Love At First Sight.

A year back, I was like any other starry-eyed girl who wanted to step out of home and see the world. And like most families, we grew up knowing that education and doing well in academics is the gateway to seeing the world, meeting new people, and doing something worthwhile. “Porashuna ta bhalo kore korte hobe” was what my professors said, meaning, you have to excel in studies. Hailing from a very ordinary family, that is what I believed too. Unlike my other friends, I did not have relatives in the US I could visit during summer. In fact, the first time I boarded an airplane was during my first trip outside home, to the US. 

My first stopover was at Frankfurt, but I never got out of the airport. Just stuck my nose to the huge glass panes, trying to see what Germany and Europe is life. By the time I reached Los Angeles, it was already dark. The connecting flight was delayed for a few hours, and as I stuck my nose to the glass panes trying to catch a glimpse of the much heard about “America”, all I could see were the tiny lights far away dotting the darkness, and several planes taking off. No landscape, no picturesque places, no tall buildings, no Hollywood, nothing. Even while landing in Seattle, all I saw were the blinking lights of the city. It had been past midnight then.

I neither knew the people who would pick me up from the airport, nor my host. All I knew was that my host lived in some remote godforsaken part of the city. So while the guys drove me from the airport, I had once again buckled myself up in the seat (the concept of seat belts was new, though not totally unheard to me then), and had stuck my nose to the glass windows to catch a glimpse of “America”. But even then, all I had seen were the silhouettes of tall dark buildings, freeways, paths winding in huge half circles, and headlights from the opposite direction. Once I reached my host's home (which I thought looked more like a garden house in the darkness), I was dutifully escorted and shown my room. And while my hosts had drifted off to sleep (it was past midnight), I had lain awake, unable to fall asleep due to a mixture of jet lag and excitement. I hadn’t pranced around the house in fear of stomping on their pet's tail in the darkness. So once again, I had stuck my nose to their window panes, awaiting daylight and trying to catch a glimpse of “America”.

And that I did. In the first few minutes of the morning light, what I saw was the most beautiful and most amazing sight I could ever have envisioned. No tall buildings. No expressways. No shopping malls. This was my first glimpse of the US in daylight. 

Who would believe that it was exactly one year since today? Time flies, huh?

sunshine

Tense-d.

I will never know how I goofed up the way I did. I work in a lab where the guy who helps run the lab does two things-

1. He makes it a point to write down everything, leave little notes and scraps in papers tucked here, there and everywhere.

2. Whatever he writes, the verb is always, ALWAYS, in the past tense.

Now I thought it would be more of a case of amusement than concern. This is the same guy who in his own words, “Ranned away from Vietnam” about 30 years ago, found himself a job, imported a Vietnamese girlfriend, got married, and raised little kids. And all the time while I listened with fascination about his courageous story, my vision transfixed in between the upright strands of his always oiled, porcupine like hair, I imagined what a great feat it must have been to have “ranned” from Vietnam. I mean did he actually run mountains and valleys, like we often hear in movies? Or did he run for his life towards the airport while mom and dad ran after him, hoping to stop him? My second question- despite the amount of oil present on his head at any given point of time, how does his hair remain perfectly at an angle of 85 degrees with his scalp at any given point of time? These are a few things I mean to ask him someday.

However, there you would find little scraps of paper pasted neatly everywhere, with things written that read like the following-

Very expensive instrument. Handled with care.

Whoever stolen, please returned my favorite knife. No questions will asked.

Please use the knife to cutted the food.

Don’t wasted the buffers. Stored them back.

Please contacted me at this number.

I am leaving on a vacation but will returned in two weeks.

You get the point. In a way, it amused me to think of this guy who fled from his homeland to establish himself in an unknown country, and even with his screwed up tenses, managed to have a job and raise his family. Every day I went to the lab, I would look at the familiar notes stuck on the walls of instruments, refrigerators, incubators, etc. I would read them and re-read them in my mind, till I finally knew which note was stuck where.

And then one fine morning in a meeting with my advisor and the other profs, I finally declared my intent to complete deadlines-

“I will go over the rough draft this weekend and will returned them by next week”.

Shit! I knew I had heard of similar sentence constructions before, but where? And then I remembered- Oh shoot ! Will returned by next week?

I don’t think many heard it, but the few who did were looking at me in amusement, asking me silently what my TOEFL scores were. I mean I wish I could convince them that they had just misheard something. I bit my tongue and rolled up the draft papers to give myself an imaginary whack on the head. I’ll have to stop reading those notes he scribbles from now.

By the way, did you know what someone asked me when I arrived in Seattle? Your English is so good, do you have English schools back in India?

I did not know what to say. 

sunshine

My Best Investment This Summer.

It was great to feel the breeze on my face and get my hair flying wildly in all directions after so many years. Just hope that the weather remains warm for some more time now.

sunshine.

Weekends Awaited.

This is the long weekend, the Labor Day holiday on Monday. Now what’s the big deal about an extra day off work? Well, I would ask the same question if I was still in India. What’s the big deal about one extra day of holiday, when we already have so many, thanks to the numerous Gods and Goddesses and the great men of India, their birthdays, death anniversaries, weddings, and if nothing, the bandhs. No more holidays coming up for the next 2 weeks now? Let’s call it a bandh!

One of those many culture shocks I got here was after taking a look at the yearly calendar. Barring weekends and Christmas, I have counted MLK day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, and two days of Thanksgiving. There might be more, but I only know of 6 extra holidays a year. No holidays for Makar Sankranti, Poornima, Karwa Chauth, and Maha Shivratri.

And guess what? My poor granny asked me the other day- Will they give you holidays for Durga puja? 

Most holidays (except July 4) fall on Fridays and Mondays (long weekend!). No holidays on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

This means you slog your butt off Monday through Friday. No midweek potluck parties, driving down to Spokane to meet your best friend, or attending musical concerts in the middle of the week.

Of course as a student, you have those one week breaks between quarters (quarters are 3 months each). But then again, not having classes doesn’t mean work stops. Research continues. Lab work continues (even with greater gusto). The only difference is that you don’t end up frantically searching in your planner the next date for the impending quiz or the exams every now and then.

And when you research in the area I do, most of the times there are no weekends as well. You can take the weekend off if you study political sciences or sociology. But lab animals do not understand holidays. They have to be fed and taken care of and monitored every day. If you plan to study the effect of solvent intoxication on the liver of a rat on day 4, it doesn’t matter whether day 4 is a weekday or not. If you know that a certain insect sheds its shell (ecdysis) between 5-6 in the morning, you have to be there between 5 and 6 am. You just can’t take off and come back after a vacation to Portland. You can momentarily stop its growth by putting it in the temperature controlled incubator for a few hours. But that is only if you need to run to grab some lunch at the nearest food place.

I have never awaited the weekends as eagerly as I do here. Because the work load in the weekends is usually low, and you do not have to start running and getting things done the first thing in the morning. Weekends doesn’t mean I run off to some island. It means I have more time to organize my life, clean my home, cook proper meals, and put my books and papers in some order. Weekends, I take my time and sleep until late. Late being 8 am. 

I am not complaining. I have learnt the art of working my ass off 5 days a week, 12 hours a day, surviving on sandwiches and eating meals in between running errands. There will always be deadlines. It doesn’t matter if you have to stay back in the lab and sleep on the couch. If you have a deadline, you better complete it. Excuses like stomach aches and granny is ill do not work here. Everyone is working very hard. There is no babugiri, government officers idling time, dozing off in offices or playing cards on the computer (Clerks in CU do that). You run with the rest, and try to outrun them. Come Wednesday and I am like- oh, is it just the middle of the week? Come Thursday and I am like- oh, just one more day. And come Friday, I am like- oh man, it is going to be over. Every time it is Friday evening, I return home with the knowledge that there would be two days of peaceful sleep, hearty meals, a walk by the beach, and most importantly, the knowledge that I have survived yet another hectic week.

Welcome to the work culture in the US.

sunshine.

If Not Then What??

Ever wondered what you’d be if you were not who you are? No, I do not mean what would be the alternative career options or alternatives in locales, spouse, significant one, or whatever. You could tell me that if you were not a software engineer working in one of the leading companies in Bangalore today (just let’s say), you’d have taken up medicine and would be a doctor. But no, that is not what I mean. Have you just looked at random people around you and wondered that you could have been this person? Just looked at the woman in the bus and wondered- What if I was not what I was and I was this woman? Or maybe looked at someone and thought- I could never ever be this person. Never with a capital N !

I have been wondering for some time now the hows, whys, and the dynamics of who we are and who we are not. It is a difficult question to answer, deeply philosophical, and yours truly is not going to delve into things so complicated. But more than philosophy, I believe that who we are is only a matter of chance, probability, randomness, and a gamut of other factors like people and circumstances. What if you were not born into the family you were born into, but were born into the neighbor’s family? Would you still be the person you are? Or would you be something akin to the next door neighbor’s kid?

What we are is essentially a meshwork of our genetic framework, surrounded by an even more important network of our ambience, and essentially the environment that we live in and that continuously affects us and shapes us.

When the guy next door failed in his finals, I thought- Gosh, I could never be like him.

When R died due to alcoholism and reckless driving, I thought- Gosh, I could never be like him.

When my friend gave up a lucrative job to marry someone she did not even know, I thought- Gosh, I could never be like her.

When the astronaut I met recently showed me Jupiter and its moons, and told me all about the stars and the planets, I thought- Gosh, he is so smart. I could never be like him.

And then, there were a couple of other people I met that made me think- God, I wish I were like him.

You get the drift, right?

Why is it that we compare our lives in terms of other people’s lives? Why is it that we sometimes want to (or don’t want to) live other people’s lives? It is something I’ve often speculated when my mind just went blank and run out of ideas to think of.

Anyway, coming back to the point, I was wondering who I was if I was not who I was. What if I wasn’t born into the family I was born in? What if I had not come to the US? What if I was not Indian after all?

I wonder if I am beginning to show incipient signs of lunacy.

So the other day I came up with a theory that I called the random theory. I just forgot who I was for a moment and wondered who I could be. And I was surprised because the first thing that came to my mind was- I could have been a homemaker in a family who lived at Ballygunge Place. I don’t know how did the Ballygunge part (or the homemaker part either) came to my mind. Ballygunge by the way is one of the upscale neighborhoods in South Kolkata. The first vision I saw was the tall housing localities near the Ballygunge post office that smells of affluence.

But then, I could have been anyone, and I could have been anywhere. Maybe a hundred times different from who I am or where I am. I might have been a banker in Singapore. I might have been a rancher in Australia. I might have been a rodeo man in Spain. Who knows?

Have you ever randomly wondered about who you would be if you were not what you are?

sunshine.

How Internet Made Me Homeless.

Forgive me if I seem to be babbling about my new home a tad too much. It is almost three times as spacious as my previous home, I have a roommate I am pally with, and the view outside the window is breathtaking. One look outside and all I see is the lush greenery, the bikers biking and the sports enthusiasts jogging. There is no insane noise of the traffic outside. Lots of storage space in every nook and corner of the house. What else could someone like me want?

Yet I have literally been homeless the last few days. To be specific, I do not go home at nights like good children do to cook a decent meal and then to go to bed watching a movie.

Instead, the walls of my lab in the department have been seeing me almost every night now.

I do not claim to be a great researcher, the next best thing on the earth after Einstein. No, I have not been burning the midnight oil either.

The reason is simple. Internet has not yet been set up at my new home !

Now this seemed absurd and ridiculous to my mom, whose voice was coated with the “What's going on? Are you crazy?” suspicion. Welcome to the US mom.

Even a few years ago in India, internet use was restricted to chatting with unknown people called “cool dude 2000” or “friendly hunk from Bombay”. Checking emails came next, but then again, so few people among friends and relatives were net savvy that there were not many people you could expect emails from. This was back in the early 2000s.

Then I was about to graduate, and internet saw a new use for me. I was applying to various schools in the US and soon I was browsing the websites of various institutes. The Google search engine seemed like a magic word for me then, and it was marvelous how putting a simple word like “recipe for chicken curry” got so many results. I remember I would often browse the website for the Indian Armed Forces, marveling at the men and women who made it there. But then, these needs could be easily fulfilled in a couple of hours in the evening, and that is what I usually did every alternate day on my way back from college. The nearest café “Cyber World” soon started to charge a whooping Rs.20/hour after he installed air conditioning. Thus I would walk two bus stops off the route to go to a café that charged Rs.10/hour for a membership, and did not boast of an air conditioner. The walls were damp, only one out of the seven computers had a webcam, and one would usually wait for 30 minutes during peak hours to find a place. We had a computer at home by that time. But it was strictly used for making word documents and excel spreadsheets. The floppy had seemed the only magic window as the link to the world of the internet then. For I would download information, save it on the floppy, and later watch it at home. Someone convinced my dad that getting an internet connection would only make the home computer prone to virus infections. Dad must have thought that it was a real virus and declared, No net at home! The chapter was closed.

Post-masters, I decided to apply to US schools. People who have been on the same track would know that it takes browsing all day on the net to select the schools and garner information till you finally dozed off on the computer. It is not that it is not doable in a cyber café, but it is so very convenient at home. It took me months of convincing dad that I would be browsing for information and not chatting with random “cool dude 2001”s (I was out of the habit of using Yahoo Messenger by that time anyway). He finally consented to take the internet connection at home.

But then again, mom would be very curious about what I did all day in front of the computer, squinting with a notebook on my lap. I was taking online GRE tutorials, finding information about the US schools I would apply to, finding online SOPs to take a look at, and so on. I don’t blame mommy for wondering how would people “in their times” make it to the US without the internet. Even I wondered that.

All this while, neither mom or dad were very net savvy. Dad would check emails and type replies very slowly, make spreadsheets, and that’s about it. Mom was even scared to start the computer.

When I came to the US, the internet life took a very different role. I had a university net id now and I was soon to realize that it was no fancy stuff to mail others in India from and get them wondering- “Wow, you have a net id that says something something dot edu”. My friends from IIT had those ids, and I had been jealous !

Anyway, here people use the internet as a substitute for telephones or personal meetings. Appointments are fixed and rescheduled, profs inform us about classes and their office hours, and every conversation possible happens through the official emails. People sitting side by side would be emailing each other about the orientation dinner they were going to. And it made sense in a way because that way there were records of all the conversations. We did everything online now, saw timetables and course websites, sent emails, browsed text books and e journals, booked air flights, bought laptops and mp3 players, ordered stuff, borrowed books and DVDs from the library, booked library rooms for group discussions, etc. Everything you could think of was being done online.

I was calling less frequently and emailing my folks more. I was sending my pics. I was chatting with them using Gtalk (by this time, my mom had transformed herself to a super mom who could start the computer and do simple stuff like send emails or connect to the webcam on messenger). I was showing my folks my home using the webcam. She would see the new dress I bought or the new drapes I had picked at a garage sale. Everything was being done online now.

Sometimes I wonder if research could be possible without the net. I was looking for papers, corresponding with the profs, digging up data and statistics, all with a click. Unlike 5 years ago when emails were checked once in seven days, I was checking emails once in 10 minutes. BBQ party, what to wear? Come and pick me at 8:30. Get some pineapple ice cream with you. All these one-line instructions were being sent through emails checked in between work. No, I would not say it was being checked in between work in a hushed hushed way, away from the glances of others. Checking emails and replying to them was a part of work now.

When I shifted to my new home, I almost suffered from acute depression the one day I spent without the internet. The internet guy would not be available to set up things for the next 7 days now. Seven days without uninterrupted internet? Enough.

Every night after dinner, I pack my bags, toothbrush and all, and come to the department. I browse through the internet for as long as I can, the earphones plugged in my ears while I happily listen to music. Sometimes when I am in no mood for work, I YouTube. Watch a movie. Read blogs. Write blogs. If nothing works, I read scraps. And then I sleep on the couch in the department. If I crave for some caffeine at the middle of work, I go get myself a coke or a bar of chocolate from the wending machine. And while I walk through the empty corridors at night, my hands thrust in my pockets, my footsteps echoing, I tell myself- Wow, it is cool to be a grad student here. There are no safety issues as long as you are inside the building. You have the wending machine. You have the couch. You have the microwave to heat up stuff. And most importantly, you have the internet.

Unless you had a loved one waiting at home, why would you want to go home?

sunshine.

“Studies” Are Fun.

And let me tell you that I am not referring to the mundane, monotonous chores of mugging up lessons and puking them on the exam sheets, whether or not you can make heads and tails out of them. I am referring to the various studies that go on in the different research labs on campus that recruit student subjects.

So what’s the deal?

As an international student, I am not allowed to work for more than 20 hours a week to earn my stipend. However, summer is the only time that the rules go lax. For not only am I allowed to work for double that time and earn whatever extra money I can (provided I can find other part-time jobs on campus), I am also allowed to participate in as many studies as I can. But of course all this has to happen within the campus.

So how to go about searching for studies to participate in?

Look for flyers wherever you can. You will find them in elevators, in departmental bulletin boards, in restrooms, in corridors, in offices, and in other unexpected places. If the departmental bulletin boards do not suffice, go to the other departments and visit their bulletin boards. You will find flyers with detailed information. At the fag end of the paper, there would be the contact telephone numbers and/or the contact email ids printed multiple times and cut into thin strips. You can conveniently tear out a strip like you tear those coupons, and you are set !!!!

So what studies am I talking about?

You wouldn’t believe the number of studies one could participate in. Of course the list is not exhaustive, but here is a little description about the various studies I have come across and participated/tried to participate in-

Computer keyboard study- in a nutshell, this was an ergonomics study where they were interested to see what design of keyboards make people type faster. I am not allowed to give out the details, but let it suffice to say that first I was given the normal keyboard and asked to type for certain lengths of time while electric pulses monitored the movement of my wrist. Then I was asked to type in a totally different (and cool) looking keyboard and was asked to type using that. My words per minute, frequency of spelling typos, and other hand movements were monitored. What else, I was given a check at the end of the study.

Garlic study- they try to see the usage of garlic in the cure for cancer. Of course you do not have to be a cancer patient to participate in this. For multiple sessions, you eat the food they give you, and then they do the blood draws and ask you to fill up a questionnaire. It lasts for about 8-10 weeks and you get monetary compensation depending on how far you have gone with them to complete the study. So it is not just the money, the food is free too !!!

Beverage study- similar to the garlic study, they would give you food, and then certain beverages, and monitor your rate of hunger.

Dental Study- they test you for sensitive teeth. Let us skip the procedure, but let it suffice to say that they paid me some $150.00 for a non-invasive (no scissors, scalpels, cuts, and stitches), 2 hour study.

Hearing study- what is the range of lowest frequency of sounds babies can hear? How different is it from the range in which adults can hear? They take you to a sound-proof recording room and you raise your hand when you hear a certain beat. The beat gets softer with time. What more, you get a check at the end of it.

Mental study- ever suffered a mental trauma? Ever been abused by someone close and elderly, and still feel traumatized? How do your sleep patterns change when you think of it? Does your heart beat faster? Is there more adrenaline flowing when you think of it? You get the drift, right?

And then, there are others, like the diabetes study, the arthritis study, the baby study, the elderly study, the vision study, the smell recognition study, and so on, and so forth.

The incentives?

Most studies pay a handsome amount for your time. And then you get the satisfaction of knowing that you have helped further the research interests of the university. Your feedback is valuable in helping companies design better products. These companies could be software companies, drug manufacturing companies, or any other company selling anything from electrical equipments to teeth braces. Lastly, you get to know interesting information about yourself, like how well you can identify soft sounds (compared to the others), how fast or slow you type on a new keyboard, how sensitive your teeth are to certain substances and certain temperatures, is there fluid accumulation in your ears, etc.

So what do we do?

I and G vigilantly remain on the lookout for such information. And when we bump into something that looks interesting, we call each other excitedly.

“Hey did you see the study they are doing on people who feel suicidal?”

“Err…. But I do not feel suicidal”…

“Well…. Then go for this hunger study. Am sure you will be a perfect fit”.

“Great. Give me the phone number. And by the way, they are recruiting human subjects for a heart rate monitoring study in the physiology department”….

And this way, we glean and exchange information, call up the recruiters, participate in these studies, and make good pocket money. I tell you, the ways of this country will never cease to amaze me. For now you know, even studies are fun !!!!!!!

sunshine.

My Neighbor Again.

This time, he is out of the city visiting his newborn and his girlfriend. Hence I send him an email.

To: neighbor.

From: sunshine.

Dear neighbor,

I am shifting and I need to know what I should do with your laptop and mails. If you want, I can leave them with someone next door, or I can take them with me for the time being. Do let me know as soon as you can.

Seven days later, this was the reply I got.

To: sunshine.

From: neighbor.

Dear sunshine,

Sorry for delaying to respond. I just come back from vacation. By the way, CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ENGAGEMENT !!that's a great news!. If you don't mind, I would like to leave my laptop and mails with you. I will tell when I go back to home.

.

Engagement? I did not think I had mentioned to him anywhere in the mail that I was getting engaged. I mean I did not even know that I was engaged. All I asked him was to tell me what should I do with his laptop. Much as I tried, I was unable to make a connection between the two. I scratched my head and tried looking for a hidden meaning, perhaps an encrypted message. Maybe he was trying to tell me something important and all I had to do was decode the arrangement of the alphabets. Where was he vacationing? Did he land up in the underworld? I scratched my head and chin until the people around me in the bus suspected that I was suffering from dandruff problems and wasn't taking a bath regularly. Congratulations on being engaged? It was like telling him, I like to eat red apples, and he replying back, congratulations on being pregnant. There could still be some relation between red apples and pregnancy, but what had my moving out got to do with being engaged?

.

It took the great brains of G to finally decipher the not-so-encrypted-and-yet-so-subtle message hidden in that single line. Like the starting lines of Austen's Pride and Prejudice (It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife), when a single girl in the city moves out, it is a universally acknowledged truth that she has acquired a boy friend and is moving in with him!

.

This logic explained a lot. Especially why he had taken a break from the school for 3 months and was diligently performing the duties of fatherhood. 

.

Oh, how it breaks my heart to clear his misconception now!

.

sunshine.

Nuggets In The Alleyways.

One of the many many things I like about this place is that you can lead a not-so-penurious student life without having to spend much. Our department is a huge seven storied building that runs almost across two bus stops. That means if u get down on a bus stop, get into the building, and start walking parallel to the road, then by the time you are at the other end of the building, you would have covered two bus stops. It took me almost 6 months to master the basic layout of the building, for it is further divided into wings from A through T. Longer buildings only mean longer corridors. And if you start walking through the corridor on any randomly chosen day, making the list of things people put there to give away for free, I am confident that you will end up with everything you thought you did not have.

It works like this. When a department or a lab does not need something anymore (which happens quite often), they just place it by the side of the corridor and paste a “FREE” sign. Sometimes, they needn’t even put that sign. A department gets extra money in its budget, and it decides to get rid of everything it has. And when I talk about free things, I do not mean that they are torn or tattered or not in a position to be used. These are things in absolutely perfect and usable condition.

While I am packing my bags these days, I am amazed at the innumerable number of things I have gleaned so far by just picking up things here and there in the corridors. Here, let me show you.

See this basket and table lamp that works perfectly fine. I had found it lying outside one of the departments. And see this jumbo-sized executive chair. For a long time, I could not decide which chair should I take.

And then you will find empty hard covered files, office supplies, and what not. I once collected a pack of 100 unused binder clips. This came with about 200 folders of different colors. There was once a coffee maker which I did not take. You can find anything from print papers to discarded tables, executive chairs, lampshades, picture frames, latex gloves, file holding racks, unused copies and pens, staplers, wicker baskets, computer accessories like keyboards and mouse, and anything you can name.

And then comes the best part- food. Did not have the time to cook and bring food? Your heart is craving for an afternoon snack? People here like to share things with others. So they simply get a pack of something and leave it outside the department door. So the next time you take a stroll, don’t be surprised to see a huge coconut and chocolate cake with a knife on it. Initially I used to wonder if these stuff are edible. After skepticism came the embarrassment of someone catching you stealing a big chunk of the cake. But this is not called stealing. People want to share food with you, even if they do not know you. This heightens especially during Thanksgiving and Christmas. So you can find cakes and cookies, salted peanuts and cashews, pretzels, cans of coke, cup cakes, pizzas, bottles of juice, chocolates and candies, and anything you can imagine.

What more, all the dozens of packing boxes I needed for packing came all from me and G exploring and hunting the corridors. And all this came without the guilt of feeling like a rag picker. For me, it is more like a treasure hunt where you can find anything depending on your luck. From food to office supplies to tables, swivel chairs, you just name it.

Who knows what more will I see as I keep exploring the corridors this way.

sunshine.

Hunting vs. Renting.

What happens when you go crazy searching for a place, get a reasonably good deal, and the fellow insists you move in the next one week, else the place is gonna go away? You realize that the lease to your current place is yet to be over, and hence you decide to sub-lease it.

This is easier said than done. First, an ad needs to be put on Craigslist. Browsing through ads is different, putting one of your own is different. For you have to be that salesperson, trying to market the best of the features, trying to give an idea that if you didn’t end up getting this place, thy life is a waste !

So I put up a decent ad, hoping that someone would turn up in the next one week or so. Ever since, my phone has been ringing and ringing till I was afraid I would exhaust my free minutes for the month in the first week only (my phone company offers me 600 minutes of free talk time per month within the US, Monday through Friday, 7 AM to 9 PM. The other times are free as it is). On an average, there were 30 phone calls and 60 emails each day for three whole days, and about 10 would eventually turn up every day. And then I realized the plight of sales persons, who must go crazy repeating the same things about their products over and over again. It was a harrowing experience letting people in your place. But then, sunshine cannot help but notice the hilariousness in every situation. These are what some of the email looked like-

“Hi, I will give you a $100 extra if you reserve the place for me now itself"

“Hi, new to your contry, bad English no understand, please please please want your room” 

“Hi, I am new to the city and I don’t know my way around. Why don’t you come and pick me up from my address?"

“Hey, I am tired of living with this woman who lives with her boyfriend and five children, one of her, three of the boyfriend’s and one together. Please rescue me from this place”

And so on and so forth….

If the emails were so interesting, you could imagine how interesting the people would be. Some would jump around the place like monkeys, immediately pull off the blinds, look for accumulated dust at every nook and corner and give me a disapproving look, dig their head inside the washing machine to see how large it was, knock at every furniture to make sure they were made of solid wood, sit and jump on the bed to assess the mattress quality, turn on and off every switch and every faucet in the restroom, measure the room with a measuring tape, ask if people do drinks and drugs on the floor, walk around as if the place belonged to them, peep into every drawer, every cabinet, every nook and corner while I would pray that no unmentionable pieces of my clothing would fall out, and flush the toilet to make sure that it works properly. 

The more decent ones would be shy to explore a girl’s room, and would be uncomfortable even asking questions like who are the other people who live on the floor. Some come in groups and keep on whispering while some look here and there, see the kitchen and the restroom, and then go back to the main room to see the view outside and this cycle keeps repeating till you pick up your phone to make a false call and exclaim, “Oh honey, you are parked outside for dinner? Give me a moment and I’ll be right there”. Sometimes it feels like a breach of privacy letting others into your space, and sometimes when you look at a person and immediately dislike him, you wonder why you should let him live in the same place that you did. People who do not want the place for any reason will always tell you, “I will let you know later”, while people who like it will immediately want to do the paperwork. It is interesting to observe people and the way they act differently.

Anyway, lots of interesting experiences to share henceforth, for now starts the arduous task of packing. More later.

sunshine.

Orkut- Bringing Lost Ones Together.

Orkut has had a profound impact on everyone’s life, and this is clear from the amount of writing I do about it. Orkut got me back in touch with many of my school mates. These are not the friends I had last met during the board exams. These are my friends from the nursery to the pre-puberty era before I had changed cities. Got hold of one, and got hold of most of the others through him.

The first thing that came as a shock to me is the way they look now. The boys are men, and the girls are women. Even their baby brothers and sisters who were in kindergarten are young men and women now. Browsing through the pics in their albums is a journey down the memory lane. 13 years of no contact, and I suddenly see that though their faces look still the same, they have grown mustaches and beards, and are taller and broader now. It feels strange to see so many girls married and with their babies the size of what I must have seen them first. And this brings back hilarious memories back from my kindergarten days. For I have seen these prim and proper men and women 23 years back, their noses running and hair oily while they cried the whole day. I even remember what their moms and dads looked like. There was this guy from my first standard who was so prone to skin disease that no one would want to sit near him. Yet I saw his recent pic, all brawny and on a bike, with his status “committed” (I wonder if he still has bad skin). There was this topper from my class who was all lanky a good 4” shorter than I was. Yet he is a 6’2” tall, muscular man now. When I talked to him over the telephone after so many years, I was so thrilled to hear his deep husky voice, a far cry from his girly voice in school. 

The guy who was first caught writing a love letter to some heartthrob in the fifth grade is a married man now. The guy whose dad would drop him in a rusty Luna drives a car now. Most of them are either in Bangalore or in the US. Most women are married now (a further reminder of my misspent youth, ha ha) with kids, while men are no exception. I have seen these people crying, fighting, making a queue while going to the restroom, peeing in their pants, cheating in the exams, standing on the bench or kneeling down with hands crossed around their ears, digging their noses, wearing half trousers, pinching and boxing others, eating their food in an uncouth, messy way, flinging chalk pieces and paper rockets at others, getting their ears boxed by the teachers, writing horribly funny answers in the exams that the teacher would later read out, and failing and repeating classes. It is so surprising that even after so many years, I remember their handwritings vividly, and so many incidents otherwise eventually forgotten. I am amazed at the sheer number of details these guys remember of me. During conversations, horror stories of our teachers often come up. “Remember the dance teacher who used to target everyone’s butt with that long, thin cane of his?” “Remember the language teacher who used to scream?” “Remember the teacher from class 1 who used to box everyone’s ears?” I still remember the signatures of most of the teachers, and how delighted we would be to earn “good” and “excellent” remarks from them. Most of the teachers have retired or have shifted elsewhere now. Some local friends even say that the school building has been remodeled, repainted, and looks nothing like what it used to then. But for me, it is still the same school, the same teachers who are a decade and a half older than what I remember of them, and my friends in half trousers and frilly frocks. It is amazing how I remember different people for different reasons. A certain guy used to wear a red sweater that had two holes on the right side. A certain guy would always have a running nose. A certain guy would always sleep in class. A certain girl had lice-infested hair. A certain guy always wrote his name in reverse, reminding me of ohm and mho. Strangely, I have their images in my mind still wearing the school uniform and the house badges.

The guy who had failed in math runs his business now. I wonder if he would find it weird when I met him. For we know these little secrets of each other, like who had bitched about whom, who had called whom a donkey, and who had pinched whom. My friend was so surprised when I told him that I remembered him bringing samosa and sweets for tiffin everyday from Calcutta Sweets, which he would eventually feed the crows during the lunch breaks. Even he did not remember that.

Well, such is the journey down the memory lane, and the bouts of nostalgia. For a moment I close my eyes and I can see those same faces, the same classrooms, the same teachers, the same books and the same chapters, and the same commotion in school. And then I open my eyes and everyone is grown up, scattered, leading their own lives in different parts of the world. And I keep wondering that like me, do they ever think of the bygone days, the fun and frolic, the naughtiness and the fun of being a kid in school?

sunshine.

Faux Pas.

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

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

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

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

“Errr…. Did I say something wrong?”

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

Finally, he spoke.

“I am 27.”

sunshine.

Project “Ghar Dhoondo”

Sometimes I think that I just need the excitement of something new and eventful happening to keep me going. The excitement of project “Insect Feeding” hadn’t waned when I thought- “Let’s do something exciting again. Let me find a new place for myself”.

Though there was still some time for my lease to get over, this is particularly the time when the new session is about to start, new kids have, or will be swamping the campus, and every possible house in the city goes “For Rent”. Over dinner, me and my friend decided that we could give it a try and find an apartment to share. The logistics, budget, location preference and other stuff was soon decided (which was a surprise because we both agreed on the same things). However, she made it clear that she is not much into apartment hunting and with her job, she wouldn’t be able to devote much time to project “Ghar Dhoondo”. In other words, she gave me the complete carte blanche to go look at places, bargain, decide on deals, and then let her know. Good enough.

Now there are different ways in which one can find a place, and I think I did the thing in 3 major steps.

Step-1: Just Go Look !

Take a bus, or walk on foot to all the locations you want to stay in, look for “For Rent” signs, note down the location and the number, and then give them a call, make an appointment, and go see the place.

Easier said than done. I started with walking on foot around my area on a sunny Saturday morning, walking through as many streets and avenues as I could, jotting down every location, the corresponding phone number, and the color of the house (or any other identifying character). This done, I came home, put all the data into a spreadsheet, and started to call the people one by one.

Some answered, though most did not. This added a new column to the spreadsheet, checking every place that picked the phone. Some said they had already rented while some said places were still available. Some quoted exorbitant prices while some had such low prices to ask for that I soon started to wonder if the roof leaks or the landlord creates a ruckus coming home drunk every night. Some phone calls were never answered, even after subsequent follow ups, and they just remained voice mails for me.

All said and done, nothing much materialized from this method of home finding.

Step-2: craigslist.org

Though I had known about this site for quite some time now, it was only a matter of time for me to really appreciate what it was worth. For here, you could get everything under the sky- apartments, rented rooms, condos, houses to buy and sell, furniture, books, free stuff, boyfriends - you just name it. And it is free. What more, this was better than step 1 because I could look at the pictures beforehand, and even the rent, floor area, utilities, etc., and could make a proper appointment with someone over the phone or email before I ventured out.

I got so addicted to doing this that the first thing I would wake up in the morning, I would browse and see what new apartments have come up. I realized that an excel spreadsheet is not going to be enough anymore, so I actually made a large notebook of data written in different colors. And my records included the name of the person, address and phone number, rent, utilities, when and where to contact, what was the phone response, etc.

Browsing through places in the comfortable confines of my home was a different thing, going to the place and seeing was different. I would take the address, put it on google maps and get directions. What more, since I do not drive, I had to put the directions further in the local website to get an idea of what route of bus would take me there, how frequent is the bus, and when does it arrive. On more than one occasion, I have been stranded in a place because the bus did not arrive at the scheduled time. and though these places were a very good deal at a reasonable price, I instantly decided not to take it. The last thing I wanted was to be stranded in the middle of nowhere on the day of the exams because I missed the bus.

But then again, I would go gaga over the pictures of the apartments posted on craigslist.

On one occasion when I went to see a place which already had another occupant, I was greeted by a huge dog which, if on two legs, would be taller than I am. While I was trying not to feel nauseated with the typical dog-like smell in the house, the owner made it clear that we would have to share the space with the dog. They said, 

“Oh look how cute the dog is. (Cute? OMG!!!). And the dog will protect our homes. He won’t be in a leash. See how he smiles? See how he wants to make friends with you. Kiss me baby, kiss me….”

And suddenly the dog had taken out his huge, muscular tongue, licking the woman like a paintbrush. And the dog looked at me, showing its sharp, pointed teeth. The idea of those teeth digging into my flesh, or being woken out of my sleep in the morning being licked by a dog gave me nightmares. I instantly made some excuse.

“Ehh…(gulp).. you see, as a kid, I was bitten by a dog. Ever since, I am allergic to dogs”

And I had run out of the place and never looked back again.

This is one of those numerous incidents. At one place, they just kept the unit unlocked for open viewing so that anyone could come and see. It was eerie, entering a huge, dark apartment with your own voice echoing. Some apartments are occupied when you see them, which can lead to many an uncomfortable situation like bumping into discarded underwear while looking around. How many places did I see in all? 15? 20? Some places were so good, you would jump to take it the moment you saw it. But these places were more exorbitantly priced and on the outskirts of the campus. It would need a good deal of time to think over it. So I used to carry my Project House Finding notebook with me and jot down all the details, come home, and think over it.

It has also happened that I have called up the owners the next day to tell them I would go ahead with the place, only to be told that the place has already been rented. The last few days of house hunting has given me a dark tan and lots of blisters in my feet.

Step-3:

You go to a friend’s place. You like the place. Ask if there is vacancy. Call the manager. Ask the same. Grab the place if you like it.

This is a relatively easier method, since the hunting process is somewhat eliminated. You know the location, the price, and how the unit looks when it is furnished (since it is your friend’s place you see first). You can ask your friend directly about the hazards of living in the place. But then again, there might not be any vacancy at all.

Well, I still haven’t finalized on any place, but the hunting process has been immensely educative. You actually learn to keep data in order to be retrieved later (and believe me, that is a very important process), you find addresses on your own, you go and meet unknown people who have just been phone voices, you make sure there is nothing in the place you have been missing out on, and so on and so forth.

The search still continues, and sometimes I wish it would get over soon. But then, this would start this whole hassle of moving, buying new stuff, etc. Nevertheless, house hunting is an experience in itself.

sunshine.

A White-mare

It is amazing how the daily events of my life fuel the existence of my blog. Just when I think that there is nothing new to write for the next few days now, something unusual happens, and here I sit at my desk and type furiously.

I had just spent a Sunday afternoon talking to my folks for a couple of hours. For a change, dad remarked that I looked thinner and pale, my eyes somewhat sallow. Now this I would take as a compliment, given the way I have ballooned up the last few months. Even the air in the US has cholesterol. Stop eating, just keep breathing and still you will balloon up.

Post dinner, I ventured into the bathroom to brush. Now brushing is just one of those excuses for going in front of the wall length mirror, turning this way and that way, looking at myself first from the right, and then from the left. For a moment, I really thought that I had shed some weight. Then I bent closer to the mirror and looked into my face, I squinted a couple of times, displayed my teeth, made funny gestures, shot out my tongue, aimed a gunshot at my own self, and finally smiled into the mirror. I absentmindedly sifted my hands through my now shoulder length hair when I stopped dead in my tracks.

No !!!

I looked at it carefully. I changed angles to see if that was the reflection of the light on my head playing tricks with my mind.

No. No. No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Smiling back at me from the mirror was a single strand of hair, proudly separated from the herd, looking at me and mocking me. It seemed to tell me that no matter whatever way I moved, it would still make its presence felt in my life, marring the charm of whatever few years of youth left in me.

For it was none other than a strand of white hair !!!

White hair. Yeah, you heard me right. A gleaming, shining strand of white hair that seemed to look whiter amidst the black ones. The more I shifted to let the light fall on my head, the more it gleamed. It mocked me, reminding me of my misspent youth. Still single, not likely to marry anytime soon. Where did I have place in my life for my whiting hair now?

Suddenly, a hundred scary images conjured in front of my eyes. Here I was at my own wedding, draped in a gorgeous red Manish Malhotra bridal outfit. The crowd looked mesmerized while suddenly, a kid out of nowhere comes running and tells me, “Auntie, Super Vasmol kesh kaala for you”. Auntie? Kesh kaala?

And then I see images of me trying to teach my kid say “ma” when she winks at me, gives me a naughty, toothless smile, and says, “Granny”.

And just like every good looking girl from Perizaad to Rimi Sen used to vanish from Uday Chopra’s dream bike in Dhoom, I saw my figurative tall, dark, handsome man disappear from the bike, to be replaced by an aging, old, withered man. White hair. White clothes. A white life. Aaarrgghhhh!!!

I tried to tell myself that perhaps it was a random case of a gene mutation in one single hair strand. Perhaps my liver wasn’t working very well. Or perhaps, my eyesight was going bad. It was none of them. For the white strand of hair kept gleaming and shining against the light, mocking me.

I carefully separated the rest of the strands of my hair and slowly plucked the white one, so as not to damage the rest. It reminded me of my summers during childhood when granny would give me ten paisa for every white hair I plucked off her head. The hair strand looked thicker than usual, and definitely de-pigmented and white. 

Now, I am in a fix. The more I lose sleep over the white hair issue, the more my hair turns white. It was just one single stray hair strand amid thousands. A statistically insignificant sample size for sure. But then again, I cannot think of anything else but that cursed, unlucky strand of white hair.

And I am just 25. Not married, still looking for someone from the same zip code, and definitely not on the lookout for a walking stick. Suddenly, I had images of these young kids vacating the seat for me the moment I got on the bus. I suddenly had this vision of getting discounts for senior citizens everywhere. And all this for a single strand of white hair. I am sure I am not looking up the mirror for the next few weeks now. Or maybe the next few years. What a whitemare, I mean a nightmare.

sunshine.

Pot-Lucky.

My mom is a superb cook. I am sure everyone claims that, but still, my mom is a superb cook. My lunch box in class right from my school days till finishing college was one of the most sought after things. Even if there was nothing more than bread and vegetables at home, my mom would concoct something, perhaps a bread pulao, and everyone would be licking their fingers. In college picnics, we were usually expected to take charge of one dish each. So while people grabbed for the options like chicken or other things that are usually in greater demand than the rest, I would rest easy and let people take their pick. For even if mom had to cook dal chawal (pulses and rice), she would make it taste better than chicken. On so many occasions in college when I was meeting a professor have I come back in class only to see my crazy classmates greedily chomping on my food. No guilt, no apology, all they would do is roll their eyes and tell me, “But you were away and how long could we wait?” 

And then, close friends would usually come home on my birthday. My mom was not very supportive of me treating my friends out for lunch. She wanted to take the pain of cooking for everyone, and that too a multi-course meal along with appetizers, desserts, and whatever your heart desired. Birthday parties at homes were a rage. And so were other parties.

And then I left home and came here. One year now and I have just learnt to cook for myself and not have to throw the contents into the trash can. I make a good job of simple things like noodles or salads, boiled eggs, or simple chicken recipes. But it is nothing I could call friends over and exult in the glory of my culinary exploits.

Here, you have a concept called the potluck. It means that you bring whatever you want to a party. Sometimes, there are lists you sign up for. It could be appetizers, main course, dessert, whatever. Some people come to potlucks empty handed while some people bring cutlery and plastic plates and cups. No one really takes offense. The host organizes the rest of the food, and that’s about it.

I always avoid potlucks because I just do not know what to cook for a huge gang of people. Even if I put some effort and made something decent, it would break my heart to see the chicken tikka and the kebabs made by someone else vanish like hot cakes while my dish stood on the table uneaten, and every now and then people would smile politely and tell you, “Very nice food. How did you make it?”. I know how exactly your food tastes given what people say about it.

“Very well made” (polite smiles)…. Flop show.

“Very well made, hey gimme the recipe. Can I take some home?”- recipe hit!!!

So when the desi people here organized a potluck, I just made some excuse of not being able to come. How I missed my mom then. I could almost visualize mom undecided about what to make since she had so many things to make, and then the people chomping greedily on her keema curry or kaju chicken, licking their fingers as well as the plate. 

But then, G amma took things in her hand (did I tell you about how someone introduced me to someone else in a party as the girl who came to the US last year and has been adopted by G?). She asked me to go ahead and tell them that I’ll bring a preparation of pulses. I was surprised. Why was she putting in her time and effort? She asked me how many people were expected while I hesitated, “Errr… maybe 10. You sure you wanna do it?”

And she said, "Naan oru dharavai sonna nooru dharavai sonna maadhiri" in Tamil. (If I say it once, it’s akin to having said it a hundred times-courtesy Rajanikanth). On the D-day, I and my friend went ahead and collected that big box of the pulse preparation from her place. It smelled so yummy that I had to keep it at my friends place so that I do not finish half of it before I reached the party.

At the party, everyone had got their share of appetizers and deviled eggs, bhaji, kadhi, raita, gajar ka halwa, and pulao. I waited with bated breath till people started to eat. And then there were comments flooding like-

“Err… who made the daal?” 

“I got it. Is it good?”

“Good? It is great. Give us the recipe”.

Well, I could have boasted all about it, but the next time my friends landed at my place for a surprise dinner of daal, I’d be in trouble. So I told them the truth.

“Err…. I brought it, but G made it”.

“What? Your G amma again? How we envy you!!!!”

By the end of the dinner, there was almost half the quantity left. She had made too much. After dinner every one had packed boxes of leftovers to carry with them. And while collecting my box, I suppressed an amused smile finding my box licked clean and dry. Not a single bit of food was in there.

It reminded me so much of those birth day parties and my empty lunch box afterwards. Thanks you G. You saved my day. You made my day. You got me pot-lucky.

sunshine.

A Tad Too Different.

When daily stuff in other places were going their way, I guess this country wanted to be different. So while people all over the world were going the leftists’ way, someone in this country must have suggested,

“Let us be different. Let us not be a part of the herd. Let us start driving our cars and buses the right way (puns, puns). The world walks wrong. Let us walk the right way too."

And it must have been then that someone did the ritualistic start of uprooting the steering wheel from the right side of the vehicle and implanting them on the left. That day onward, vehicles have moved on the right side of the road. People have walked on the right side of the road. And it is then that people like me have bumped into unsuspecting individuals coming from the opposite direction, and stood at the bus stop for long hours waiting for the bus at the wrong side of the road. Worse, people like me have gone off their mind seated in the front seat of the car and almost screaming aloud every time a huge truck from the opposite left came. But then, everyone drives and walks “right” here.

And then someone in the grocery store must have said something on these lines-

“Let us confuse the Indians, once again. Forget the meter-kilogram-second or the centimeter-gram-second systems from the unitary methods of our school text books. Let us stick to the FPS, or the foot-pound-second system. Since that day, milk has been sold in gallons, people like me have gained weight in pounds, and the daily temperature has been recorded in Fahrenheit. When I was growing up in India, the so called “amrican or foreign products” held a lot of appeal. I knew this particular brand of shampoo had to be American because unlike the ml/l concept in India, the measurements were printed in “oz.” However, the craze is gone, but not the confusion. I still get thoroughly confused in grocery stores, scratching my head and my chin frantically to figure out the least expensive brand of juice when I have to compare two different quantities with their respective prices. The unitary method calculator in my head goes beep, and then I am frantically trying to figure out how many ounces and how many gallons mean how many liters. In school, I always used to skip the sums in the physics text book using the FPS system of measurement so as not to confuse myself. But in grocery stores here, you cannot expect to ask the figurative shopkeeper, "What is the price of potatoes o' brother? Tell me in kilograms." You do all that in your head.

“Oh man, what a hot day today. The temperature has surely crossed hundred. What do you think?”

I was almost on the verge of spilling out my ignorance by exclaiming, “Hundred? Doesn’t pure water boil at hundred?” Frankly, I still haven’t figured out an easy way to convert degree Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa. All I know is that a kilogram is little more than two pounds, and every time the doctor asks me my weight, I calculate things in my head and give her an approximation. When cherries were selling for $10/10 pounds, I actually had to scratch my head in public to figure out how much would 500 gm cherries cost me.

Certainly not to mention that even after almost a year now, I still have difficulty identifying the dimes and the quarters and the cents. Even the bills are not color specific unlike in India, and every bill is green in color. What more, I have to live up t the realization now that Gandhi ji is no longer going to smile on my bills here.

Bill by the way is the American English for note. As in, currency.

And then someone else must have said, “Let us change the words to confuse these people some more”. So notes became bills, bills became checks, while checks remained checks. Lifts became elevators, bathrooms became restrooms, snaps became pictures or snapshots, lucky happenings became fortuitous events, coriander became cilantro, capsicum became bell peppers, and brinjals became eggplants (though they contain no egg). And here I thought that we were dealing only with one language “English” here.

After words came the turn for spellings. Some mathematician calculated that in reducing one alphabet approximately for each word, the entire nation could save 112.84 liters of ink and 56.73 hours of type time everyday. Children in school would learn to spell words at an approximation of 18.25% lesser time. So it all came down to the self while the concept of a “you” went missing. Colour became color, favour became favor, and so on. Every simultaneous repetition of the same alphabet became redundant, and MS word made sure that every time people like me typed, the screen was filled with red squiggles. 

Units changed, currency changed, words changed, and so did their meanings. Quantities changed, my weight changed, my accent changed (somewhat), and so did my perceptions. These days, it is almost impossible for me to identify anyone as uncle, aunty, bhaiya, bhabi, and so on. We all go on the first name basis. So many times have I been tempted to call my 70 year old advisor grandpa instead of John. The last time some junior emailed me from India for academic advice and started the email with “Dear Didi”, I almost had tears in my eyes. The “Good morning sir” became “Hi, howz it going?”, and the “may I come in” became “Hi, do you have a minute?” after the tap on the door. Doctors no longer asked you if you are married, they simple asked if you have an active sexual life. Biodata became resume while information like father's name and marital status became redundant in my resume. And I love the use of euphemisms here. Handicaps are physically challenged, madcaps are mentally challenged (just kidding), stupid people are dumb, dumb people are mute, the word rich is rightly substituted by the privileged and the affluent, and professors “encourage” students to finish the assignments instead of writing something like “You are required to do so and so, it is compulsory”.

The numbers and the percentages in exams are somewhat redundant here. It is all converted into grades. This way I could go on for hours, but then, right now I need to get my As and my Bs right. Naah, I don’t mean learning the alphabets afresh, but am referring to my grades for the upcoming exams.

A tad too much of learning, huh?

sunshine.

Culinary Exploits…. Bits n Bites !!!

I was thinking of my culinary skill almost a year after leaving home. When I left home, I didn’t know how to cook. Not that I am any better now. But when you have people like G in your life, who always make sure they give you 4 days of food every time you visit them, you barely want to take the trouble of cooking. Eating mom’s food has heightened my taste buds to such an extent that it is very difficult to survive on my own cooking. Add to it the fact that I start to cook following a recipe, but at the middle of it I get so impatient that I just do things my own way to take a short cut, and then everything ends up in a mess.

My neighbor became extremely useful to me in these situations. Whenever I cooked something barely palatable, I would eat it. And when the food was utterly unpalatable, I'd present it well, garnish it, and knock on my neighbor’s door, telling him that I had cooked an Indian delicacy for him. I mean come on, the food was not rotten or fermenting, just badly cooked. Mom always said, do not waste food. 

Dad always told me that the best way to ensure good cooking is to take a lot of time and patience to fry the onions. Mom says that too many and too much of spices only ruin the food. However, I never learnt to cook back at home, and I still do not have much idea about what ingredients to put. But I have survived. I cook very rarely, but every cooking session has been like performing an experiment. There were disasters, there was excess or too little spices, and sometimes the food was damaged beyond repair. And yeah there were earth shattering accidental discoveries in the process. And then I would feel like Archimedes in the bath tub, basking in the glory of my own success.

Naah, I am not telling you any disastrous recipes here. But when I look back at my collection of pics from the last one year, I cannot help but smile at so many memories, disasters, failures, anger, frustration, and all for the lack of the knowledge of cooking. Here take a look-

This was the first time I had ever cooked. And you will roll on the floor laughing if I told you what this was. Obviously it had tasted too yucky to even go to my neighbor’s stomach. This is a disastrous attempt to cook pasta without sauce, the Indian way, where I went ahead and added lots of vegetables, and then most disastrously added one whole tablespoon of turmeric powder.

Lesson learnt- Never be generous with adding turmeric. And before Italians fall off the Leaning Tower and commit suicide, stop using pasta to make an Indian-style curry.

Then this is the mushroom curry that turned out to be relatively better.

Did you know that I could never make omelets without messing them up and ultimately ending up making scrambled eggs? Here they usually look like this.

But the only time, and the one and only time I managed not to mess it up, it looked like this.

This was when I made rice for the first time. I added lots of vegetables and mushrooms to it, and then went ahead and actually let the cooker whistle five times before I turned it off. Needless to say, it turned out to be more like the gooey liquid you’ll feed your newborn.

The bread pulao I once made tasted okay and looked like this.

And so did the noodles.

One thing I do a good job is of making salads. That is provided my mood is good and I am not too impatient to notice the size and shape of the vegetables I cut.

Once, I also made a fruit salad with lots of sweetened strawberry flavored yogurt, black grapes, apples, and chocolate sauce.

I love to make Maggi (instant noodles) with lots of vegetables thrown in. So much that the so called 2 minute dish takes me about an hour to cook.

The sweet and sour mushroom and baby corn curry I made once turned out to be very tasty.

But then, I messed up the chicken by trying to add sugar in order to make the onions brown, and throwing in so much of sugar in the process that it actually became more of a sweet dish.

But the egg curry I made was quite decent. Here take a look at the slits I made on the eggs to let the spices seep in.

And this is one of those nutritious “ready in 5 minutes” corn salad with lots of vegetables thrown in and served with a dash of lime.

My over ambitious plans of making fish curry resulted in frying the fish excessively and thus breaking it due to accidental injuries with the spatula till the fish was powdered into something I called a powdered fish salad. It tasted amazing, but there was no fish.

The Bengali potato curry (alu dum) in fact turned out to be very nice.

And so did the lemon and spicy chicken I made the other day.

If you have noticed, I always start cooking something that eventually turns out to be something else. And yeah, ask me about a particular dish, and I would not be able to tell you most of the ingredients or the actual measurements. I cook by instinct. And yeah, my food always looks much better than it tastes.

Well, that in a nutshell is my cooking exploits in this country. Only in these times you do remember how your mom had a hard time asking you to learn to cook. These days, I have an idea of what not to put where, though I still try to figure out what to add to what. And as usual if the food isn’t to my liking, my neighbor ends up eating it.

Still trying, still learning, in bits and bites.

sunshine