Childhood Chocolate Memories

Opting out of a late lunch, I inserted the one dollar bill into the vending machine and watched with fascination as the bar of snickers fell with a thud on the floor. It wasn’t the first time I was using the vending machine as a convenient substitute for skipped meals. I unwrapped the bar, relishing it and licking my fingers with shameless greed till the wrapper was clean. I was a grown up, which meant that I wasn’t accountable or answerable to anyone for a midday meal of a chocolate bar. Yet somehow, this brought back sweet memories from my childhood when chocolates and candies meant so much more.

We never bought chocolates in our family. I am sure none of us did, waiting for the opportune moment as kids when a certain nice uncle would show up, and in the process of drinking tea and gulping sweets, would take out a bar of chocolates from his pocket. It is funny how you noticed the elevated rectangular thing in his pocket all this while, yet you were not allowed to seem too eager or keen. You were supposed to look coyly at your parents, seeking silent permission, when they would accede. Then you would be expected to thank the uncle, accept the chocolate, yet still not open it or eat it in front of the guests. Like a nice kid, you would put it back in the fridge, and forget about it. The uncle wasn’t supposed to know that the moment the door closed behind him (after thanking him again for his kindness and chocolate for the 113th time now), I would spring in action, somersault and jump, cross 7 mountains and 13 rivers, and sprint to reach the fridge and grab that bar of chocolate. Had that uncle been forgetful, he would have witnessed a very nasty scene of chocolate all over my hands and face on his way back to collecting his forgotten umbrella or car keys. Something quite contrary to the image that had been portrayed for the last couple of hours.

Our family used to be unique in another way. Chocolates were never divided among the two siblings. It was always divided equally into 4 shares. 3 out of the 4 shares went to me, my sister, and my dad respectively, while mom would have a bite of her share. Then, she would again distribute her share among us. Our family didn’t believe that chocolate was meant for kids. It was meant for everyone in the family. That included my grandfather as well, till he had all his teeth pulled out at 75.

The taste of chocolates never lingered in our mouths. No sooner did we finish our share (and mom’s share, and anything remaining, depending on who was stronger), we were expected to go brush our teeth. All my milk teeth removed have been attributable to my dental cavities. Last I heard, the dentist had made a small fortune out of the fees my dad paid him, and his son is attending a college in London thus. Yet as an incentive for the painful process of tooth pulling, I always bargained, argued, bickered, and cried for more chocolates.

The taste of chocolates in my childhood used to be much sweeter. This was perhaps because both quantity of consumption and the frequency of buying were powered in the hands of my mom. Even though you knew you had 8 small bars of chocolates in your share, you could not finish it off in one go. You were expected to save it for days till most of it either went to the ants or into the neighbor’s child’s stomach. Self-sacrifice and controlling greed were virtues that always stood with monstrosity against my chocolate munching. Things got worse especially after my little sister sprouted teeth and learnt to talk and complain and cry because after finishing my share, I would always eat her share. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t very fond of chocolates, the chocolates still had to be there every time I opened the fridge just to tempt me and torture me and teach me qualities such as self-restraint.

The chocolates of those days were very different from the chocolates of today. Not only were there less choices and less brands, there was a clear distinction between what chocolates must be had on what occasion. And while I write this, I can’t help but salivate profusely, thinking of the different memories of my childhood these chocolates bring back.

Like I said, we never bought expensive chocolates like Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or Five Star. These were always gifted to us by some generous uncle when he would visit our home and spend hours finishing a week’s worth tea supply and biscuits and sweets and pakore in return. As the protocol has been described earlier, you could not appear too eager to grab that chocolate bar from his pocket and disappear. You were to wish him and smile at him, make small talk, correct him for the umpteen number of time that you were in class 3 and not class 2, and then look at his extended hand shyly, thank him for the chocolate, and put it back in the fridge. If you did not do it, mom would do it for you, shut the fridge door, and hide the key somewhere on planet mars. Cadbury's (and 5 star) was the most expensive brand of chocolates we ever ate. Yet no chocolates were to be eaten in front of guests. I have eaten chocolates under cover, under the bed, inside the bathroom, hiding in the store room. There was a time chocolates used to be kept hidden in my clothes wardrobe and I would burrow my face inside to munch on chocolates at the pretext of taking out clothes.

Then again, there were candies that you could always bargain for whenever mom took you out with her for grocery shopping. The Mango Mood in its yellow wrapper seemed tastier than the real mangoes. As much as I hated munching paan, I loved Pan Pasand, more so because of the red coating it left in the tongue. Believe it or not, even at the age of 26, I fight with friends over my share of pan pasand. Still reminds me of Archana Joglekar and her “Shaadi aur tumse? Kabhi nahi”. The éclairs were yummiciously delicious, but a little more expensive (50 paisa each), hence usually the choice for birthday celebrations in class. The wrapper was an orange one, and not the golden one it is now. Maha Lacto used to be another of the favorites. I didn’t like Kismi Toffee Bar much. The genre of Amul chocolates was a cheaper substitute for dairy milk (Amul chocolates were still Rs.7.50 a bar while dairy milk was Rs.10.00). I especially loved the orange flavored bars. Another favorite was the Campco milk chocolate bar, perhaps the only white chocolate bar I knew of. Later when I discovered the bliss of Nestle Milkmaid, a brand of condensed milk, it tasted the same. Then there was the age old favorite Poppins, a cylindrical treat of colorful delight (I hated the green ones and loved the pineapple flavored yellow ones). Rola Cola was a later introduced cola flavored version of poppins.

The house of Cadburys itself held so many treats for me. Other than the bar and the five star, there were Gems that I loved to munch on in mouthfuls. Then there was another chocolate I forget the name of, probably Mr.Pops or something akin that was a chocolate version of a lollypop. Wafer chocolates had come much later in my life, and that is probably why I do not associated myself much with wafer chocolates like Kit Kat.

Chocolates and candies were not always chocolaty or sweet. There was this candy called Swad that made your eyes pop out of their sockets and corroded the upper surface of your palate. I still salivate profusely when I think of that jar of Hajmola granny would keep out of my reach, that farty smell whenever the lid was opened, and how you wanted to finish the entire bottle once you started munching on them. Then there were pillow packs of Hajmola Candy- Khatti Imli and Raseela Aam, mango being clearly my favorite. One of the memories I associate with my childhood is that ad of a little boy hiding under the bed, holding out a bottle to the stern looking teacher and saying- “Hajmola Sir”.

Much later in life, when elder siblings, their boyfriends and friends of friends of friends started to leave for the US and send things back, I actually learnt of chocolates like Snickers and Twix and Toblerone and Godiva. I had no knowledge of these as a kid. Hence even now that I am in the US, my hand always reaches out to that bottle of Pan Pasand or Hajmola Candy while shopping at the Indian grocery store. Like I said, I have very fond childhood memories of these. Childhood flew by, but even as a seemingly sensible and mature adult, the mind jumps with joy whenever a friend takes out a bar of chocolate from her bag. All the more if it is the good old dairy milk from the childhood Cadbury's days. Like I said, snickers and twix are always available in the vending machine. But whenever it comes to chocolaty matters, I'll always remain a desi at heart.

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Pigeons

When I was little, we used to live in a palatial house. It was an old building built during the British era, painted an unblemished white with a huge pond in the front. Our house used to stand out even from a distance. Our landlord was a famous doctor who had made quite a name for himself, and as it happens in small towns, everyone knew our house.

The ceilings were some 25-30 feet high, and it would remind you more of those havelis in the Ramsay movies. No matter how much you tried to maintain it, there would always be cobwebs in the remote corners of the wall, and a musty, damp smell whenever it rained. There were skylights the size of present day windows, and French windows double the size of present day doors. There were some 8-10 rooms on each floor, and the ground floor was always locked and dark. Truth be told, I’d often get goose bumps every time someone knocked and I had to go downstairs to open the main door.

There were many grey pigeons that lived in the skylights. As a kid, I had my normal share of curiosity. Back from school, I’d happily jump flapping my hands and see them fly out of the skylights. I would often try to get close, observing the way they blinked their lidless eyes, trying not to scare them, yet never really getting close enough to touch them. They made peculiar sounds and as a 6 year old, I would happily mimic them. Sometimes when I cleaned the walls of cobwebs as a part of my routine weekend fun, I would chase the pigeons with the long pole and derive wicked pleasure in seeing them helplessly flap their wings, too afraid and confused to find an open window to fly out of. When I was tired of my running around with the pole and scaring them chore, I would let them fly away, and then close the windows to see how they found their way back. And as always, they would find an open window, some open nook from where they would re-enter the house. They often pooped and made the floors and the walls dirty and our cleaning maid mad, and believe it or not, I have spent hours positioning myself obscurely to witness the exact moment when white poop emerged out of their rectal opening and fell with a soft thud on the floor.

The most exciting phase for me was when these birds were getting ready to lay eggs. Weeks before, they would start making their nests, spending days working hard, carrying back and forth pieces of twigs, small branches, and dried leaves in their beaks. They probably glued it with their saliva, for the nests would be very compact and whitish in appearance. I would spend weekends not doing my homework but observing them fly out and bring back paraphernalia to build their homes. And then the female would lay eggs, sitting on them for days till they hatched. As a 6 year old, I knew nothing of parental behavior and nesting, yet it was such fun watching them make homes and babies.

However sometimes, there would be an accident. One of the many eggs would fall off and break, leaving watery yolk on the floor and the unbearable stench. Sometimes the babies would fall off and die, and our maid would give us a hard time agreeing to clean it up. Whenever an egg or a little one fell down and died, the parent pigeons spent days mourning by the corpse. The sadness would be evident, and despite me getting close to them, they would refuse to fly away. These would be the unbearably sad moments for me, for no longer I would use my cobweb cleaning pole to run after them and chase them away. Sometimes, the entire nest with its next generation content would fall and be destroyed. But with time, they would start making nests again, and lay more eggs. The resilience and the ability to move on in life these little birds showed always amazed me.

Today, I feel like a pigeon. My close friend, who was about to deliver twins in 4 weeks, had one healthy baby die unexpectedly inside the womb. As I read her husband’s email, I sat like a rock, unable to bring myself to face it. When she delivers in a month, it will be one live baby and one dead corpse. I have spent a good few hours crying my heart out till I gathered enough courage to talk to her. My eyes are all puffed up now. Since blogging is my way of releasing pent up emotions, I am typing my pains out here. And after more than 20 years, all I can think of at the moment is about those pigeons, the way they were my childhood friends, the way they built their nests, and their faces every time their babies fell from the skylights and died.

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Sunshine Is Sadness Today

My aunt in India passed away last night. Somewhere in her late fifties, in an advanced stage of cancer. Bereft of life support system. Mom sounded very upset, particularly since she happened to be one of her closer cousins. And I lay on my bed in the darkness and listened to her on the phone, so many happy memories from a different era drifting in front of me.

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The trip we had to Orissa together. The way she always praised me saying what a good student I was. The onion pakoras and the goat meat curry she always made for me. The way she always chewed on betel leaves, leaving a distinct odor I always associated with her. My first badminton racket that she had gifted me in the seventh grade.

In the last few years that I have been here, so many members of my extended family have passed away. A couple of aunts and uncles, my grandfather’s brother and his wife, and a couple more. It is weird how mom would tell me on the phone, and I would lie on bed for an eternity, thinking of all those childhood memories, of the fun things we did together as family, of the trips we went to, of the family weddings we met at despite living far away, of those various pujas and religious festivals when we saw each other. The past, thankfully immutable, leaves me with these treasured memories while I realize that I will never see them in person again.

People like me who live thousands of miles away from the family will know what I am talking about. When we choose to be away from our families, we do so with the implicit understanding that there are people in our close and extended family whom we may never see again. We all know that death is coming, eventually. Yet we never seem to be prepared enough for it. 

My maternal grandparents, my only grandparents alive, are getting old. When I talk to them, I feel the helplessness in their voice, knowing well that they think they may never see me again. Even when my cool grandma updates me on the new bollywood movies (she is a big fan of bollywood), I cannot help but feel the uncertainty in her voice. I wish that they could visit me in the US someday. I wish I could go back and spend weeks with them, just like the good old days. Yet practicality expects us to move on with our lives, no matter how much we wish to change things.

It doesn’t matter how much I love my family, I know that they will not be there with me forever, and it is just a matter of time. What I absolutely hate is being informed on the phone, and then spending hours remembering the good old days, knowing that the dead will never come back. I know it is something I cannot change, but the pain of living away from family shall never leave me.

You will be missed, very dearly.

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Hey Baby !!!!

I was on the bus, as usual running short on time. As usual, tired after the days work. As usual, stressed and pissed off. As usual, frowning involuntarily, wondering how many work hours to put more before the people higher up in the hierarchy would be happy. I was holding a book, yet not really reading it.

And then I saw you. Not more than a feet tall, holding tight to your daddy’s chest, yet flailing your arms, fearless of the laws of gravitation. A mop of thick, curly hair over your face, huge almond eyes, pink lips, drooling happily.

And then you looked at me with those wide, innocent, almond eyes, as if the world never ceased to fascinate you. And then, you gave me your sweetest giggle. I don’t know if my frowning face seemed funny to you, but the moment I saw you, I smiled back. I spotted two tiny little teeth in the lower gum, the upper ones still without teeth. You giggled at me as if there was no sadness in the world, nothing to worry about, no one to bother you. You flailed your limbs happily, oblivious to anything else. That was the sweetest smile I had seen.

You made my day !

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Run And Earn

From the daily newspaper today:

"Get paid to be my jogging partner. $10/hour, 2hours/day, Monday to Friday 6-8 am and/or 5-7 pm. Flexible.

[Place] [Contact number] [Name]"

Wow….. Like I said, this world will never cease to amuse me.

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Culinary Exploits

Disclaimer- This is NOT a food post.

I don’t even qualify as a reasonable cook. Till the day I left home, my mom, in her bouts of optimism, urged me to learn to cook the basics. And every time, I refused and (mis)reasoned. Not that cooking is gender-specific or status-specific. My dad is a great cook, and so are so many men. My mom had resigned, wisely predicting that a person who loves to eat will eventually learn to cook. And that is what happened, the hard way of course.

For one year, I tried to make what can be called “kitchen accidents” instead of food. When I finally got tired of eating out, I decided one fine morning, ladles and frying pan in hand, that I will learn to cook. Believe it or not, I had never broken an egg before that, let alone cook. I didn’t even recognize the names of most spices. I would sniff the spice and try to remember which dish would mom use it in. I still associate the smell of jeera powder with unripe mango sharbat mom made during the summer. I still do not recognize the pulses, let alone know how to cook it. I started my first day of cooking by adding turmeric powder to pasta. I am sure that Italians are still turning in their graves after that. Eventually, in the process of numerous hits and trials, numerous pan burns and food being disposed in the garbage, I finally learnt to make some palatable curries that saw me through the week. I didn’t have to be a connoisseur of food for that. And now every time I try something new that works, I excitedly call home. My proud announcement of “Mom, I made prawns today” is usually accompanied by a silence and a thud on the other side of the line when dad picks up the phone and announces that my mom has just fainted. Well, not really, but every time, she is on the verge of fainting when I tell her that I cooked something new.

Well, what spices did you put in it? Where did you get the recipe from?

Errr…. I don’t know. I put whatever I thought would taste good in that.

Such are my cooking expeditions. Browse through any cookbook or food website and I’ll realize that I don’t even recognize half the ingredients, let alone have it. So I have finally decided, that these websites are meant just for visual pleasure. If it comes to cooking, I’ll have to improvise with whatever little I have.

However, there are things that I learnt during my cooking expeditions. Like these-

--How well the food tastes depends on how correctly you cut the vegetables. A simple onion can be cut into a dozen different ways, depending on what you are making. And if you fry the onions properly, brown and un-burnt, half of your cooking is done.

--The key to a good flavor lies in the minimum usage of spices. If you are not sure about how much to put, start by adding little quantities. It is better to rectify a less spicy, bland dish than to uselessly try to mend an over-spicy, over-cooked, or over-burnt dish. But then again, it all depends on who you are feeding other than you, isn’t it?

--Green vegetables should always be added at the end, else they fade in color.

--Good food comes from good use of patience and innovation, rather than a lot of spices or ingredients. Especially if you would like to have male friends frequenting your place. They really appreciate it, especially the single ones, given the fact that they eat anything other than textbooks, computer equipment, and office supplies.

--If you are trying something for the first time and are not very confident, cook in small quantities. If nothing, your heart wouldn’t break while disposing it off in the trash can or passing it over to your Thai neighbor as an “Indian delicacy”.

--Cooking is like doing research. Sometimes nothing works and sometimes everything works. But then, it also depends on who you are. If you were Sanjeev Kapoor, I am sure even using turmeric powder in pasta would be cool.

--Writing food blogs may not be a good idea as a distraction from the midnight snacks hunger after all. If anything, the hunger just gets worse.

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Swerving Past Life

This is not so much as a blog post for my readers as it is a post for me. Years down the line when I am all old and wrinkled and ready to leave, I’ll remember how precious life had been to me.

Sometimes I wish I was dead.

Oh, why do I have to face all this? I wish I didn’t have to live.

Life seems too much of a pain these days.

The next time you say these lines, think again.

Yesterday was a gorgeous sunny afternoon, unlike the cloudy weather that is so usual here. Friday night being the fun night, we decided to do something nice for the evening. I had bought a new sandwich maker recently, and I happily made some sandwiches, threw in some Gatorade, and hit for the beach.

The interstate, or what we call the freeway/highway, had its share of the Friday evening traffic. We were happily driving, basking in the glory of sunshine. My friend asked for a sip of the drink and I opened him a bottle.

What I didn’t realize was that he was trying to take the left lane, and was looking on the left side of the road from his rear view mirror, one hand still holding the bottle. At the same time, the reckless driver to the right lane of us blinked his indicator, and without so much as waiting for us to slow, changed his lanes to come right in front of us.

So here I had my friend driving, still looking to the left to shift lanes, and worse, accelerating a bit to shift soon, unaware that a car was right in front of us. And here I was sitting to his right, watching in horror as the car changed lanes and came right in front of us while my friend accelerated.

The next thing I remembered was me screaming out to him to look in front. In a fraction of a second, he had swerved the car to his left, the screech of the tires as the car skid deafening. Our car had turned a whole 270 degrees, splashing the entire bottle of Gatorade on the windscreen in the process. Like a Hollywood action movie, the car turned 3/4th of a circle and stopped perpendicular to the road.

For the next few seconds, we watched in horror as several speeding cars from behind lost their tracks, and came hurling at us for a head-on T-collision. They came pointing right at us, and either snaked right or left to avoid hitting us. In a couple of seconds, the other cars had either stopped or carefully avoided hitting ours. We finally completed the remaining 90 degrees of the turn, my friend waved his hand in a gesture of thanks to the drivers behind, and we moved on.

I was shivering in panic, unable to stop my teeth chatter. Ever since it has happened, the whole episode has been replaying in my mind- me seeing the car change lanes, screaming out to my friend, and watching in horror as the cars from behind came hurling at us, our car stuck perpendicular to the road. The culprit car sped away, probably unaware of the havoc he had created behind, or too careless to stop. But this incident (better called an accident) made me realize how precious life is. We could have been hit by any number of cars. Our skidding car could have overturned. It could have been a dark, rainy night. We might have ended up with stitches and permanent scars. Or we could have been dead. Or going bankrupt paying car insurance and medical bills for the rest of our lives even if we were lucky enough to escape with a few broken bones.

Instead, every single car avoided hitting us. And here I am talking about a freeway and not some narrow lane where consequences wouldn’t have been this disastrous. The liquid splashing everywhere, blurring our vision, seemed so much like a scene out of a movie. Ask me the horror of being strapped to your seat, seeing every single car coming head-on to hit you, and then swerving past without so much as a slight bump. The whole approximately one minute incident has been replaying in my mind again and again. A one minute that seemed like a lifetime. We could have been in the talons of death. Instead, I am still healthy and unscathed, all in good shape, writing about it to get it out of my mind.

I later remembered how we were having a discussion about our frustrations of academic life and job hunting and stuff. But all these hardships boiled down to nothingness in comparison to the struggle for life. Yes, life is precious. How much, I realize now.

Drive doubly safe. For your safety is as much dependent on other people's safe driving as it is dependent on your safe driving.

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Shall We Dance?

Acceptance is a very special word, no matter how big or small the thing is. You get accepted into one of the IITs, and you are the next sought after thing in the neighborhood for years to come. You get a call from one of the US schools, and people walking on the streets often touch you to see if you are as real as the other lesser mortals. You fancy someone and the person proposes love. You wish something and the wish comes true. You have spent sleepless caffeinated nights trying to write a thesis proposal and it finally gets accepted by the committee. You send a poem for a poetry contest and it gets published. No matter how big or how small the thing is, it always feels great to be accepted by someone, hugely boosting up your self-confidence in the process. It is the waiting period in between that is killing. But getting a certain YES email or a letter feels so special, it makes the wait every bit worthwhile. Equally disheartening are rejections. But then, don’t all of us move on? I remember how disappointing it was to get so many rejects from the good and not so good US schools a few years back. It always makes you think- What was wrong with me? Was I not good enough? Why me? But one acceptance letter obliterates all the dejection, one good rank in the joint entrance exams makes all the years of hard work worthwhile, one chance to work with some professor you have wanted makes it worthwhile, and so goes for the person you want to live with. It is a different matter altogether that the real responsibilities, the pains and travails of living up to the expectations start later.

A month back, our dance team got rejected in one of the auditions. No one knew why we could not make it. We had our theories though. Some said that the deciding committee was biased towards north Indian folk dance, while some said that they had already decided who they wanted to choose based on personal preferences. Whatever the case be, it felt horrible to be rejected, all the more for me because I did not understand the language and the dance style was not familiar to me, hence I had put five times more effort. I drifted between stages from putting the blame to myself, to my team, to the choice of dance number, and to my luck. When sanity struck after a while, I realized that there was nothing to put the blame on in the very first place. Life was all about getting chances, we win some, and we lose some. After some 6 hours of feeling low and lachrymose, I had moved on.

However, I remained on the lookout for newer opportunities. In a way, I was tired of dancing with my south Indian dance team, neither understanding the language, nor feeling very comfortable with the style of dance. Someone up there heard me, for one of the bigger dance groups in the city were auditioning for new dancers in their team for a few upcoming events. I had been to their dance shows before, that beautifully showcased a variety of dances. However, this was a round 2 audition, meaning that they had already chosen the bulk of the lot and there were a handful more dancers they wanted. I was apprehensive, because one rejection was only so much I could take. If it was something like glass painting or knitting, I wouldn’t have cared, but dance is something that I really cared about. My apprehension about being rejected the second time knew no bounds. I would stand in front of dozens of pairs of unknown, judgmental eyes, and then the music would play and you would be expected to dance on your own while they decided if you were good enough. The music would stop in between and they would say “NEXT” while you would pack up, wondering if they got bored too soon or if they made their decision so soon. And then the wait would be unbearable. Probably you would know some of the other people who auditioned, and would live in the constant anxiety that they would make it and you wouldn’t. Even if you were rejected, you would be tortured to death, reading one of the most diplomatically and cunningly crafted letters- 

“While we were so delighted that you gave us your valuable time and brought your ass on the dance floor, we are sorry to let you know that you have two left feet! It seems you shook your hips a tad too more and your right leg and left hand were not in sync. However, we are sure that there will be other dance groups who would willingly overlook these and accept you in their group because hips and legs do not form an integral part of their dance. We wish you all the best”.

It takes a lot to face rejection. Anyway, here I convinced one of my friends to give me a ride, since I had no clue how to get to that godforsaken, desolate place they had chosen for the auditions. I plugged in my music player into my ears, and shook my hips for a couple of hours in front of the walled mirrors in the gym just to make sure I could still move a couple of my body parts without running the risk of being disqualified for having two left legs and a missing right leg. I don’t know what made me choose to audition to a Hrithik Roshan dance number, not even coming close to his flexibility and finesse, but after a few minutes of practice, when I still didn’t show signs for a slipped disc or a chipped tarsal bone, I decided to give it a shot.

Adrenaline is a magical potion. It can make you do things you didn’t imagine you were capable of doing. It can make you jump from the height of a 1000 feet, being tied only to a rope. It can make you thrust your hands in the crocodile’s mouth just to see if they use their pre-molars or molars more while eating. It can make you stand in front of dozens of unknown people, dancing in solitude, risking being laughed at or being stared at as if you were an alien. And thus we went through this together, me and my adrenaline. At that time, I didn’t care if I made it to the auditions. All I cared about was to be out of there as soon as I could, of course after stuffing my pockets with the little cans of free orange juice from the wending machine.

The wait was bad, all the more since I personally knew one of the judges, and every time I got an email from her, it made me cringe. Email I did get, but from one of the other judges. I read it calmly, got up from my swivel chair, and headed straight for the restroom mirror. I looked at myself for a long time, eyes not showing any emotion. And then I straightened my shoulders, held out my hand to the mirror in that typical ballroom style dancing, and said to the person looking back at me from the mirror-

Shall we dance?

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My New Found Love

I am glad I got to know him, though I wish I had met him earlier. He has become such an integral part of my life that I cannot function without spending some time with him every day. I would be preparing for an important exam, and then I would sneak out and spend some time with him before I resumed work. I cannot get through the day without chatting incessantly about him, laughing at every little thing he says, every funny gesture he makes, reciting verbatim his one-liners and the songs he sings. Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce you to my new found love, my addiction and obsession, the one and only, Eric Cartman !

I don’t know how a friend of mine got me introduced to him, and truth be told, I didn’t even like the first few episodes of what I saw. For here I was seeing a bunch of 8 year old kids swearing profusely and blurting profanities and farting with such enthusiasm and gusto. But once I got the hang of what was happening I was hooked. I was hooked to the extent that I cannot get through the day without my daily dose of 3-4 South Park episodes. And then we would spend hours ruminating on the new things we had just learned, talking to each other in what we call the “Cartmanish language”, singing all the songs we hear this fatso sing. When we are irritated, we try to clench our fists, close our eyes in that typical “X” and scream “Goddddammit”. I have never looked forward to watching the TV every Wednesdays before this ever since the days of Chitrahaar on Doordarshan when I myself was Cartman’s age. Within a few weeks, I had completed season 1, 2, and 3, and am looking forward to the other seasons. Frankly, it was an interesting discovery to know how I can relive my childhood again at this age. You can see the amount of the crazy-cartman-syndrome effect this thing has had on me.

For imagine the puzzled expression on people’s faces when I pick up a stick and scream “Respect my Authoritah”, or hum “Stinky bridges” all to myself. My roomie would go crazy if I told her something like, “Aye woman ! Why don’t you go to the kitchen and make me some pie, or go home and make babies?” See a cat crossing the road and scream, “No kitty, bad kitty !” The “big boned” guy thinks that independent films are all about gay cowboys eating pudding. Cartman and group, Mr.Hanky- The Christmas Poo, Chef, Butters and group are my new friends now. I have been looking for a restaurant in town called Casa Bonita. I look at a bunch of kids arguing and wonder “How do I reach these kids”. If you know what I am talking about and have experienced the same level of madness, then welcome to the club. If not, please join the club. For everyone is entitled to a little humor, a little laughter, and lots of craziness in life.

And here goes Cartman online, in its entirety.

“Sweet” !!!, like he would say.

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Can You "SIT" Through This?

I was half listening to the lecture, half lost in my thoughts during the 8 AM class this morning. This isn’t unusual, since the prospect of sitting through a 90 minute class straight is totally unacceptable to me. The seating arrangement was in the form of a long rectangle with one of its short sides chopped off for the instructor to stand, while I sat closest to him. I was bored to death, feigning interest, though my mind had wandered off to the different theories I come up with. Today, I didn’t come up with a unique hypothesis, but certainly an interesting research question.

What makes people decide to sit where they choose to sit?

If there was a huge hall full of empty chairs such that the number of chairs was greater than the number of people in the room, and if each person was free to independently decide his coordinates, what would cause a particular person to choose where he chooses to sit?

I myself have attended classes of different sizes and seating arrangements. There is this standard arrangement where the teacher is at one end of the room and there are rows of seats in front, so that if you were sleepy or bored, you could always choose the last row for a short nap. And then there was this class I was sitting in where three sides of the room has seating arrangements, the fourth side for the instructor, while the rest of the room was a long strip of empty floor space good enough for a cricket pitch. And then there were rooms more like stadiums and cinema halls where you climbed up and down the stairs to have the seat of your choice.

Keeping all the classroom seating designs in mind, what induces people to opt for certain seats? If it is a small class and you needed a recommendation letter from the professor at the end of the semester, you perhaps chose to sit in the front row, left, right, or center. Even if the course didn’t interest you, you pretended as if it was the second best thing that happened to you after that apple fell on Newton’s head and gave you several extra chapters and formula to learn from the physics text book. If you didn’t care about the recommendation letter, you probably chose to sit in some dimly lit corner of the room, trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible. If it was a huge class with a gallery seating arrangement, you would probably choose to sit at the end in order to see the teacher better, precisely the reason why balcony seats in the cinema hall are more expensive than the rear stall ones. If you have the habit of dangling your legs to ensure proper blood flow to the hind limbs, the first bench is never a good idea. If you had a large ass, the side seats may not be a good idea (God, why am I reminded of someone called Eric Cartman… aaayyeeee !). 

Having said that, if you had a large classroom and observed where people sat in each class, I wonder what the results would look like. Some would always sit in the front while some would always sit at the back. Some would always alternate, left, right, center, front, back, doesn’t matter. Some would not care about the coordinates as much as they would care for their friends. Some would always be proximal to a certain group of people while some would always be at the maximum possible distance from a certain group of people. Some would be undecided and take the first available seat. Some would avoid being close to the other professors in the room who have come to attend the seminar, while some would make it a point to always sit closest to their adviser. Students with love interests are expected to sit close to each other. Students who take lots of notes will usually choose that empty corner to get that extra space, and definitely the front one to see and hear properly. People who wanted some extra attention will usually sit in the front while people like me who couldn’t care less would try to find some godforsaken corner. If it is a class of hundreds, one would prefer to be as close to the EXIT sign as possible. Some people have a favorite seat, a favorite nook or corner where they sit class after class, year after year. They squirm and get uncomfortable if they find someone else sitting in their favorite place (If it is a man called Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory, he will make sure his favorite seat is vacated before the class can even start). Some people are like extra-terrestrial bodies that wander, though not aimlessly, but with a formula not yet known to physicists. If you had a bird eye view of a square classroom, I usually prefer to sit in the geometrical center. It gives me a sense of symmetry, the walls being equidistant from my left, right, and frontal vision.

If there was a study for a year (the class being unaware of it) where some crazy theory proponent like me observed and recorded peoples preferences for seats, would there emerge a specific pattern out of it? If the sample size was large enough, would the result fall safely within a confidence interval? Will the seating pattern be in clusters, scattered, linearly, or otherwise? Would there be confounders and effect modifiers? Who knows how it works. Probably when you enter a large room, a fluorescent lighted signal leaves your brain to your muscles directing where it should move, unless there are certain determining factors like friends, state of interest or boredom, etc., that predetermines a location. If we were to develop a conceptual model on seating, what factors would be involved? Neurocognition? Motor coordination? Evolutionary stable strategy? Social learned behavior? Purely instinct and/or reflex? Networking intentions? A combination of physiological and social factors? I myself have attended a class with a handsome doctor in it when I would come late and strategically position myself so as to be able to see him the best, yet be as unobtrusive as possible. Yeah, even budding scientists have hormones.

I applaud your patience if you are still reading this. After all, it is an age old rant of scientists that people do not understand or appreciate their concepts and ideas. You see, an idea, a random thought is all that it takes, and though the theories you hypothesize may not earn you Nobel prizes, it can certainly transport you to wonderland and see you through 8 AM classes or concepts otherwise considered boring.

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Morning Sickness

Brain-Hand Coordination-

Class registration menu

Go to list of courses

Select appropriate course

View course details

View class timing

8 AM- 3 days a week.

Hand stops. Brain function goes frantic.

8 AM? Who wakes up at 8 AM on a Monday morning to go to class? Do you know what 8 am classes mean?

No more shutting off the alarm and going back to sleep. Catching the bus at least by 7:30 AM, breakfast or no breakfast. Spending Sunday doing homework and going to sleep at 9 pm.

8 am, come rain, hail, storm, snow, sun, light, darkness, cold, or fog.

8 am means being done by 10 AM and not knowing what to do with the rest of the day. And coming back when people are just starting to go to school.

It means arranging for breakfast at night and probably going to sleep wearing the next day's clothes just to get those extra 10 minutes of much yearned sleep. It means not caring about dress, hair, or looks, and getting into the department still half dazed and yawning. 

It means finishing all the pre-assigned readings by Sunday night, and not waiting until Monday. Which also implies getting the class handouts printed way before Sunday (I currently print it Monday morning).

It means not being able to wave sleepily to my roommate anymore and wonder how lucky I am before going back to slumber?

8 AM? Even for exams? But who will wake me up? 

Seems it is gonna be a tough quarter. Three days a week of morning sickness for the first trimester. No puns intended.

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Draw-ing The Line

The other day, in one of my contemplative moods while waiting at the bus stop, I looked at my hands, palms outstretched, and wondered at the number of skills I had mastered over the years. I am not just talking about writing that first word “APPLE” or drawing the first house with a chimney. Even as an adult, I have mastered various skills over the years. Though not professionally trained, I have developed a knack of picking up and performing various dances. In my play, I did more of hand gestures than I could ever think. Always a pathetic cook, I have learnt to make a decent meal over the years. I have held the needle, I have created stuff with a pair of scissors, I have tried to make a point with the pen and the key board. I have raised hornworms for laboratory research. I have used the calculator to balance complicated expense sheets. I have done so much with my hands, these short stubby fingers with nails neatly cut. But if there is one thing I regret having not been able to do so far, it is picking up the art of drawing, sketching, and painting. It is not one of those things I’d rather regard as “Who cares” and move on. Quite contrarily, over the years, I have tried picking up the pencil on several occasions and come up with something even remotely coherent, if not artsy. Alas, my high built hopes have been cruelly demolished every time.

It’s not that it does not run in the family. My dad is a great painter, he can paint what rich people hang on their walls. But it seems that the particular genes have not been rightfully passed on to me. My greatest fears in school were those assignments when we had to draw science experiments depicting Brownian motion and Pascal’s law on the left hand sheet of our science notebooks. This was followed by having to draw different human systems, stems and roots, ginger rhizoids and potato tubers for the biology classes. I would look at the better artists in my class and marvel at that extra shade added to the stomach diagram that would give it a 3-dimensional look, those extra few lines in the liver that gave it a shiny appearance and identified it from the rest. Ironically, my diagrams were not bereft of the “Good” and “Very Good” remarks scribbled by the teacher. This is because I always managed to put on a helpless, lachrymose look the night before the submissions when dad would take pity on me and make a few strokes in my copy. He screamed at me, he got impatient, he got mad at me, but at the end of it, he would remain awake late and complete my drawings while I would always excitedly wake up in the mornings with a broad grin on seeing the best photosynthesis experiment protocol diagram in my copy. Dad always went an extra step to shade and give a 3-dimensional effect, that always worked wonders. I hated him getting mad after a hard days office work to stay up and do my drawing assignments. But over the years, he gave me hundreds of those beautifully drawn things I preserved and showed off in class proudly for ages.

When I finished school, dad sighed in relief to have been relieved from his duties. But alas, God had different plans. I took biology, and had to draw 50 times more this time. But this time, dad made the rules clear. I could bug him only on weekends, not more than 2 drawings everyday. I just could not appear with pencil and paper and expect him to start drawing. However this time I had a better plan. I started to do outlines and little bits of stuff of the drawing before I showed it to dad. I would draw, let’s say, the head of the fish or the tail of the rat, show it to dad, and exclaim more to myself, “Naah, this is not half as good as what dad draws”. He would take a look, start erasing things, and would redraw things for me. I still remember I had to draw a mouse one time, and he drew such an animated version of it, all dark and hairy and real, that one look and mom had almost thrown up- Yuck ! Even the tail looked so real with the rings that one would feel like swinging it by the tail.

So dad bailed me out through my torturing drawing assignments while I earned goods and very goods. But I never really learnt how to draw. It’s not that I never tried. I tried emulating simple sketches, carefully noticing the way dad held the pencil and made strokes. I also realized that I was not that bad in seeing something and exactly replicating it. But I had no imagination, no creativity. You ask me to draw something as simple as a caravan and I would end up making something that would look like a cow without a tail. With time, I told myself that there are only certain things I could master, and I had to live with the knowledge that I could not excel in everything. But then I would look at a certain painting in wistfulness, marveling at the brush strokes, the paint and the water color, with the signature of the artist scribbled below illegibly, and wonder if I could ever learn to draw something as simple as sketches showing different facial emotions. I looked at the art teacher in school with all jealously, amazed at the way her hands moved with speed as she drew fruit baskets and vegetables and flower gardens for the kids. One visit to my friends home and I gaped in amazement at the huge paintings she had drawn and hung on the walls that gave her house such a “rich person’s house” feel to it. A simple flower vase with flowers. Faces of different women waning into the background colors. The plumage of a multicolored bird.

So what reminded me of this? I was at the hospital earlier today for some bill settlements, and while I waited for someone to attend to me, I looked at the different paintings on the wall with the same feeling of wistfulness. What caught my attention particularly was a certain framed picture that had dozens of hearts, each unique and drawn differently from the rest. Every heart had a different color, a different pattern, and I was amazed at the creativity and the imagination of the painter. For a while, I wondered about the idea of making a life painting and hosting art exhibitions instead of studying cells and molecules. Perhaps I could use my creativity and learn to draw different patterns on the DNA, draw weird looking cells with star patterned cell walls, and weird looking red blood cells and mitochondria. I think I will give it a try tonight by sitting with my pencil and paper again, trying to replicate simple patterns of shapes and emotions and moods. But something in me tells me that I’ll again end up drawing vegetables that look like lamp shades. And just in case people can’t even understand what I was trying to draw, yohoooo !! I can always call it modern art.

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Trying new things

A few weeks back, I opened my eyes to the glorious sunshine one morning to exclaim, “Shit, I will be turning 27 this year!”. I scurried to the bathroom mirror for tell-tale signs of greying hair, wrinkles on my face, or even a receding hairline. But everything looked fine. However, I now felt that my life-wicker was waning while I did the same mundane stuff over and over again. Nothing was wrong in my life, not an extra pimple on the face, no degenerating hormones or dystrophic muscles. But the very thought of spending a life analyzing health impacts of metals on humans was depressing. So I decided to try something new, something exciting.

I’d heard that my university friends were performing a classical dance for the opening of a new South Indian temple and were looking for another dancer. I speak or understand no Tamil, but I found myself for the rehearsals, inwardly rolling on the floor laughing when I heard the lyrics (which I understood nothing of). Having danced to tapori songs all my life, a classical performance was not what I had expected. Nothing had prepared me for a chance to dance Bharat Natyam to the song “Margazhi Thingal” in a temple. Most people I know perform after years of classical dance training, and the little bit of dance I had picked up was due to my interest in Bollywood. Yet the choreographer had immense confidence in me, no matter how long I took just to get my tripatakas and ardhapatakas and the other mudras right. Not just was the song alien to me, there were parts in the song where there were no words at all, but the tei-yum-dat-ta’s and the Jatis. I do not know if ignorance gave me the courage to go classical the first time in front of an audience, but here I was with a mini jasmine garden on my head, kohl-laden eyes, my limbs painted resplendent red with the red highlighter as a substitute for aalta, my mind vacillating in between controlling the ticklish sensation and wondering how very dermotoxic the highlighter would be. When I sent pictures, my family back home thought that I had dressed up all classical and hired a photographer to take my pics just for kicks.

 

My group wanted to perform to another song. It was a far cry from the Bharat Natyam I was religiously practicing. It was full of hip jerks and ovary-dislocating pelvic thrusts. For the next few weeks, I danced to songs that I did not understand with friends whose language I did not speak. I made my own version of the song in my head, making strange words out of what I understood. Imagine the fun you have dancing to something you do not understand, especially when the dance moves looked like milking cows. Someone even told me that I looked “authentic South Indian,” whatever that meant. Again, it wasn’t an earth shattering, but I think I did well. I was also able to get out of the lethargy that prevents you from trying out something new, getting pally with a group of unknown people from different backgrounds, no matter how trivial or unimportant the act or the effort itself was. I danced to kumbida pona deivam and yammadi athadi.

That summer, I also registered for level 1 salsa classes with my roommate and her boyfriend and completed it. I tried my hand at some bowling, thanks to a classmate of mine from Pakistan. I went to a bull riding show in Tacoma last month, starting watching (and liking) South Park, and went for a dance audition for another group last week.

sunshine.

Sunshine And Sunrise

I just realized that I am more of an outdoor person than an indoor person, unless of course you put me on the dance floor. I also realized that though planned hanging outs are fun, surprises are way better. How do you feel when you are woken up on a weekday by the shrill ringing of the phone? You either expect an emergency call from your folks back in India, or you expect some jerk from a different time zone in the country playing a prank.

So, wanna see the sunrise?

Yeah sure, in your dreams, said a very groggy and irritated inner voice. A very sleepy me: What? When? Now? Well, okay… (still trying to figure out of it is April 1st)…. How long will it take you to come over? (Mentally calculated some 30 minutes of extra sleep)

Well, am right in front of your house.

What?

A very groggy me jumped out of the bed like the jumping jack out of its box, brushed and washed face and put on her slippers in record time, and in the next two minutes, was headed for the beach to see the sunrise in her pajamas and chappals. The sky by the sea had just started to change hues, and by Jove, this is one of the better sunrises I have seen. It wasn’t a big deal in India, but with the screwed up weather and the equally screwed up work schedule and lifestyle here, waking up at half past five just to watch the sun rise is definitely a big deal. And for the next few hours, we were happy people, whiling away time listening to the chirping of birds as they flew in a V-shaped herd, excitedly watching and waving at the train that snaked along the nearby railway tracks, and listening to the roar of the waves.

Like I said, planned trips are always great, but there is something about being woken up from sleep to be told that someone is waiting right outside the door, and the prospect of seeing the sun rise in pajamas and chappals has an amazing appeal to it. I would prefer it over wearing stylish dresses and high heeled shoes to a party. Absolutely anyday.

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Shells

I am an avid collector of seashells. There is something about these lifeless remnants of calcium carbonate from the exoskeleton of mollusks that never cease to fascinate me. Have you ever looked at them closely, observing the ridges, the patterns of rings, the different shades of colors? Like fingerprints, every shell is different from the other one, even the one lying the closest to it. It is so much fun digging your hand in the wet sand after having targeted a particular shell embedded in it, visible only half way. There is so much mystery involved in how big it would be, or how colorful. Sometimes your eyesight deludes you into picking up something that was nothing more than a half split and discarded groundnut shell. And then I jump excitedly when I find two little shells jointed together at their tips. It makes me think of the life that was nested within it, popping its head out occasionally to feed itself or move or see the world. The shell protected it from danger, from adverse weather conditions, giving it the luxury and comforts of a protected existence. And then the life within it died and was washed away, leaving behind remnants of hard rock to live a life of loneliness and solitude till it is either picked up by a collector like me, or vanished into the elements of the earth in anonymity. If shells could tell stories, have you wondered what would those autobiographies look like? Subjected to the sun and the moon and rain, being washed away by the sea again and again, tossed back and forth from the sea to the shore, so many of them all lying lonely, discarded, disjointed, witnessing hundreds of generations come by and go?

I have often wondered how long shells last before the elements are degraded back into the earth and recycled. What gives them their distinctive color and size and patterns? Is it influenced by the environment, or by the genetics of the organism? How can one determine the age of shells? If there was life on other planets, would there be seashells too? There are hundreds of questions I ask myself when I look at a shell. Like people spend hours looking at old photo albums and reminiscing about happy memories, I spend hours, looking at each and every shell I have collected. Back in India, I have thousands of them collected from different parts of the world, neatly dated and labeled in transparent jars. How it broke my heart to leave everything behind. When a friend was visiting Europe and asked me what I fancied from Europe, I’d asked the friend to collect as many shells from as many different beaches as possible. So my collection included shells from the beaches of France, Spain, and Italy, not to mention dozens of beaches in India. My greatest collection were these hundreds of little conch shells in Vizag that housed the hermit crabs, and our home stunk for days while I boiled them and cleaned them.

So what got me thinking about shells, of all things? The weather has been darn good for the last 2 weeks, and after a day’s bunking classes and coming early from work, me and my roomie decided to go to the beach. Now the beaches around here haven’t impressed me a lot in terms of their shell collection. I wasn’t even expecting shells in a beach that is no more than 2 feet wide. But there they were, tiny pieces of black and white jutting their heads out. They weren’t pretty and all looked the same, no beautiful ridges, just tiny lumps of black and white and grey. But even before I knew, I was crouched on the sand, collecting these little shells with both hands, as many as I could, stuffing as many as I could in my pockets and socks. A few hours later, I was a happy kid, running gleefully on the beach. I put my prized collection in a transparent container and placed it on my study table, in between pens and pencils, for me to see them whenever I look up. Now these shells do not run the risk of being lost in anonymity, washed by the waves and ending up being nobody while no one knows them. They can live with me to be marveled at by people who visit me and see them.

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Science Fo(u)r You…

Mingling with different cultures is a great way to learn new things. Everyone of us brings unique things, that makes a cross-cultural study environment such a diverse and rich learning experience. Last week was the Chinese New Year, and the group in our class was discussing and reviewing the following paper-

The Hound of the Baskervilles effect: natural experiment on the influence of the psychological stress on the timing of death (DP Phillips, GC Liu, et al, 2001)

I haven’t referenced it properly here, but that is okay. What I found interesting in this paper was the fact that Chinese and Japanese people consider the number “4” unlucky. “In Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, the words DEATH and FOUR are pronounced almost identically”. It seemed funny to me at first, but then again, aren’t there similar notions attached to the number 13 by many people? What was more incredible was the fact was the finding that on the fourth day of the month, cardiac deaths were significantly more frequent than on any other day. The paper discussed experimental designs to test the validity of the finding. Much to my amazement, the hypothesis did have substantial validity, the mortality peak on the fourth day of the month being called the “Baskerville Effect” (After the hound of Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Evidently, the deaths are mainly due to chronic heart diseases, reasserting the proposed hypothesis that cardiac mortality increases on psychologically stressful occasions.

Now what does it translate into from a layman’s point of view? That more people die on the 4th of any month compared to the other days, just because the way the words “four” and “death” is pronounced is similar? Apparently that seems to be the case, though in not so much of a cut and dried way. It is more of a cultural phenomenon with unpleasant associations, and it seems that the number 4 evokes discomfort and apprehension in some members of the Chinese and the Japanese population. “Some Chinese and Japanese hospitals do not list a fourth floor or number any rooms 4. Mainland Chinese omit the number 4 in designating military aircraft—an omission said to result from the link between “four” and “death”. Some Japanese people avoid travel on the fourth of the month, and some

Chinese patients are apprehensive about this date. Aversion to the number 4 is also evidenced by Chinese and Japanese restaurants, which avoid this number”

Four and death have similar pronunciations in the native language. However, the pronunciation of 13 in English is not related to death. This apparent lack of “linguistic link” may explain why English population shows no peak in mortality during the 13th day of the month.

Personally, I didn’t really want to shrug off the hypothesis till there were stronger evidences to disprove it. It might sound incredible, but incidences happening a certain number of times in a distinct pattern changes intangible beliefs into science, provided of course there is a suitable logic to back it up. My Chinese friends were reluctant to speak about this issue on an auspicious day, which in itself showed their strong beliefs. They did accede that most people strongly associated the number four with death.

Now, I hadn’t heard anything like this before, and this got me thinking. I personally have some strong associations with the number 4, not that I am a believer in numerology. I was born on the 4th day. For quite a few years, my roll number has been 4 in school. My name starts with the 4th alphabet. I thought I had found true love when I was in class 4 (don’t even ask me about it ! I still know the guy !). This is the 4th city I am living in. I don’t even have any issues with the number 13. I had applied to 13 US schools a few years ago, and my family had some qualms about it. I wasn’t trying to prove a point, 13 happened accidentally, and I let it remain that way. Big deal. I don’t really have issues with numbers or alphabets as such. However, your perspectives and comments would make the discussion here all the more interesting. If you are looking for the paper and are unable to find it, please drop me an email. It's past 4 am, and I must sleep now.

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