Occupied Space.

I was wondering about the concept of space in my life. Not the molecules of hydrogen and helium beyond the exosphere, but the one I occupy at different places, in different ways.

Home, sweet home. For 9 long years, I have lived here. The walls, the paint, the smell of my room seem so familiar. It is strange that all of a sudden, I have started to notice things I would not previously. My room has been my personal space for so long now. This is where I have studied for all my exams. When I was in my final year of school, dad had designed a cupboard for me. It is similar to the ones you would see on the Inside Outside magazines, where when you unlocked it, one of the sides would unfold as the study table. When you were through, you could close it like the door of an oven and lock it up again. Dad had designed it for me to keep my books, and that was perhaps the most special possession I had. Slowly, my books started increasing in size and volume, and dad designed another huge showcase for me (it is of the same height that I am) that covered one full wall of my room. I still remember how I would proudly show it off to my friends, unable to sleep out of excitement. Probably it was after that that I started buying new books and novels with greater fervor.

My room is where I cried in solitude when nobody would understand me. It is where I read those hundreds of novels to kill loneliness. It is where new thoughts and ideas have taken shape. It is where I saw the sunset from. My room houses all the normal things any room would have. Yet somehow, every bit of my space seems so special to me.

The bed, the pillows, the bed sheets, the cartoon wall hanging, the corner where I would hang my weekly planner, the wall clock, the large snap of mine on one of the walls, everything seems to have survived with me for years now. I have a huge collection of weird things. There is a black cardboard box where I have a huge collection of the greeting cards friends would give me. I love to collect earrings. And then, I have a habit of collecting dozens of pencils and pens of different colors. I have a huge collection of seashells of different shapes and sizes and designs. I love to keep all the letters that I get and read them over and over again. I have a few dozen albums filled with snaps of all occasions- our childhood, school, freshers’ parties, farewells, excursions, weddings, and so on. There was a time when I would collect hundreds of audio cassettes. Now, the collection has dwindled and shifted to CDs.

I know that I will be moving out of this place pretty soon. And since it is not possible for me to carry everything, I will have to get rid of a vast chunk of my paraphernalia. This includes all the things I have mentioned, and many more. These are things that I hold dear, these are things with which are associated so many memories. These are the things I have amassed over a period of years. I still remember how I persuaded mom to get me that black sleeveless dress from Metro Plaza. I would touch the particular page on my slam book for months where a former crush had scribbled. Almost every tee shirt I got myself, every dress, every accessory I bought would be the result of saving money and some mad bouts of endless shopping spree. Every thing I possess, every space I occupy, holds so many memories for me.

The particular dining chair I sit on, the window panes in my room, this swivel chair dad got me, this computer keyboard I am typing from, my favorite collection of songs I listen to, everything holds a different memory for me. It is the space that I have occupied for years now. I will soon be alienated from all this. Hopefully in a few months’ time, I will be living in a different country, breathing different molecules of oxygen, touching unfamiliar doors and windows, sitting on unfamiliar chairs, typing on an unfamiliar keyboard. I would soon learn to live without reading the letters that I almost know by heart now, or live without the same things I do now.

I have been touching everything of late, trying to get a feel of things. My wardrobe, my clothes, my books, my study table, my cupboard, even the huge cartoon wall hanging. Soon, all this would be from a different era. I will make newer memories with newer things. Things would soon change and spaces would again be occupied. But the memories associated would remain frozen in an ice of timelessness forever.

I must be feeling these things because this is the first time I would be moving away. I just don’t know.

After all, there are so many other spaces I occupy. Spaces in people's lives. Friends and family.

Speaking about space, there was this favorite bench I had in the classroom where I could sit and pull a prank on others, write instant poetry, all being inconspicuous to the eyes of the teacher. The last time that I had been to college, there was a different batch, a different face sitting on that particular bench. I wonder if that person shares the same sentiments that I have about that place.

And then when I speak of space, I think of the space I have created for myself here in my blogs. There have been so many people I’ve known in these last few months. And even after all these months, I would still type my mail id and wait with bated breath, eager to read the comments I get for each post. Somehow, all these are not just statistics for me, they mean a lot more. I thought the eagerness to read comments would subside and I would soon become lackadaisical. However, that is not the case.

Anyway, I should leave now. Get back to the favorite corner in my room. Touch and feel my prized possessions once again. I need to go through the files and sort out the novels. Maybe I am getting excessively sentimental about things. Or maybe I am just plain tired and exhausted and stressed out. I just don’t know.

sunshine.

In Fond Remembrance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sunshine.

Snippets From A Teacher’s Diary.

Why I Love Parent-Teacher Meets.

The parent teacher meet today heralded the completion of one session. Most of my students (I prefer to call them my kids) have done very well and have been promoted to the next higher class. Even I have been promoted. When I joined here four months back, I was the subject teacher teaching physics, chemistry, and math. I am the class teacher now. And this session onwards, I’d be taking more classes and teaching environmental sciences as well.

When my colleague asked me how has been my experience in a nutshell, I actually did not know what to say. I’ve had mixed feelings about the whole episode. I’ll tell you what does being a class teacher in my school mean. It means I’ll be responsible for some 40 kids, doing some extra donkey-work like taking the attendance everyday, adding up the figures at the end of the month and things like that. This is pretty menial work that requires no creativity or imagination. On top of that, I’ll be held responsible for whatever my kids do henceforth, be it my boys breaking the window panes while playing cricket or my girls proposing to the senior guys. Most kids find History boring (even I used to), so when they do not do the History homework, I’d be blamed. I’ll have to make sure that the desks and the chairs and the classroom remain shipshape and my kids do not whistle or do not throw a single paper rocket in school. If it’s any consolation for them, I already feel like a jailor in charge of innocent victims treated as convicts. You just can’t put a child with a football in a large room and expect him not to kick around. Kids are kids after all. They break windowpanes, whistle, come to school without studying, run around and dirty their shoes, and throw paper rockets at people walking on the roads. It’s wrong on my part to hush them up every time they open their mouth to say a seemingly silly joke. 

I have never enjoyed the parent teacher meets in the entire 14 years of my school life as much as I did today. It’s always different to be on the other side of the table and watch the parents and kids. I have also observed that while among Bengali families, only the moms turn up at the parent-teacher meetings, both parents show up for others.

After the meeting, we were sharing our day’s experiences over pizzas our principal treated us to. "How was your first meeting?", she asked me.

"Ma’am, I think the PT meets should be converted into fathers-teachers meets henceforth. Moms strictly not allowed"- I blurted out in front of more than a dozen teachers.

There was complete silence. Everyone was giving me a stunned look. No one reacted because they did not know how the other person would react. Finally, all of them including our dear principal burst out into relentless laughter. The typical side-aching, dentition-exhibiting, closing your eyes and contorting your face types.

What came next stunned me. Because when she asked me who I thought was the best looking dad, everyone screamed equivocally, almost at the same instant- Sakshi’s dad. And then, everyone gave each other surreptitious looks and guilty smiles and started the laughter round once again. 

At least we teachers agreed on one thing. All of us. Sakshi’s dad.

sunshine.

Maid In India.

I am one of those lucky kids who had never had to stay away from family, but for the occasional visit to cousins during vacations. So I grew up watching the everyday running of household very closely. The one thing I understood from this is- the one person who held the strings to my mother's perpetual happiness and peace of mind was not my dad. Not even my grandparents. It was our home maid, the person who came during particular hours of the day, usually twice a day to help mom with the household work. And we have had our fair share of eccentric and egocentric maids.

As kids, we used to have morning school. By the time we got back at noon, mom's face would always tell us if the maid had turned up that particular day or not. I've seen her irritable and grumpy, shouting and screaming at us for no reason, but she has always gone out of her way to be cordial to the maid.

Wait till you take charge of home. You will realize how important it is to have a good rapport with the maid for your own good- she would say.

Maybe. I've never had much interest in the household duties unless something was specifically assigned to me. Naturally, I wouldn't know.

My earliest memories go back to.... what was her name? Yeah, Laxmi. My mom is one of those I-Forget-Everything types when it comes to safeguarding money and valuables. She keeps bunches of 50 rupees bills tucked under the mattress or beneath the table cover and forgets about it. She is the emotional kind who would be so engrossed in watching a movie that she will start crying even when the hero is asking God- “Yeh kahaan ka insaaf hai?”, and beating up his head on the temple walls. In this process of forcibly upsetting oneself (a kind of masochism according to me), she would keep her earrings or money someplace and forget it. Naturally, Laxmi used it to hone her kleptomaniac ability to such an extent that she soon made a small fortune out of the things she would pick up from here and there. One summer, dad fractured his leg and had to take a month's leave. Now dad is a person who should have been in the FBI. One look at you and he will know what's going on in your mind. Naturally, Laxmi was so much into stealing things from the palatial 2,600 sq.feet home we used to live in that she had to quit once dad stayed at home.

Our next maid turned out to be a not so very maid-ish female. Barely 5 years my senior, she is one person I will remember for my life. We used to have a great time after her work. I used to teach her Bengali while the little bit of Telugu I speak is due to her. She used to hire a cycle and we would go for long rides. I did not know how to ride a cycle back then,and she had made quite some effort in teaching me that. God bless her, she had almost scared a guy who was stalking me when I was in sixth grade. She was almost like an elder sister

Dad got transferred and we shifted. Our new maid was a TV addict. She wanted to have unrestrained hours on the TV. She had cried when Julie had gotten herself pregnant and was being rejected by everyone in Julie. She had punched the bad guys, her fists moving in air when Amitabh Bachchan had beaten up those thugs in Deewar. She would smile coyly whenever hero heroines would kiss in the parks, a huge dahlia flower covering their faces. Thankfully, she left us before the Tip Tip Barsa Paani movie released.

Our next maid one day made it clear that she wanted to have food with us while we dined. The next one had a husband who was blind. And they still managed to have eleven kids. Gandhari would have turned in her grave. She wanted a Benarasi sari during the Pujas every year. Mom had just two of them in her wedding trousseau, and in her entire married life. 

By the time the next one came, my mom got herself a mixer grinder. Previously, it would be the maid doing the excruciating work of grinding the spices. Now, the roles got reversed. The maid used to bring all the stuff needed to be ground from her home and while she did the jhaadu-poncha, mom would grind the masala in the mixer for her.

The next one would change names for every home she worked in. For us, she was Pushpa. For Bose aunty, she was Bhagirathi. For Sen aunty, she was Sarita. Since she would take long leaves without prior notice, this was just to make sure that no one knew what other homes she worked in.

Well, there are numerous incidents that I could write about. There have been so many, and each one was peculiar in her way. Maids have come and left us, but mom has always been so nice to them. She has been rude to us, has screamed at us, but the maids always got the royal treatment.

Our newest one- She is a nice lady. Nice as in she comes at a specific time (you could actually adjust your watch when she comes, she is so timely), finishes off her work in 20 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon and goes away. She is not a habitual leave seeker. She doesn't give us any nonsense about gifting her benarasi sarees or making mom grind spices. Her level of gossiping is also tolerable.

Last week, she came and told us- Please save a number.
Mom- What number?


Maid- My new cell phone number.

With that, she proudly showed me the Nokia set she had got. Incidentally, I too use the same set. She has even used my charger twice. And when she decides not to turn up, she gives us a missed call. 6 months back, I was shocked to see our local vegetable seller with a mobile. 

The advent of technology and the influence of the maid in our daily life are the two things that amaze me constantly.

sunshine.

Empty Boxes.

Everything I dislike comes in the form of empty boxes. Let me explain.

I hate this uncertainty. Most of my friends who’d applied to the US have started getting their accepts or rejects. Not me. Last month, I got an admit from one of the places, though not from one of those highly ranked ones with a bankable funding scenario. Naturally, I am not even considering it. But what about the dozen other places I’d applied to? Most of them claim that they need some 2-4 weeks to review my proposals. But that they have been claiming for the last 10 weeks or so. And I actually sent the stuff more than 2 months prior to the deadline because admissions were supposed to be on a rolling basis. The sooner you applied, the better chances you had. Now, finishing off everything 2 months before the deadline is not a matter of a joke. Not to mention the exorbitant price I had to pay to the Blue Dart courier services, which made so big a dent in my pocket. Mom believes in the “no-news-good-news” principle. She is naive enough to think that since they haven’t sent me a reject either, they must be spending all their weekends and free time going through my seemingly impressive credentials. Not that I’d vouch for it.

So the moment I enter the main gate of our apartment, my eyes are automatically glued to the letterbox for some promisingly fat stamped envelopes. From telephone bills to electricity bills to LIC Policy mails to credit card offers to invitation cards for weddings and funerals to the free pamphlets for catering services, home delivery, and high income job offers working from home, my letter box seems to have it all. I have a weird habit of taking out the contents of the box, deftly using my two fingers without a key. And it’s highly frustrating to use your skills to take out some pamphlets instead offering mehndi and facial at attractive prices from the local beauty parlor. The same goes with my e-mail inbox, which is inundated with blog comments, orkut scraps, personal emails, yahoo group emails, emails conveying the news of admits/rejects of friends, and of course spam mails from unknown Bobs and Richards who want to share their inheritance with me and ask me for my bank information. Not to mention those emails from the grad secretaries stating- “We have received your application which is being reviewed by the department. It will take us 2-4 weeks to get back to you.”

My life is turning out to be one of those huge empty boxes these days. Of course this gives me ample opportunity to write philosophical blog posts that none wants to read. Someone wanted to know my reasons for not replying to blog comments nowadays. It’s nothing but the very fact that I am too tired to even open my mailbox most of these days. And I don’t see much point in sending one week’s stale replies to the comments. Okay, excuses apart, though your comments mean a lot to me (I still compare it with the number of comments Munnu gets), the lack of replies are due to the sole reason that I am emotionally too tired to communicate with people these days. Hopefully this phase is not going to last long. 

Correction work is something else that has a story of its own. With the final exams just over, I have been making and breaking records by correcting papers for some 6-7 hours at a stretch everyday. Try that when you have to read and mark every answer 50 times. 3 subjects, 3 classes, 50 papers in each. I’ve been amazing myself with my resilience. And what are you supposed to do when you have to correct some weird answers like this?-

Q: What kind of a triangle is triangle ABC where angle A is 30 degrees and angle B is 40 degrees?

Ans: This is an impossible triangle, since a triangle should have at least three degrees.

Q: How do you measure the length of an object using a ruler worn at its edges?

Ans: No problem. I can still manage.

Q: How can you prevent the spread of water-borne diseases?

Ans: By not drinking sewage water everyday.

No wonder the empty boxes on their answer scripts are being adorned by zeros and the single digit numbers.

God, please fill up my letterbox and mail inbox with some news I have been looking forward to. I long to be my old self once again.

sunshine.

Where Are Your Teeth?

This is something I love about teaching in a school. I love those Class I – Class II kids running around in school, screaming, fighting with friends over the tazzos or whatever they prefer to call it, and complaining when they can’t handle their irksome friends by shouting- Ma’am, pushing, Ma’am, beating. The moment you enter the class and give them the threatening look, everyone will be quiet. You might want to laugh your gut out, yet you have to maintain the grave and serious facade.

The class monitors are the worst victims. Every time the class is over, they have to collect the copies and carry them over to the teacher’s desk in the staff room. I seriously pity these kids who have to make endless rounds in school everyday carrying the pile of copies high enough to hide their faces. So all you see from a distance is a pair of legs and a pile of copies walking down towards you.
Naah, I don’t make them carry copies. I do that myself. And build my biceps in the process.

We teachers have devised an innovative way to identify the class II kids. Just ask them to smile and you’d see the front four teeth from each jaw missing.

There is this huge weight lifter monitor of class II. He has a bulging paunch and an equally bulging butt, his school belt barely able to hold his tummy in place. He has such soft cheeks that you’d wanna keep pressing them. We call him a weight lifter ‘coz in Annual Functions Day, there was this circus show where he had been the weight lifter. Wearing black boxer shorts and a red baniyan, he was proudly showing off his biceps, white powder in his hands, making a show of trying to lift the heavy weights which were actually made of foam. He surely made a hilarious scene out of it.

Hence we call him the weight lifter. And whenever we spot him, we pinch his cheeks. The poor fellow is unable to ward off the teachers and has to put up with this bit of bullying. And trust me, he thoroughly enjoys all the attention and lionizing.

When he entered the staff room with a pile of books today, one of the teachers immediately grabbed for his cheeks.

What is your name? – DB maintained that feigned authoritative tone in her voice.

Weight lifter- he almost mewed.

Weight lifter? Tell me your real name.

The boy mewed his name softly.

Unable to control the urge anymore, we just burst out laughing. The kid suddenly realized that this was just another innocuous session of bullying and we were merely having fun at his expense. The kid finally grinned.

But DB was not to leave him in peace.

Where are your teeth?

He was tensed again. He mumbled something incoherent.

T-E-E-T-H- DB pointed at her own teeth. Where have they gone?

I don’t know ma’am.

What? You have left it at home? Whhhhhyyyyy? Go get your diary. I will write a complaint.

The boy almost fainted. Not wanting to harass him anymore, we patted his head, hugged him, pulled his cheeks again and let him go. His relief was portrayed by the speed with which he ran towards the protective shelter of his class.

The moment he was gone, all of us burst out laughing. We laughed and laughed till our stitches ached. And then we laughed some more.

Reason?

5 minutes later, the kid came back with his diary, the complaint page open.......

This is why I love kids. Their innocence and simplicity more than anything.

sunshine.

Don’t Question Me About Questions.

Last weekend, I finally finished making all the question paper sets for all the classes I take. I teach Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Final exams will start pretty soon. I finally typed and got the prints of all the question paper sets. As I held them in my hands, I closed my eyes, trying to imagine myself as that omnipotent deity in whose hands lie the future of some 200 students. I know that I am exaggerating, but that is what this post is all about. The way some people have been exaggerating and overestimating my power and considering me omnipotent these days.

With the final exams coming, it seems that suddenly the children and their moms have been galvanized into action. Everyday I have some of those moms meeting me after school and trying to get hints about the questions. Considering my profession and my age (I just turned 24.5 recently), I am considered a kid here. So when the moms had initially seen a kid teaching in higher classes, they made no secrets of their skepticism (The dads were okay about it though). Allow me to digress a bit from the main content of this post. I actually had some of those pain-in-the-ass moms asking me stuff like-

Pehli naukri hai? Isse pehle kahaan padhaya hai? Educational qualification kya hai? Kaun se college se pass kiya hai? Kis year mein (that was to roughly calculate my age)? Aap to teacher lagti hi nahi hain, etc.

I have to deal with such finicky moms. So for the exams, all the necessary instructions have been given to the students. All the chapters are equally important. Numericals in physics are a must. In chemistry, equations have to be balanced. In mathematics, the entire book would be covered. Diagrams are important wherever applicable. Sums have to be with the proper units. Questions can be set from anywhere in the chapter. And so on and so forth.

Yet I have had moms coming and asking me ridiculous things like-

Kahaan se questions dengi? Chapter ke peeche se? Maths mein wahi questions aayenge ya values ghuma fira ke? Experiments padhna padega? Work book se questions aayenge? Please HEAT waala chapter include mat kijiye. Numericals kitne marks ke aayenge? Chapters ke beech mein highlighted portions important hain? Hydrochloric acid ko hydrochloric acid likhna hai ya HCl? Back questions karne se ho jaayega?

And the volley of questions continue. I’ll spare you the details (for my own sanity actually).

But I’ll share an interesting episode. One of the moms actually told me (with the son standing right in front of us, and old enough to understand everything) ..... Madam, mujhe itni tension ho rahi hai final exams ke liye, hormonal imbalance ke liye mere periods irregular ho gaye hain. Please kuch important questions bataa dijiye.

All I could do was stare stupidly at the mom, and the boy. God, couldn’t she have chosen a more apt excuse for her gynecological problems? Or for asking the questions?

I don’t understand what’s the big deal in performing well in the final exam. Just listen to the class properly, study the chapter from A to Z, practice the sums and diagrams, do the numericals, and that’s it. How does it matter whether chapter ke peeche se questions aayenge ya beech mein se? As long as the questions are relevant, how does it matter?

I wouldn’t claim that I've never been stressed during the exams. I would often ponder and wonder what questions would come. But these people have suddenly made a God out of me. If I happen to meet my children in the corridor, I would definitely know the expression in their eyes, urging me to divulge some kind of hints about the question paper. I would explain every sum from the chapter, discuss the type of questions and the expected answers, but would not give a single hint about the actual questions I've set.

So as I held those bunch of question papers in my hands, I tried to imagine how powerful I was and what amount of respect I could be commanding at that point of time.

I don’t understand what is so great about exams? It is just a school final exam. What’s so powerful about these few sheets of paper that I can inspire such awe? Give sleepless nights to so many even sans my age and experience? I wish I knew the answer to this. 

sunshine.

Teeth-ing Troubles- I.

If you are looking for your daily dose of laughter in this post, you’ll be thoroughly disappointed. I am in a lot of pain, and humor is the last thing I can sense now.

It so happened that I hurt my cheeks while having some popcorn. And I totally forgot about it. The next day, I woke up with tremendous toothache. Thinking that it must be the popcorn, I tried to fix things with a toothpick. The problem got worse. By the evening, my entire right jaw, right neck, and my right ear was throbbing with pain. Not to mention the fever. So I went to the doctor for the routine checkup. And then....

It’s very easy to write about funny stuff. But your pain and your insecurities, not so much.

If there is one thing that could turn me to jelly out of fear, it is the sight of blood. Doctors are a special breed of people I genuinely fear. But things you fear the most keep coming back to you again and again. Somehow, I keep having to meet my dentist every six months. I still shiver when I think of the last surgery. I’ve had some of the weirdest encounters with dentists right from age five. I could probably write a dozen posts on that alone. 

Coming to wisdom teeth, I had my first one operated at age eighteen. The dentist was a muscular, hairy man, about 6 feet tall who looked like the devilish version of Kumar Sanu. I still remember the way he had towered over me, blocking the lights from my face, had caught my wrists with his hairy hands and had pinned me down before he mercilessly punched an injection into my gums. I was so shocked by the way he had grabbed me that I could hardly protest. The toothache had seemed nothing compared to the mental trauma I’d felt on being treated that way. Of course he was the doctor and he knew what he was doing. But I never again went back to him, or to a male doctor for that matter.

My new dentist is a lovely looking Punjabi lady with smooth, hairless hands. She is barely a few years older than me and is very sweet. This time, she checked me thoroughly, and after an agonizing scrutiny for about 15 minutes and constantly gurgling and spitting blood, she decided that I needed a tooth extraction.

Me: What? But it was just popcorn.

Naah, the popcorn was in no way responsible, she found no popcorn, it was the wisdom tooth causing the pain and the fever.

Dentist: Get it extracted. Come Sunday evening. I am writing the list of antibiotics and pain killers you must take......

Me: Hey hang on, you mean this Sunday? Four days from now? But I need some time to be mentally prepared. 

Dentist: Girl, I would be with the scalpel and scissors, not you.

And this brought afresh the memories of the last time.

To add insult to the injury, mom tries to pacify me. She says- Toothache is much better than labor pains. What would you do then?

And the dentist says- Ah, with such an irregular set of dentition, problems are sure to arise. But then, you have to pay a price for having a sweet smile.

Very funny.

So Sunday evening it is then. And knowing me, I know that I am gonna worry myself sick the next four days. I am gonna behave badly with friends, am gonna be irritated and restless throughout the day, am gonna cry for no reason, and am gonna get mad at everything and everybody.

And I wonder, what would I do with so much of wisdom? This is the third one.

BTW, I just looked at the prescription and found out another reason why I could never become a doctor. I do not have an illegible handwriting.

To be continued..................

sunshine.

Braggart No.1.

If you want to master the art of bragging, you should meet my kids. Specifically, the second and the third graders.With their innocent faces and smiles, they can even get away with murder. Given their imagination, it doesn't take them much time to come up with ridiculous stories.

A few excerpts from some of the recent conversations I had with them-

X: Ma’am, my dad has a red car.
Y: Ma’am, ma’am, my dad drives a biig Wagon R and an Indica.
Me: (feigning interest) Really?
Z: (almost shaking me from behind) Ma’am, my dad bought me a new car as a birthday gift. Not a toy car but a real big car.
X and Y turn pea-green with envy.

P: Ma’am, my brother was vomiting yesterday.
Q: Ma’am, my uncle had white white things (which I interpret to be foam maybe) coming out of his mouth before he died.
R: Ma’am, yesterday I cut my hands and there was “so many” blood.R showed me his injured hand, but I could only find a tiny spot that might as well have been a mosquito bite.

A: Ma’am, I am going to Bombay for my uncle’s wedding.
B: Ma’am, my dad will take me to foreign in the winter vacation.
Me: Really? How far is foreign?
B: Very far. One hour. You have to take an aeroplane.
D: Ma’am, my dad took me to aeroplane yesterday (whatever that meant!).

J: Ma’am, will you play cricket with me in the picnic?
K: (before I could answer) And football and beyblades with me? I have 2 beyblades.
L: I have 4 beyblades.


M: Ma’am, my dad is a doctor.
N: Ma’am, ma’am, my dad goes to hospital also.
Me: Children, look out of the bus. This is a very big hotel. It is called Taj Bengal.
P: (feigning a blase attitude) I have come here. But I did not like the food.
Q: I also. I also.
Whatever that meant.

Well, there are endless instances of senseless conversations like this. But I have to smile and feign surprise and listen to all that they have to say.

We were in the school bus, going for a picnic. These kids were their usual noisy self, with their my-dad-gave-me-this and my-dad-gave-me-that talk. The bus had just crossed Rabindra Sadan and was on its way to New Alipore when the endless stretches of greenery appeared at my right.

Me: Look children. This is the Calcutta race course.
I was just going to add that they can see the horses running here when a small boy screamed in excitement out of nowhere-

I know this place. My father and my grandfather come here to run in the fields every morning.

sunshine.

The Golden Period.

If there has been a particular time in my life I have been the happiest, this is it. Sometimes, all this seems like a dream. School life ended years ago, taking away with it all the magic. College life was much harder, with competition, weird syllabus, weird questions,  and the inevitable “What Next?”. Same with university.

All this seems to have happened a whole lifetime of suffering ago. A job has changed it all. It has made me realize many a things about myself, and the people around me. People no longer take me for granted. Most importantly, I do not take me for granted any more.

I still think of the day I went for the interview, sitting uncomfortably among others. I kept telling myself that I had nothing to lose. The job has made me realize what is it that I want out of life. For more than being employed and earning, I realized what kind of work made me happy. I am sure working in a call center would earn me much more than I do now. Five of my cousins are already into it. But teaching is something that I immensely enjoy, so much that it seems effortless. The timings and the ambiance suits me fine. Correcting piles of copies can be draining at times. But I plan my questions well.

Also, when you are the youngest teacher, people always look after you. I have started socializing with the other teachers, and I like it. The occasional treats and the parties they throw feels good. I have the advantage of age. Children love teachers who wear bright clothes and teach enthusiastically instead of sitting on a chair and complaining. I discuss everything from Harry Potter to Beyblades with them.

My school gets over by 2 pm. I have all the time to myself after this. Sometimes I go to the library or go visit friends, maybe even go for a movie or lunch. But most of the time, I get back home, shower, and settle with a book till I fall asleep. Sometimes, I write. Unlike earlier, I do not have to burden my brains and study, go for tuition, or prepare notes. Sometimes, I pick up books from Gariahat, College Street, or Wellington market before heading home.

Life could not be better. Ma wakes me up every morning, makes me some coffee, and makes me lunch. The only thing I have to do is to get myself ready. Back home, my steaming hot dinner is always there on the table. The only thing I do is clean my room in the weekends. I can save up my salary and spend it whatever way I want to.

I have friends who are still putting in long hours to prep for the NET exams. I'm not going to write one, I know that. This job I have is a great one-year stint, perfect as a transition job. Hopefully, I will get into a good doctoral program in the US by next year. Until then, I have no responsibilities to cook, pay the bills, care for family, and raise children. The other teachers come here to work. It feels like I come here to picnic. I am saving up my salary for my dreams. And being with the kids at school is a great stress buster. The moment I get in class and start scribbling formula and equations, I forget my worries. I feel certain and more confident about myself. And even if things don’t work out in the US next year, I'll get a B.Ed.

This golden period might not last forever. But the fond memories definitely will. So I am trying to make the most out of it.

Time to get back in the arms of Morpheus. The God of Sleep. Good Night.

sunshine.

A Very Special Feeling.

I got my first salary yesterday. I guess the first things in life are always special. First boy friend, first date, first salary. When I was out of school 6 years back, I started tutoring English to a young girl living close by. The first time I had held those 3 bills of 100 rupees each in my hand, I had felt that I was the richest person on earth. I had the same feeling when I signed the receipt and held my first salary check yesterday. What more, I am a taxpayer now!!

Late at night, I had held the salary envelope this way and that way, swaying it again and again in front of my eyes, just to make sure that all this was true. I have friends and classmates who still haven’t managed to get a job. I feel so fortunate that I did. Dad treated all of us to some great Chinese food in Gariahat. I know I should have treated them, but dad never lets me pay.

Have planned my Christmas vacations. Am taking a week off. Just got my tickets today. Am going Switzerland. Wanna come? Just kidding. Switzerland will have to wait for a while. May be until a few more "first times" happen. Like taking a plane for the first time. 

sunshine.

Annual Function Day.

The last few weeks have been a very different kind of experience for me altogether. Everyday, I get to do a lot of “seemingly unimportant” stuff that I could not have done otherwise. I use the term “seemingly unimportant” because a lot of my so called over-achieving friends think that I am wasting my talents and skills with this job. They had the nerve to tell me a lot of things on my face. Like-

“You are meant for more meaningful jobs”.

“You must be kidding when you say your job is hectic. How can teaching be hectic?”.

“If you had to teach, you should have had a college or university in mind. Why a school?”

“Don’t you have ambition in life? A school teacher at last?”

I will not go into the other senseless remarks I keep hearing. I don’t even feel like explaining anything to anyone. The people who said this must have all studied in a school at some point of time. And my job is no sinecure. For, making a child understand the principles of Newton’s laws can be more difficult than making codes run in plush offices.

Well, I was a Ph.D applicant when I got this job. And I just love it now. I can be with kids all day. This might not be equivalent to participating in board meetings and making business deals, but to me, it means much more than that. I love the way kids wish me with a smile every morning, the way they cling to my sari while complaining about their friends, the way they give me chocolates and pens on their birthdays, the way they tell me- “ma’am, you are very sweet”, even if they don't mean it. I love the shine in their eyes when I play “quiz quiz” with them in the off periods. I love the way they give me their opinions when I ask them about the latest Harry Potter movie. The kids have accepted me as a part of their life. So though I teach in much higher classes, I sneak into other lower classes whenever I can.

But engineers and doctors and managers think that no job is more important than theirs, and their contribution to the society is way more than mine.

Tomorrow is the Annual Function Day. Today, the stage rehearsal was extremely tiring. Now don’t ask me what is so difficult in making a few kids sing and dance in rhythm. The kids are doing a great job. You should see them dressed as puppets and jokers and monkeys. Tomorrow, I am in charge of the green room. And that means trying my hand at another new job. I will have to dress them up and see to it that they have the proper make up. A good 300 kids. Can you imagine that?

Try telling me, what's so great in that?

sunshine.

Screwed Up.

1. Load X Load Arm = Effort X Effort Arm.

Mechanical Advantage = Effort arm/Load arm.

I devoted a good 30 minutes to explain this basic funda about machines to Class VI. And at the end of those 30 minutes, I gave them this simple sum to do.

Effort = 200N, Load = 100N, Load Arm = 25cm, Effort Arm = ?; Mechanical Advantage = ?

28 out of 30 students got a zero. The rest two did it half correct and managed to get a 2.5 out of 5 marks each.

2. What is the sum total of the three angles in a triangle? I randomly picked up three students from Class V, and asked them this, half dreading that they would laugh at me for asking them such an easy question. The three answers are respectively, 30 degree, 70 degree, and 120 degree.

I was shocked beyond expression.

What more, I ask them why cannot a right angled triangle have two 90 degrees? To this, one of them says confidently, “Who said so? They can have two 90 degrees in special cases”.

If I were a student now, I would not even step in this school, forget about studying here. And if I had given such answers in my schools, I would have been thrown out of there.

3. While correcting one of the chemistry copies, I find a CD inside, with Bipasha Basu’s pic on it. As suspected, the CD contains stuff you would not normally see in a sixth grader's collection.


4. My computer is screwed up for the last seven days or so. There are problems that I am unable to interpret. Okay, I know this for sure that the Norton thing has stopped working and the machine is virus infected. Also, the printer cannot be installed for weird reasons. Last Sunday, the printer just stopped taking in papers, and kept on printing lines and lines of coded expletives. And the machine just shuts down on its own and restarts without notice.

We do have a person who is supposed to fix these problems, all the more because we need the computer everyday. And this man has been telling me for the last 5 days, “I am coming first thing tomorrow morning”. And mom is like, don’t be rude to him, he might have been busy somewhere.

5. My ankle swelling is getting worse day by day. I am absolutely clueless about where all this is leading. On top of that, I get this splitting headache ever since I corrected those physics papers.

6. My project guide calls me up to ask me where have I disappeared. Snippets of the conversation-

Where have you disappeared?

Sir, I think I told you I got a job.

Yes, yes, I know, but why do you need a job?

The same reason as you need one, I wanted to say.

Anyway, he spared me a reply, and asked me to come to the lab tomorrow. We need to discuss a few research projects.

But sir, my job? The timings just will not let me work in the lab anymore. I am dog tired by the time I come back.

Just come over after school tomorrow. We will see.

I know what is coming. My weekends and Christmas vacations are gonna be screwed. And I am not even gonna be paid for it. Are the full time scientists there dead? Don’t tell me that a lab as huge as this is banking solely on a freshly graduated student.

7. Snippets of an argument with mom as I come home from work-

So you are not going?

Of course not. I cannot even move my ankles.

Is this your excuse this time? Why do you let us down? You do not attend a single wedding. But the moment you friends make plans to meet, you jump and go. 

I hate these weddings. There is nothing good to do there but sit and stare at others. I am not going. I have been up and working since 5 am.

She left without saying goodbye. Yes, she did give me a nasty look as she left. Intuition tells me that she will not be on speaking terms with me for the next few days.

8. Amidst all this, a small pin pricks my finger while I am arranging a few papers. It was like an ant bite I might not even have noticed. But then, I press my finger hard, and there I see two drops of bright red fluid oozing out. Blood! God, this is the life saving fluid called blood! I am bleeding. The next instant, strange images come to my mind. My head reels. My vision gets blurred and my tummy feels light. I rush to the wash basin and throw up.

From headaches to unruly and dumb students to sarcastic mommy comments to being pressurized by the guide to virus infected computers to objectionable CD contents to the sight of blood, I have had enough for a day. Right now, I just want to go to sleep, and never wake up again.

sunshine.

Role Reversal.

Strange are the ways of life. 5 months back, I was bunking classes big time, and whatever little time I would be in class, I’d sit in the last bench and talk non-stop! 3 months back, I was burning the midnight oil, studying for the exams, and cursing the teachers big time.

And now, I am supposed to control a pack of naughty kids and make sure that they do not talk in class. I have to set questions for them they will not be very happy to answer. How can I ask the kids not to talk? Their senseless chatter should fill up the rooms, don’t you think? It is a crime to shut them up. Yet, thanks to our strict principal who must never have had a childhood, I have to scream at the kids (at least pretend to be angry) to please her. If I were the principal, I would do away with exams, do away with the school uniforms, and never try to stop them from talking or giggling senselessly. It only shows their innocence, something we adults lack completely.

My life has changed drastically the last few days in more ways than one.

The alarm goes off at 4 am everyday. And everyday, I shut it up and go back to sleep. And then, I have to get up to the melody of mom screaming at me, "The day they fire you for being late, you will realize”. Well, my circadian rhythm has still a long way to go for these drastic shifts. I have to take the bus by 6 am everyday. And that means wake up at least at 5. I cannot even dream of touching the cold waters then, let alone take a bath. So these days, I shower after 10 pm, and read a book till I fall asleep by 11.

I can’t bring myself to have food early in the morning. And once I am in school, I just do not have the time. And this means I don’t get to eat these days till say about 2-3 pm, but for the cups of coffee. You bet, my family doc is gonna be rich soon, the way I am aggravating my ulcer.

My school is nothing but an army as far as discipline is concerned. Teachers cannot color their hair (mine is not), and cannot wear jewelry ( I usually do not). But you cannot wear jeans, or skirts, not even the longer ones, or anything that is sleeveless or is not a salwar kameez or a sari. Even a short kurti will not do! And that means 70% of my wardrobe has already become redundant.

It is great to hear “Good morning ma’am” thousand times a day. I was so not very used to this, I’d initially turn around to check if that was me they were wishing.

Last year this time, I was interning at a state government environmental lab for 3 months. Running gas chromatographs. Doing hardcore research. Grim faced scientists running around all day. Not a noise but for the constant drone of sophisticated machines. Speckless labs that reminded you of Robin Cook novels or a Steven Spielberg movie. People talking in hushed tones all day.

But this place is so very different. You will go deaf with the amount of noise children make. I had always fancied teaching in a school and being surrounded with kids all day. But I had never expected it to materialize so soon. It is amazing, how even a “very good” you scribble on someone’s copy can make his day and earn you their toothless smiles. And I just love those “ma’am, he is tickling me, ma’am, he is pushing me” complaints.

Plenty of stories to recount, but it is already past ten, and I should try and get some sleep. Have a long day ahead. Just a funny incident before I sign off.......

I find two boys from the last bench whispering into each other’s ears. Distracted, I roll my eyes and ask in a feigned but stern tone, “What is it so interesting that you boys are discussing in class?”

One of them stands up, guiltily smiles a rather toothless smile, and says, “Ma’am, he is saying you are very cute.”

Well, if you expect me to be harsh to these kids after this, you might as well put a few stones where your heart beats. As for me, I just love the kids, and all the indiscipline, and all the noise that they create! Makes me feel alive.

sunshine.

A New Chapter.

Two weeks back, there was a job interview ad published in the newspaper. I naturally overlooked it. And my sis naturally found it. And my mom was naturally like....... when would you grow up and learn to read the newspaper properly? Why do you just skim through the headlines?

Four days back, they called me for the interview. My sis naturally got all the credit. And my mom naturally started calling up all the relatives, as if I had already got the job!

Two days back, I had the interview. The first job interview of my life. I screwed it big time. Okay, I din do that bad, but I wasn’t that good either. Sitting in a plush air conditioned office among some 25 other candidates, I felt like Shashi Kapoor in Deewar....plain, simple, middle class with loads of qualifications and degrees, yet jobless!

The first thing they told me is.....Oh, you don’t have a teachers training? They then said..... Oh, you don’t have the experience either? When it came to salary discussions, they bargained big time. I was very upset by the time I got back home. They had said they “might” get in touch with me after 4-5 days for a second round of interview. For all the diplomacy, they might as well have told me on my face that I had failed to impress them.

My phone rang the moment I reached home. Surely I must have left my phone or purse in a hurry. Strange, I had both with me.

You have been selected ma’am. Please be there Monday morning, 7-15 am sharp.

Was I imagining things? It was not yet 4-5 days. Did she call up the wrong person? Naturally, I was dumbstruck!

Today was my joining day. My first job. The first time I have signed in the school register as a teacher. For the first time, I was on the other side of the stage for the Children’s Day celebrations. For the first time, I sat in the teachers’ staff room instead of a classroom. And tomorrow, I’ll be teaching classes for the first time.

I am sure a lot many first times are gonna happen for the next few weeks. My mom has already made a list of the places I have to take her out for a treat, not to mention the number of movies I’ll have to take her to.

The job is very well timed. Just when I complete my masters, clear the GRE/TOEFL, finish off with the SOP and recommendation letters, and am just about to parcel everything, and am still wondering, “what next?”, I get the job.

Among the many things about this job, the best thing is that I can be surrounded with kids all day now! I am already looking forward to it.

School starts tomorrow morning 7-20 sharp! A good 1 hour 15 minutes from my home. Someone wake me up at 4 am sharp, please!

sunshine.

My First Baby.

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

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

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

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


sunshine.

I Am Beautifully Challenged.

It is one of the places where I spend the least time and money. It is one of the places that makes me feel as estranged as a student of history would feel in a class of bosons and fermions. No wonder, all I do is stupidly gawk at the people in amazement whenever I go there.

It is a Beauty Parlor.

As far as beauty awareness goes, the world has already entered the jet age while I am still marveling at the usefulness of the bullock cart. We fortunately have a dressing table at home. And every time I try on some make up, my mind gets discombobulated amidst the bottles of creams and lotions and face packs. I would not know one bottle from another. My mom and grand mom and my little sister know a hundred times more than I do.

Okay, I do have a fetish for soaps and shampoos. I wash my face and brush my teeth twice a day. I comb my hair and apply a little bit of liner under the eyes, not to mention some lip gloss. I even know the names of some internationally famous brands. But when it comes down to powders and lotions and mudpacks and lipsticks, I feel as lost as I would probably if I were on the moon.

I was recently at one such place, ready to get a new hair style. Not that the length of my hair would allow much scope for a variety of coiffure. And given the mad rush for the pujas, I could not even make an appointment the first day. So they asked me to come back the next day early in the morning. And here I thought that appointments were made only before meeting the CEOs.

Reluctantly, I went there the next morning. I was made to wait for almost an hour, since a huge crowd already needed to be attended to. So for 60 minutes, I waited there, trying to take in the flurry of activities going on besides me.

Two women as old as my grandma were half lying with some yellow face pack and slices of cucumber on their eyes. And for all the time I stayed, they remained that way, reminding me of Egyptian mummies.

A woman with waist length hair was having something like curd applied to her hair. It is later on that I learnt she was coloring her hair. And she was not coloring it white. It is the usual color of the paste.

In between, a young lady breezed in and asked, “Phesial ka kitna charge?” And her mom asked, “Hair color ka kitna aur henna ka kitna?” (Hair color ka Rs.1,000 and henna ka Rs.250). And just when I thought she was ready to make an about turn and never come back again, she agreed to color her hair. Half an hour later, I saw her sitting on a chair with 3 women attending to her; one at her feet immersed in scented water, revealing hairy calves, one filing her finger nails, and one attending to her hair. The daughter was besides her with the “phesial” stuff. Man, what a sight !

In the meantime, my turn finally came. The lady wrapped me with a dozen plastic sheets and asked me, “Kya karna hai? Hair highlighting? Henna? Facial? Manicure?”

I looked at my neat nails, my simple hands still sans those 8 diamonds, and said, “Just give me a simple, neat hair cut. I do not want the tresses falling on my eyes”.

She looked as if she had seen a ghost. It took her a good 10 minutes to give me what I needed. And all the while, she was like, yeh kijiye na, woh kijiye na, yeh lagaiye na, apne eyebrows thread kijiye na !

For the first time in 24 years, she made me thread my eyebrows. It hurt like hell, probably like the way it did when I broke my leg or had that wisdom tooth pulled out. So much for wisdom! She kept on hurting me, paining me, and she kept on urging me not to move. What did she think, was I a pachyderm not to feel the pain?

So that was 5 more minutes. And this makes it 10+5=15 minutes of grooming up. Just a 15 minutes compared to hours women spend at the beauty parlors. And she charged me some 143 rupees (all taxes included) for a 15 minutes job and an hour’s wait. No hair colors, no mud packs on the face and cucumbers on the eyes. Just a simple hair cut and a painful eyebrow thread.

After looking at me, mom said I looked like my cousin Oishi, a three and a half year old kid.

On my way back, I thought about how the world has progressed while I am still lagging behind. With these thoughts, I fiddled with my purse for some money for the bus fare. And there, I found a paper the lady at the beauty parlor had thrust in my hands with the cash receipt.

“10% discount on all services including bridal make up and hair coloring. Offer valid till 31st December.”

Well, I am not getting married this year. And I am not coloring my hair either. So maybe, I will not need those offers after all.

I rolled those papers into balls and threw them out of the window.

And till date, my eyebrows hurt.

Maybe I am one of those “beautifully challenged” people.

sunshine.

A Day In The Life Of A Metro Commuter.

Welcome to Calcutta Metro Railway. Calcutta Metro Railway aapka swagat karta hai. Kolkata Metro Railway aapnader shagoto janaye.

These are the pre-recorded welcome lines you will hear whenever you take the Kolkata metro from any of the terminal stations.

Specklessly clean paltforms and trains arriving exactly on time is what makes Kolkata metro. It is fast, safe, less time consuming and much more convenient. Spanning a length of about 17 km and 17 stations, you can connect south (Tollygunge) to north (Dum Dum) in just 33 minutes. The maximum permissible speed is 55km/hr and the average speed is about 30km/hr.

No, I am not using this post to advertise Kolkata metro. The Indian Railways still hasn’t paid me for that. This post is meant to delineate particular categories of people I find travelling in metro everyday. The typically funny categories. When you love to study people, you will be amazed to notice how much facial expressions and body language speaks about someone. And even if you have been regularly commuting like me for years, there will always be something new to see every time you take that train.

The Clan Of Milkha Singh.

If I am to direct a remake of the movie Daud or Run, I would cast them. The moment the sliding doors open, they will come jostling for seats and in the process, they will stamp on someone with arthritis, accidentally sit on other people's laps (well, almost) and collide head on with people trying to get down.

And then they are the ones who will come running down the stairs and wave to the motorman, even if the doors have been shut close. From the stairs to the ticket counters to the escalators and then to the train, they will run and collide with a dozen people. Not that they are the really busy people on whose shoulders lies the progress of India. They might be found sleeping in their offices and chatting for hours over cups of coffee. I wonder if they try doing their bit of physical exercise with this running act.

The Unenergetic, Sedentary Types.

Just opposite to the previous category, these are the ones (mainly women) ever in need of that one glass of Bournvita everyday to give them the necessary horsepower. They will sit on seats with legs spread apart and exactly keep a distance of 15cm from the sides. And they will pay no heed to the women who complain, “Shorey boshun”. And then you literally have to push them with your bums to close that 15cm gap.

Platform Mein Timepass

They loiter about in platforms for hours till the blue uniformed men come and drive them away. Some constantly spit pan and throw pan parag wrappers on the railway tracks. They will ask you the time despite the huge digital clock hanging prominently. And every two minutes, they will dangerously lean on the tracks to see if the train is coming.

The Deceptive Types.

These are the most dangerous category of people. For every 10 seconds, she will adjust her saree and rearrange her bag, as if she is just about to get down at the next station. And then she opens her side bag and brings out a hand bag, opens its zip, and all the while lures you into believing that she must be digging for her ticket inside ‘coz she has to get down. And then she brings out a hanky from the deepest recesses of her purse, stylishly wipes off the beads of sweat, careful not to damage her make up, drinks some water, and gives you a look that tells you she knew all the while that you thought she was ready to get off. For all that you know, she gets down at Dum Dum or Tollygunge (the two terminal stations), and leaves you standing and needing your own hanky all the while.

The Sleepyheads.

They do not get to sleep at home, thanks to cantankerous spouses and obstreperous children. So they catch up on all the sleep in the metro, sometimes even standing. And in this process, they invariably fall on other people and irritate them to the extent that people would want to stick a bamboo pole into their nostrils. Well, anything to wake them up. I wonder how they never miss the station they are supposed to get down at.

The Phoney Category.

No, they might not be phoney in the real sense. But all that they do in their metro sojourn is fiddle with their mobile phones, play games, send sms, and play ring tones, totally oblivious to everything happening around them.


“Blessed By Cupid” Types.

They are the oblivious lovebirds you find hidden behind the station pillars and in the vestibules. They will not take a seat even if they could. And you just have to see them trying to defy Newton’s first law of motion. For they would never hold on to the steel hand rails and would love to stumble on each other every time the motorman does the brakes.

The Gynophilous Variety.

Not that this word exists. But splitting it etymologically will give you gynos+philous = lover of women. Needless to say, they are men who prefer standing in front of the ladies seats and gawking at women. They will not mind being jostled by women in a crowded metro. Some of them would always prefer to sit on the ladies seats. And they just will not get up until and unless you stick your fingers into their nose, bend their head upwards, and show them the L-A-D-I-E-S sign printed in bold red. And then they will make a face as if they have done you a favor by vacating the seat, expecting you to be thankful to them for the rest of your life (and I am referring to those young men who do it on purpose).

The Adventurous Escalating Types.

They fear the escalators like anything. But they will never take the stairs. So on a busy morning, you will find them standing in front of the escalators, almost putting their right foot on it but pulling it back at the last moment. This will happen till the other commuters start yelling. And then, one of the braver ones would just hold their hand and drag them up. And in the meantime, I’d be scared shitless, wondering what if they lost balance and toppled over me? Apna to ram ram satya ho jaayega.

And I must not forget to mention those unruly children and jobless adults who while their time moving unnecessarily up and down the escalators while waiting for the train.

The Alices In Wonderlands.

They see the train entering the platform, the doors opening, and just when the doors begin to close, they make some stunts and hop in. And they sit comfortably in the metro while the doors open and then they suddenly jump off their seats and make a headway for the doors. No wonder I have seen office bags being stuck in between doors and slippers left behind on the platform while the owner manages to get into the train at the nick of time.

Ghar Grihasthi Waale Gregarious Behenjis.

They get on the train with trunks and suitcases and a bunch of children. And they will stumble and fall, unable to decide on where to sit. And then there are moms with school going kids who empty the kids’ school bags, take out the copies, discuss homework with the other moms, force their kid to eat the unfinished tiffin, and scream “jashna jashna” (don’t run around) while the kids would run around and punch each other. And they would discuss their mom-in-law and the daily khit pits at home. Not to mention how Qazi Taukeer manages to get junta’s vote every time, the latest updates on Jassi and Armaan, and how the k-bahus always manage to look so prim and proper.

Yeh Seat Sirf Mera Hai.

Think of a seat of 8 where 7 not so thin people are already sitting. So maybe a kid or a pet dog could barely fit in. And then a big, fat lady comes, scans the seats, and demands, “Shore Boshun” (make space for me). The other 7 twist and turn and make some space that will not even accommodate half her ass. Imagine a big fat lady sitting with a tithe of her ass touching the seat, and the rest of it hanging in mid air, cursing the rest 7. Well, anything to get that seat !

sunshine.

The Ten Things To Do This Pujas.

(Not necessarily in any order).
1. To unleash the Bengali in me and to learn to wear a sari the Bengali way.
2. To catch up on all the Bollywood movies I have missed out recently.
3. To finally start cleaning up the mess in my room.
4. To get loads of beauty naps.
5. To read all the books I have been collecting the last 5 years or so, with no time to read.
6. To gawk at all the good looking guys.
7. To promise not to say "no" to sweets for the 5 long days. Never mind if I have to diet for the rest of the year. Ma Durga would never want her children to diet during the pujas.
8. To go find myself that man who will give me those eight diamonds happily.
9. To go pandal hopping and watch lots of puja. I wasn't enthusiastic enough the last year. But this year will be different. So I will hop on to my bed, grab a bowl of pop corn, put on some good local channel like Star Anondo, and watch lots of pujas on the TV with grandma (Naah, you can't really convince me to go pandal hopping amidst all the crowd and commotion).
10. To finally cut down on chatting and blogging those 5 days of pujas.

sunshine.

Something Is In The Air....

I was shaken out of my slumber by the sounds of “ghanta” and “shankh” very early this morning. It was drizzling all night and the cold winds made me long to get back to my covers, cuddle the pillow close, and go back to sleep. As I tried to shake off the last remnants of sleep (I am a very early riser) and to bring my world into focus once again, I remember that Durga Puja is just a week away. Seems Ma Durga and her clan of Gods and Goddesses (and Mahisasura as well) are busy getting spruced up for the pujas.
The whole city seems to have suddenly come to life again. The scent of pujas is in the air. And I see it everywhere. I see it on the faces of people. I see it in the scaffolds of the still incomplete puja pandals. I see it in those craftsmen working diligently to add the final touches of paint on Ma Durga. For pujas is not just a 5 day event when you wear new clothes, gorge in kilos of sweets, and go pandal hopping. It’s emotional, and it's a celebration that starts weeks before and lingers like sweet nostalgia even when it is all over.

Kolkata is a city with a soul. I hardly liked it when I first came to live here 8 years back. But with time, the city grew on me. There is an undeniable magic, an aura that emanates, a feeling of being home that begins to grow on you with time. For a city is not merely impressive buildings and shopping malls and prospering industries. It is essentially the people.

And God knows I still get goosebumps at the sounds of the dhaak. It seems as if my blood rings and my soul sings to the drum beats. And you have to be a pretty insensitive pachyderm not to feel the magic suffusing the air when dhaakis play the dhaak (for the uninitiated, watch Parineeta).

Being a “Probashi Bangali” (one who is not born or brought up in Bengal), Durga Puja wasn’t any different to me than say Christmas, or Eid. I had seen Puja outside Bengal, and it meant all the same to me.... decorative pandals, people in new clothes, cultural functions, and loudspeakers honking with the recent hindi movie songs. So I could never comprehend why people said, “You have to be in Kolkata to get the real feel of the Pujas”.

But I got this real feel when I came to Kolkata. And from then on, I’ve waited each and every year for the pujas to come. Right now, the whole of me is awash with joyous anticipation. There is something in the air that drastically enlivens me. Though there are so many things I am equally scared of.

I am so scared of the Q factor. And these days, I find it everywhere. I see queues in metro station ticket counters, in front of shops, in restaurants, in pandals. I do not see the logic why people would like to stand in queues for hours to buy a pair of shoes or to get into a pandal. And the metro has never been more crowded. It is funny seeing people carrying half a dozen packets of clothes and sweets and what not. And even cranky children screaming out for attention or complaining husbands cannot deter the spirits of the Bengali woman on her shopping spree. I do not see people stinting and scrimping on their shopping budget. Every body seems to be basking in the imperial glory despite the financial strata they belong to.

I see the shops dazzling with lights and people, discount boards hung everywhere, food joints filled to capacity, thousands of people laughing and shopping and eating, the kids dancing and screaming around. I see the passion of the cheerful crowds, the warmth of being together, the joy of celebration, the pride in artistic expression. And I see the bacchanalia everyday, everywhere, on every face, be it a kid or a 70 year old. Every body seems to be thriving on buckets of Bournvita that gives them all the energy and enthusiasm for a celebration of this level. Even the bad weather during the last few years and the low pressure and the constant drizzling and water logged streets and traffic snarls has been unable to dampen the spirits of the Calcuttan.

And then you see love birds exchanging hushed glances and sheepish smiles. So many love relationships are made in the meeting grounds of Maddox Square by the grace of Goddess Durga every year. Never mind whether they make it to the altar or not. Sometimes, an innocuous fling is good enough a change from the dull, drab life, that leaves sweet memories for years to come.

On that note, happy puja.


sunshine.