffee with Karan, will there be supper with sunshine? Will sunshine agree to meet this reader who is visiting her city? Will the reader treat her as a blog writer, or will be able to see beyond her writings as a human in flesh and blood? Will he come with preconceived notions and half formed expectations, wanting to find such and such thing in the person whose writings he is familiar with? Or can they meet as two individuals, and not as a blogger and a reader?

Time will say.

sunshine

Stereotyping.

A few days back, I was bawling my vocal cords out. I had screwed up. Not my vocal cords but my exams. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise as it happens to me all the time. Not my exams not going well but my bawling out. My friend, in a desperate attempt to stop be from crying, said, “Hush. 26 year olds do not cry”.

This made me cry even louder (one of those days when you get into the mode of crying). Once I was calm after my friend convinced me that my next exam would go well and how the concepts of protein folding and unfolding we so interesting, I wondered- What did he mean 26 year olds do not cry? You can’t cry and express grief just because you are 26? So what do they do anyway, mourn in silence? And then I thought of my reply- “You insensitive men do not understand what we go through”.

26 year old girls do not cry.

You insensitive men do not understand what we go through.

Weren’t both of us stereotyping? It’s not just others who do it. I myself do it all the time. I started to think of these stereotyping comments I have heard or made at people, and boy, I came up with an unending list. Here are a few, in any random order of having said or having heard.

You Indians are so good at math (well, okay, yeah, maybe).

You Bengali women love to gossip and eat fish all day (well, eh? errr? I never ate fish till I left home).

You Southies know not the world beyond Rajni.

What do these people here understand about bonding and human relationships?

You grad students in the US have such an easy life compared to that in India.

You IIM people end up being a money churning machine.

You married women barely understand the pangs of being single.

You single women don’t know how difficult married life is.

You PhD people are like humans with two extra brains.

You Microsoft people are humans with two extra wallets.

You Oriyas are such boring people (okay I didn’t say this, but someone else did, mistaking me to be an Oriya. And I promise, I reprimanded her more for stereotyping Oriya people than for calling me an Oriya).

You ABCDs know nothing about struggle in life.

You women have an easy life- study and then get hitched to an NRI.

You Biology students are so bad at math.

You doctors are suckers for money.

You men are so romantically challenged.

You men…. You women….. You doctors…. You engineers…. You buggers….. You desis…… You fat people…. You white people…. You socialists.... You communists....... the list goes on and on…… Rarely do we realize that each of us is fighting a battle, fighting our own battles and that irrespective of what we are and what we have, no one has had an easy life so far.

sunshine

The Kiss Eaters.

We Bengalis are strange. Social. Gregarious. Food lovers. Corrupt. Morally depraved. People tell me that you cannot mistake a Bengali. Why? Do we wear two extra horns? Do we talk a lot? I don’t know- says a friend. When you see a Bengali, you’ve got to know it is a Bengali. Okay, that was very intuitive. Not that it helped a lot. Often I have been told about half-cooked ideas of Bengali women being very proactive, with huge eyes and dusky complexions and luscious figures. Not that it helped a lot to boost me up. Then they said Bengali men loved to be dominated by the women folk at home and seldom had a mind or a voice of their own at home. This angered me further, because this was stereotyping. Although sometimes, interaction with the men folk in the friend circle had somewhat confirmed this. But then again, it is one thing to live with a notion, and another thing to vocalize it. 

Would you want to marry a Bengali? Asked a non-bengali friend in hush tones at a party. He was expecting a rebuff, a rebuke, like he must have been used to with every Bengali chick now. I looked around me and whispered in equally hushed tones- “No way !!! I have heard they are quite boring !”

And then we had laughed, my laughter borne out of guilt for having such an opinion about my own people. So tell me what Bengali people are like, asked my friend. The ice had been broken long back with the confession of not wanting to marry a Bengali, and the conversation had taken a somewhat humorous tone. I thought hard.

They are complete foodies.

And?

They like to talk a lot.

And?

They make friends everywhere. Strong networking skills, you see.

And?

Umm……… oh yeah. They eat everything.

So you said. They are foodies.

No, not that way. They eat everything.

Everything? My friend looked somewhat amused.

Yeah, everything.

Like what?

Like, they eat food. Everything. Fish. Meat. Eggs. Rice. Dal. Vegetables. Everything.

Oh wow !!!

Yeah, and even Bengali Brahmins are meat eaters. They eat everything, unless they are into Manekaism and animal rights kinda things.

And what else do they eat?

At this point I realized that it would be unfair to carry on the whole conversation as “they”. Who was I talking about? I myself was a Bengali too. So I decided to be politically correct here.

So we eat everything. We eat water. And we eat drinks.

My friend looked confused.

The colloquial Bengali language has no concept of drinking. We eat everything.

Even water?

Even water. We say, jol khabo, which roughly translates to- “I’ll eat water”.

My friend looked amused. What else do you eat?

I thought hard. We eat cigarettes.

Cigarettes? As in crush them and chew them?

Hell no, we smoke cigarettes, but when we say that in Bengali, we again say, cigarette khabo, which means I’ll eat a cigarette.

Really?

Yeah, it goes with cigarettes, beedi, alcohol, everything.

Wow. What anything else you eat?

Umm… that’s pretty much it. I thought hard. No wait, we eat something else.

Yeah?

Umm… I don’t know how to say this, it is kinda embarrassing. 

What else?

Umm…. We eat a kiss..

What? Holy…. My friend started to roll on the floor laughing even before he had completed his words. What the…..

Well, yeah, I squirmed uncomfortably. You see, we say, ami chumu khabo, which roughly translated into English sounds like, “I’ll eat you a kiss”.

With this, I too started to roll on the floor laughing, so funny it sounded. You were right indeed. We Bengali people are the weirdest people. We even eat kisses. I just wonder if this is what makes us the epitomes of romanticists. Good food for thought. 

sunshine

Visit To The Haunted Ground.

The man on the street was playing a heart-wrenchingly sad music on the flute. It was a cold chilly night and the dry wind blew wisps of hair all over my face. It was one of those cold nights that made you cling tightly to whatever dear you have, which wasn’t a lot more than a few winter clothes that didn’t really help much. I didn’t know if the misty eyes were due to the harsh chilly winds or a response to the sad flute music playing beyond. The music reminded you of pain, of loss, of letting go of everything you have dear.

There was quite a crowd of tourists like me all over the place. It was my first visit to New York City, and all day, I had been excitedly taking pictures. These were the places I had seen in movies, on television, in albums of other people, and now I was seeing everything anew. Even after a hundred pics or so, I thought that I could not have enough of the mightiness of the Empire State Building, the majesty of the Statue of Liberty, the liveliness of the Times Square, the serenity of the Staten Island. If there was a model city I wanted to live in, this was probably it. I walked on the streets and thought-“Wow, is this the Wall Street, the hub of so much going on in the world?” I was like a kid finding my way through wonderland, never knowing what fascinated me more.

NYC gave me neck aches in no time. I was craning my neck every time I wanted to see the sky above the buildings. There was very little sky to see anyway. The place wasn’t called one of the most happening places for nothing. The Manhattan skyline was a complex mesh of the tall sky scrapers straight out of a Matrix movie, and one just had to see them to gape in astonishment. The buildings were so tall and there was so little sky to see beyond them that I was actually beginning to wonder if people didn’t feel claustrophobic walking down the streets.

On one hand there were these tall buildings that made viewing the sky almost impossible. And then there was the broad, clear sky dotted with stars. Though one would expect such a thing, it was a different thing altogether to see it. I am talking about the ground zero- the remnants of the place after the 9/11 tragedy. All these years I saw the videos of people jumping out of the WTC in desperation. I read stuff and saw pictures. I watched documentaries and movies. I replayed and watched them again. But nothing, I repeat, nothing compares to what I saw standing right on ground zero. The place was almost fenced with thick material and there were people at a distance who peeped through a tiny orifice in the fencing material. When I crouched to take a look myself, I could not believe that I was witnessing from that 4” by 4” window one of the worst acts of nefariousness mankind has witnessed in recent times. It was different to read about world wars and disasters and movements in history books and to watch movies and documentaries about them. But here I was peeping out of a window in the NY cold watching the area that had witnessed the loss of everything one could value, and withstood it. There were no signs of wreckage, no mangled metal and trapped bodies, no blood or stench of death. The area looked akin to a large construction site with neat cement and concrete and construction workers wearing helmets and safety gear. I tried to imagine what the site must have looked like 6 years back, but my imagination failed me. 

The man was still playing his flute and there were people walking past the spot to catch the train. There were visitors like me, tourists who were taking pictures and were reading the stuff there. There was a list of the people who had lost their lives and given the amount of space the list took, I estimated it to be around 3,000. There were about 3,000 names in front of me, names who meant nothing to me, but names who were people once, who had lives and families, and who had lost their lives on the very spot that I was standing. There was nothing placed deliberately there to attract your sympathy, in fact it was mentioned clearly that no materials were supposed to be distributed or no public speeches were to be made around 25 feet near the place. Yet I saw the names and wondered who they were and what fate had caused them to be there at that particular point that day. My friend later debated that more people died elsewhere, in wars and suffering, and we pay no heed. That is not the point. Here I was standing in that spot, and that is all that mattered to me. I did not care about quantifying how big or how small the loss was. I was standing there like a visitor, like people visit museums and Disneyland, yet it was none. I looked up and saw the biggest stretch of skyline I had seen in New York. They claimed that in the next few years they are going to erect structures and buildings, but that was not the point. I wondered staring at the mangled pieces of construction if the memories of the dead were to reside there forever and to come back and haunt whoever cared to think of them. Life went on, people were busy catching trains and celebrating the holiday and getting on with their life and work. It was good in a way, since life is all about moving on, no matter what. Yet I stood there speechless, transfixed, my vision crystal clear after the tears had wiped the debris off my eyes. I wasn’t really crying, I found out much later on my way back to the train station that my eyes had gone misty. And in that strange moment of realization, I discovered that after spending a holiday taking hundreds of pictures, not once did I remember to take out my camera standing at ground zero. And why would I? It wasn’t a memory I would have loved to take back with me. I could have sent the pictures home, but did it really matter? If you felt the pain and the sadness as much as I did, you would not even remember walking away from there, let alone taking pictures of the place. There were ample pictures on the internet anyway if you googled "Ground Zero" for images. The least you could do was to let the dead rest in peace.

sunshine