The Dark (and soporific) (K)night

I write this post in a moment of great danger to the genre of idiosyncratic people like me, and as my friend Ali puts it, in a moment of great shame to mankind in general. He thinks that in performing the very act that makes me type this post, I bring utter shame, disgrace, and humiliation to humankind. It is a shame in the name of friendship, and the ritual of watching movies together that forms the basis of strong social ties. If movies can make friendship, movies can break friendship. If divorces were not restricted to disjoining two people tied by vows strictly marital in nature, we as friends would have been divorced and disjointed months ago. I marvel at the infallible spirit of mankind that thumps its tiny fists to protect its social instincts, and dictates that movies ought to be watched together, with close friends, amidst sipping cans of coke and munching pounds of buttered popcorn.

Ali knows I tried hard. He knows I gave it my best. He knows that as the darkness and the chill engulfed the large theatre, I tried my best to keep pace with him, and with the crowd, concentrating with greater dedication than I did while studying physics during the boards. I tried to cheer with the crowd, and clap with the crowd, and whistle with the crowd. But ensconced in the lap of luxury, the purr of the AC and the thick foam of a chair behind my behinds became too much for my soporific senses. I had come with the condition that there is a probability, God knows how un-minuscule, that I would fall asleep in the course of the movie. And that became a turning point in the history of mankind and cinema, when despite all my sincere and hard efforts, I fell asleep while watching The Dark Knight (TDK) in the movie theatre.

Sacrilege. Condemnation. Thus cries out every soul that reads this my readers. But history has witnessed it that no matter how good a movie is, there have definitely been moments, minutes, maybe seconds, even nanoseconds when I have fallen asleep. The reason? I go to see most movies at the end of a long day. My energy reserves start depleting, and even the excitement and the thrill of watching a great movie doesn’t suffice in charging my batteries. I cannot concentrate on something that lasts longer than 30 minutes, the situation made all the more worse by my comfortable surroundings. It’s not that I don’t like watching movies, and believe it or not, I have nothing personal against the movie makers. It’s just that the prospect of staring into an illuminated screen with a darkened background induces my soporific self to wake up. I have slept while watching great movies. I have lost so many friends who stopped asking me out for movie nights because the one time I went with them, I have had the nerve to ask them what transitioned between the hero in his days of sworn bachelorhood to the days when he posed for a family picture with his wife and 4 children ensued by the rolling of the names of the art director and the spot boys and other people I have no business knowing the names of when they realized that I have slept through most of the movie. It is an instinctive call, I try to justify myself. Fishes cannot travel in airplanes, no matter how much they love to see the view below from the window. A fish has to live in water and I have to sleep through a movie, no matter how Oscar-winning material it is. I have slept through Bourne Ultimatum. I have slept through Kung Fu Panda. Hell, I have even slept through Sleeping with the Enemy while my enemy-like friend kept darting furtive glances at me.

And thus I kept my record intact, sleeping through this one as well, amidst moments when I felt Ali elbowing me and nudging me to wake up and kicking me and blowing carbon dioxide into my ears and pulling my hair when nothing else seemed to work. But nothing really helped prop myself up despite the frantic kicking. Resigned, he had to be content with watching the movie on his own for a good 30 minutes. For no matter how much I try to feign interest, action movies do not interest me. I see no point of supernatural characters jumping out of high rise buildings or driving vehicles at the speed of light without risking a ticket from the cop or having to struggle for parking. I don’t identify these situations with my everyday life, where I jump out of the 10th floor balcony instead of taking the elevators, or don’t have a heart attack when I see half my face marred enough to delineate the muscles. Action movies aren’t my cup of tea. Sitting through movies aren’t my cup of tea. Hate me, get mad at me, elbow me, kick me, tickle my nostrils with the tip of your handkerchief, but the next time you tie me to your armpits during one of the movies again, I’ll snore aloud and wake up with a jolt to ask if you think the hero is from North Dakota.

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Barcodes

I was thinking the other day that what if people had barcodes on their feet? Technology has advanced so much that it is difficult to believe people haven’t already considered this a possibility. Wouldn’t it be so very easy if everyone had barcodes on their feet? That way one could keep track of wherever one went, because most places would have these electronic scanners that would scan people as and when they entered and left someplace. This way one would leave electronic footprints behind, and using a secure password, one could find out where one was at such and such date. That will save so much trouble remembering when did you go to get your last dental checkup, when did you get that milk from the grocery store that turned sour before its expiry date, or when had you gone to visit your ex-girlfriend last in the year 1999. The information would be confidential, and no one but you would have access to it. Of course authorities like the cops could get hold of such information if they had permission to do so. Certainly that would make the job of tracing down criminals and suspects much easier. At the end of the day, if you are in the habit of maintaining a diary, you could connect yourselves to a device and scan the chip to keep a record of the places you went to. This way you could also trace the places you have been to when you visited Montana in 2005, the number of miles that you have jogged since January this year, and in general join the dots and create a map of your footprints on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Mothers will no longer have to worry about their babies getting lost, and it would help healthcare systems provide better service, knowing exactly when and for what reason you went to the doctor. And all it would take is a simple barcode on your feet.

What do you think?

sunshine

Slim-Phone & Fat-Treat

The upheaval created by the launch of the new iphone 3G last week astounded me. At the apple stores around the city, one witnessed a long queue of people snaking into invisibility who had actually base camped for hours to buy one of these phones. They could have spent the summer weekend hiking, fishing, or even peeling potatoes and watching TV at home. Yet they chose to half cook themselves in the blazing sun for hours, reminding me of the queues in front of the ration shops or the puja pandals in Calcutta to catch a glimpse of the much hyped pandals that looked like the Louvre museum or a casino in Las Vegas.

My friend, who happened to be one of the iphone maniacs, argued that while the previous model sold a million copies in 74 days, this one sold a million copies in 3 days. A quick calculation told me that in 3 days, one out of every 300 people in the US is a proud owner of an iphone 3G. Impressive. But the tech challenged and the often ridiculed clumsy cohort of people’s category that I belong to, all I ended up asking was- “What is the big deal about possessing a device whose primary function is to make people talk?” Seriously, I failed to realize the reason for this craze. I mean one could easily wait a couple more weeks and then buy one of these when the madness had somewhat subsided. True, it had the cool built-in GPS and great storage and stuff like that, but I’m sure my laptop combined with google was pretty capable of fulfilling the same needs of mine.

Sure the phone is great to touch and great to look and even greater to possess. My friend was quick to shrug off my thoughts as those being chronically an extreme version of insensitivity and ignorance. He actually looked hurt that God had not programmed me to be able to find an iphone cool. He himself stood in line for a good 3 hours in the blazing sun on a weekday, and at the end of it, all I saw was smiles and excitement on his face. Sure he hasn’t seemed this enthusiastic about checking out the chicks inside a store. What was that English word describing this syndrome? Hype? Don’t we call it “Hujug” in Bengali?

Anyway, the main point of this post is not what you have read till now. We shall talk of more important things here. The important thing being-

What happens when one fine day you become the proud owner of an iphone 3G?

You end up spending 22% on treat taxes.

Good for me, an iphone craziness survivor.

sunshine.

Another Book Of Impossibilities

I recently finished the book The village bride of Beverly Hills written by Kavita Daswani, and these were my thoughts as I finished reading the last word in the last page. There are so many things unrealistic about this story. But in all, if you are willing to overlook the basic flaws in the flow of the story and forgive the writer for what according to me seems a weak build, you may want to take home a lesson- that nothing in life is impossible to attain as long as you want to put up a fight for it. 

In the story, Indian homey girl Priya gets married to Sanjay and moves to the US with her in-laws. A very typical Indian setting replete with traditions and customs, the book makes a quick read, sending the readers who live out of India on a nostalgia trip back at home. There are so many things unbelievable in the plot. For one, newly wed Indian brides from conservative families with super-conservative in-laws did not go onto their secret mission of becoming a Hollywood reporter from an insignificant desk manager wearing the most unfitting and unfashionable clothes. No one knows how someone on a spouse visa acquired work that soon, and transformed from the most unfashionable and sartorial-challenged person to one of the happening reporters in Hollywood. I mean going by this logic, I would have been warming up for the Stockholm podium to go get my Nobel Prize pretty soon. But the way in which Priya’s mom tells her how she belongs to the other family now, the way she ends up with a spineless husband and overpowering and possessed in-laws, the way she is expected to cook and clean and get food ready on the table before she leaves for work is totally believable. It reaffirms my initial belief that all they were looking for was a maid from India. 

No secret of course remains a secret for long, especially this one with such bones and muscles. But then, even after her husband was told of the truth, no one knows why she had to give up her job despite earning more than her bag-trader husband, and fly back to India. Like I said, you will be disappointed if you considered every nitty-gritty in the story. But if you read it and try to take the inherent message out of it, you will perhaps end up with a little less creases on the forehead than I did after I finished the book. Overall, a nice read as long as you can spare a few lazy afternoons or commute for hours everyday. The message of course is very clear, that only take as much shit from the husband and the in-laws and the world in general as your patience permits, and then screw them and fly back to India. Lots of elements of surprise, like this one. Did you know, Hollywood really liked convent educated, British-English accented news reporters to speak to? Duh, why did the author underestimate my judgment or acumen again and again? Another good review here. Hoping for something more believable the next time Kavita, sunshine. 

PS- One of the better ways to learn about new books is through other peoples recommendations. If you have read any book and liked/disliked it, or would simply want to write about it, drop me a line in the comments section or send me an email. I am always on the lookout for reading interesting books, and your effort would be highly appreciated.

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A Logophile’s Faux Pas

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

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

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Convocation

I hadn’t really realized the impact of what I was about to feel till I had reached the venue to collect my convocation gear. It was a crowd out there, with people busy distributing, collecting, or posing in their gowns. I held the packet they gave me, with everything they had put- my convocation gown and cap, and the numerous other things I was entitled to as an alumni- free passes for football matches I was never going to attend, free coupons at the nearby Mexican eateries, and a car license plate with my status of being an alumni imprinted on it. I have never had a convocation before. Needless to say, the feeling was very new, and “foreign” to me. I came from a place where you were just another face among the thousands of other people getting their degrees. Some professors remembered your face only if you got famous in the process, made it to the US, were the minister’s daughter, or something like that. I came from a place where professors had no official email ids, and some of them still wrote about you being “known to have a good character” in their recommendation letters.

I held my gown for a long time in the restroom, waiting to change for the photo shoot. The first time I tried, I could not even wear it properly. Then there was the cap with the tassel and “2008” marked on it. I was to keep this with me forever, so that the future generations in my family could remember what a luminary I had been. A good soul in the restroom offered to help me wear the gown properly. Within minutes, they had asked me to look at a certain angle at a certain imaginary dot on the wall, and my photo was clicked. Back in India, the only people I had seen being convoked are the graduates from IITs or IIMs, whose photos their moms and our neighbors proudly showed of. I had always wondered how cool it must feel to prance around in one of these attires while your mom showed off your picture to the other neighbors. Now, I knew.

The convocation was still a week away, but I could not get enough of the excitement after that. I was not really prepared for what to expect during my convocation. Then there were ceremonies organized by the school, where they reiterated how important and invaluable I have been to the program. I listened to them in amazement, wondering what was there to make a big deal out of it. Blame it on the place I hail from, where unless you are the topper or the daughter of a minister (or both usually), you fade out into the crowd of nothingness.

With pride, I stood on stage in my blue sari, the symbol of my Indian-ness, that had taken me a good half an hour to wear without help. I was the sole representative of India in the departmental ceremony. On the main day, I proudly cat-walked the outdoor stadium in my gown, smiling, waving, and throwing flying kisses to imaginary people like the others did as if I was some Miss.Universe in the making. No words can describe the thrill and the sense of worthiness you feel when you go up the stage in front of a packed stadium and shake hands with the dean. Photos were clicked and congratulatory wishes offered, champagne flowed, the smell of good food wafted the air, my advisor and chair patted my back and congratulated me, friends hugged me and offered me pretty floral bouquets, and I took in everything, feeling like a celebrity. Gifts and cards have been pouring in ever since, and my home looks like a Botanical garden and a gift shop now.

It took me back to the days in India when mom and dad had a different future planned for me. I am sure that their intentions were noble and well-meant. But as a 22 year old, all scared and confused and not knowing what to do in life, I used to have sleepless nights wondering how do I deal with the situation and accept the fact that I might end up being a nobody. The matchmaking process had just started, and somehow I found the idea of flying to a different country with a spouse very obnoxious and unpalatable for me. Many people choose to do it, but the idea of living in an alien country where I would not be permitted to work and where a husband would give me a credit card as a gift was an envisioning of a sad existence for me. Five years later, there is a credit card, but no husband. I still have issues finding a job and the tension of leading the penurious graduate student life. But deep within there is this sense of worthiness that I was fortunate enough to achieve what so many others would long to, to go to graduate school, to contribute in my own minuscule way to the advancement of science. It’s a trade-off, I gave up on the security of a married life, incurred the wrath of my family when I told them to stop deciding my future for me, packed my bags, and landed here, but it’s a tremendous sense of achievement nevertheless. When I talk about achievement, I am not referring to the numerous classes I have taken, the new concepts I have learnt, the grades, my GPA, the contacts with people I made here, and the degree I earned in the process. I am not talking about how I learnt about cultural competency, social capital, and heat shock proteins in class. I am referring to the sense of achievement I feel of having taken a decision for myself and sticking to it, of all the effort I have put up trying to place myself in a new country, new situation, among new people, of all those nights of studying hard and the early mornings spent in lab wishing that my work will be appreciated and I will be accepted as one among them. I feel a sense of achievement for having dared to challenge the fate others had chosen for me, and for proving dad wrong when he said that I wouldn’t survive for more than a month here, not knowing how to cook or take care of myself. I made mistakes, and I learnt from them. I made bad friends, and I made good friends too. I went through my normal share of miseries, and more. I lost hair and put on pounds as a token of being a part of the “stressed American society”. But whenever the going got tough and I thought I could take it no longer, I asked myself to hold on to hope for a little more.

I don’t see a problem with any lifestyle we choose. What’s important is we choose it, taking full responsibility of the consequences. We all make mistakes, and there is no shame in failing. Friends and family are always there for opining and advising. But at the end of the day, I have realized that it makes so much sense to decide things for yourselves and then stick to your decisions.

Today, I have a masters degree from one of the best schools in the US. Here from, I know I can do anything I want to. I can find work, I can get married and still work, or I can go get another degree in something I have wanted to study. And what I take back with me isn’t my degree and my convocation gown and cap and the license plate I’ll have to wait to use it till I learn to drive. What I take back with me is 2 years of rich experience, little successes and failures, lots of memories of going to graduate school, of numerous friends made, and mostly importantly, the realization that I have the power to envision my own life and shape it the way I want to. Like someone told me sarcastically- “You have become an American in every sense. You are all of “individualism” now".

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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.

sunshine

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.

sunshine

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 !

sunshine

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.

sunshine

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.

sunshine

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.

sunshine

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?

sunshine

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.

sunshine

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.

sunshine