Plane of Reality

I have a Chinese girl in my class I meet once every week. The first day we met at the orientation, she told me that she was worried about the English spoken and written test every incoming graduate student has to take before they start their research. She asked me if I had similar concerns. I didn’t know the “right” answer to tell her. Yes, I was concerned, but that was not because of the test. It was because I would have to wake up on a Sunday morning and drag myself to write the exam by 8 am. I was more annoyed that the school is not convinced about my English written and spoken abilities, and I could not sleep till late on that Sunday.

I passed the test. She didn’t. It meant that she would have to take an English class once every week for the rest of the semester. Bummer ! If the class load and the research and TA-ing wasn’t bad enough, the last thing you wanted was extra class load. I empathize. The next time we met in class, she came running to me asking to me which day I was assigned to for the English class. I observed that she had assumed I had not passed the test. It broke my heart to tell her that I had, and didn’t need extra English coaching. She didn’t do a good job to hide her disappointment. She looked confused that how could I be exempt from it when she was forced to take it.

Ever since every time I meet her for my research class, she asks me how are my English classes going. It seems her perceived reality has accepted that being an international student, I too had failed my English class. I felt sorry for her, but it unnerved me a little. Last week when I met her in class, I saw her talking to an American student. She was telling her how difficult this part of the semester is with midterms and then pointed to me asked me if I was having a hard time with the extra English class. It seems it had never registered in her mind that I was not taking any English classes. Amidst rectifying her yet once again (to which she looked a little startled), some strange realization dawned on me too. I realized that we all live in our own realities, and sometimes the plane of our realities might not match that of others. Does that mean there is no concept of absolute reality? What is unreal to me might very well be someone else’s reality. Often we hear people recounting stories when we think to ourselves, “This is not possible, is it true?” This is because the things we do not believe in are the things that are beyond the scope of “our” reality.

This girl was clearly upset, not just because she has to take extra classes, but because her reality might be that she thinks she has failed herself by failing the test. So at some point, her reality started to believe that as a non-native English speaker, I had failed the test too, maybe in order to make her pain or guilt less bearable. Whenever she asked me about my English classes, she was very empathetic, and it was clear that she was not making fun of me but genuinely believed that I had failed the test. What she thinks might not be the truth, but it is her reality that she has spun around herself to make it less painful for her.

I looked back at my life and realized I might have done this at some point too, though not to this drastic extent. I might have known things which might not have been true, and on being corrected, I must have asked, “Oh, why did I believe it otherwise then?” Which means while 2 plus 2 is always 4, it might not always be 4 in some of our realities. It is a scary thought, and an equally interesting one. I would love to read up more about psychology and realities if I can find some interesting books. Think about it, how fascinating it would be if each of us lived in our respective realities, and there was no concept of an absolute truth. So though in reality I am a poor, Indian graduate student, in my mind, I could be a princess, a Hollywood actor, or a heart surgeon. Is that what we call the beginning of incipient lunacy?

I am not talking about my classmate anymore, and don’t mean any offence to any non-native English speaker, but why is it that we think some people are crazy? Is it because their plane of reality doesn’t match with ours? How many times have you heard your friend complaining how her famous mathematician husband doesn’t hear what she says, forgets to do household chores when asked to, and lives in his own reality solving problems? Is this how ideas in fantasy movies are conceived, by thinking of ideas that might not align with the realities of most people? My grandmother still does not believe that it is possible for someone to travel around the world alone and not be lost. She also doesn’t believe that it is impossible to board a wrong flight. Like people sometimes get on the wrong train, my grandmother believes it is possible to get on the wrong plane; that you can actually get on a plane and realize after talking to the other passengers that the plane is going to Tokyo while you have a ticket to London. It is her reality. I don’t buy it, I don’t believe it, but it is her reality nevertheless.

Maybe we have our own realities because it makes coping with stressful situations easier. If so, then are dreams borne out of our subconscious realities? So many times I have seen dreams about things I would not admit to in my conscious state. I often dream of snakes when I am stressed. This might be because in real life, I am very scared of snakes, and will neither visit the reptile section of the zoo, nor will get into a discussion involving snakes. Then why do I see something in my dreams that I am scared of in reality? Is this because I push away those things I am scared of in my sub-conscious, and while dreaming when our mental guards are down, those issues come up? Who knows !

If you have read a good book about psychology, dreams, or realities, please let me know.

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Final thank you of the day

There is a lot of predictability in my everyday life. Every morning I wake up late and run to catch the bus on time. Every night before I go to sleep, I pray that the following day would bring in new hope and new opportunities. These days I try to reach the department by 8 am every day. These days I usually spend about 12 hours in the department. Every night as I start from my department, it is late and empty. I walk the hallway, get out of the building, walk for a few minutes, and wait for the bus to take me home. It is all very predictably programmed. Every night the bus arrives after a few minutes of wait. I wait for people to get off the bus. Then I board the bus. I start to go for the last seat, which is my favorite. While walking towards it, I expect the driver to start the bus and for me to be jolted out of my motion and lose balance, a phenomenon that happens when you are moving inside a vehicle that accelerates when you are holding on to nothing, best described by Newton’s law of inertia. Every night, I reach my favorite seat all the way at the back, turn, and sit. Every night, the bus starts only after I am seated. He is not obliged to do it, but he still does.

Every night, I say my last thank you to the bus driver mentally, for politely waiting till I have found a seat and for not letting me trip by starting to drive before I have found a seat.

Thank you.

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Efficiency Resolution

It was a new year party. We were transitioning into 2009. Amidst intervals of taking tequila shots and merrymaking, it was time to do the ritualistic new year resolution announcement. Everyone had to drink to a resolution and make a resolution. Everyone laughed about how resolutions were meant to be broken and stood good only a couple of days into the new year. People eventually reverted to their old habits, screw resolutions! As usual, someone said (s)he wanted to lose weight. Someone said (s)he wanted to get married. Someone said (s)he wanted to be a better person. But someone said something I remember vividly till date. (S)he said (s)he wants to stick to the resolution of an 8 hour of work schedule every day.

That’s it? Short and sweet, isn’t it? What was the big deal about sticking to an “I will work for 8 hours a day” resolution? Or so I thought then. But trust me, I am reminded of the resolution every day. I am not sure if the person who made it was able to stick to it, but I haven’t been able to. We like to fool ourselves believing that we spend a large chunk of our time and energy working, but do we really? In class, we check Facebook messages in the name of multitasking. At office, we check personal emails a hundred times, put on music, read the news, comment on our favorite blogs, and speak on the phone. Every time we are given an assignment we do not like to do, we let ourselves get distracted, go out for a walk, drink a glass of water, feel hungry or feel the sudden urge to talk to parents in India, or quickly scan who is doing what on Facebook. And if that is not enough, there are youtube videos to watch, friends dying to talk to you online, and news feeds on who scored a century recently or how the economic policies of the world is affecting the automobile industry. We feel that dying urge to be a part of heated discussions, comment on topics, wish our friends a happy birth day, like status updates like “Life is good, having fun in Hawaii” on FB, and read gossip about others we are better off not knowing. We check the weather and check fluctuation in flight prices from Texas to Florida, though Heaven knows we have no plans of visiting either Texas or Florida for the next few years. Some go a step further and look for online shopping deals, scan for furniture ads on craigslist that they would never buy, or simply forward feel-good emails to others on the pretext that, “If you do not forward this to 15 goats in the next 5 minutes, everyone in your extended family from Ullhasnagar to Jhumri Talaiya is doomed.

On an average, if a person spends 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours relaxing at home (that includes cooking, eating, watching TV, taking a shower, courting, socializing, having and taking care of kids, writing blogs, making travel plans, etc.) and 8 hours at the workplace, no prizes for guessing what time slot we choose to sacrifice for our distractions. Sleep time is our “own time”, and so is the time we spend at home. How is the math of doing quality work going to happen then?

It’s not a preaching post, it’s a self-realization post. I realized (shamefully) that I know how many common friends I have with a certain person “X” over the top of my head, and might also be able to tell you that although I know a friend’s friend only distantly and have never been formally introduced to her, I could tell you where she works, her pet’s name, what car she drives, and where she shops. But if you asked me to name the top five journals in my field or the top research papers on a particular thing I am working on, I will be mumbling, stuttering, scratching my head, and having a difficult time trying to organize my thoughts. So for the last few weeks, I have resolved to reach the department by 8 am and try to be productive. I have tried working in close proximity to my advisor and my other colleagues to take advantage of the Hawthorne effect (people consciously improving their efficiency simply because they know they are being watched). I have tried clicking on non-academic websites for lesser number of times. I have tried not taking phone calls or replying to personal emails. Less FBing, no youtubing, no blogging, and no unnecessarily checking the weather of a place where I do not even live. I won’t claim I have seen outstanding results, but I am still trying to better myself. Every time I need a break, I try taking a walk by the campus instead of checking updates of people I have no business knowing. I am yet to go a long (really long) way before I achieve desired results. But it never hurts to try, does it?

I feel great at the end of the day when I have worked on something, finished something, or achieved a target (which doesn’t happen very often). But some days are wasted, meaning distraction sets in and by the end of the day, you feel horrible armed with meaningless knowledge of who is going where on Thanksgiving and who is drinking what kind of coffee at Starbucks. These are the days I feel most frustrated and useless. Building self control is an exercise that takes time, discipline, and motivation. Which brings me back to the resolution my friend talked about earlier. This is the only resolution I have felt true to its core, and most difficult to follow. “My resolution is to spend 8 hours at work every day just focusing on work”. Sounds very simple, but try doing it. You might perhaps not succeed fully, but you will definitely end up knowing a few things about your self-control (or the lack of it) that you might not openly admit to.

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Feeling Driven

A milestone was achieved in my driving history yesterday. I drove a record of 300 miles in 5 hours, crossing a few major east coast cities, non-stop. This was my first long drive on the east coast, and once I started from New Jersey in the morning, I didn’t stop for once till I reached my destination. Not even a restroom break or a refueling break.

I think driving gives you an amazing perspective about things. There you are sitting controlling the wheel, accelerating, and occasionally braking. It is tiring, but not demanding. For most of my drive on I-95, I was driving at 80 mph. I am telling you all this because this is a first time achievement for me. As I drove from 9 am to 2 pm non-stop, cruising through all the cities and stopping only to pay the toll four times, I got a lot of time to think about things. I started to think about my PhD differently. In some ways, I think I should treat my PhD just like this drive. Start with a plan, be focused, and don’t stop till you have reached your destination. There would be obstacles and wonderful distractions, big cities and lovely places to stop by, but if your goal is to reach home by 2 pm, you would neither think of getting off the freeway near Philadelphia to visit the city, or briefly stop at Baltimore to meet that long lost friend you promised you will meet 5 years ago. Throughout the drive, I focused on being at the leftmost (fastest) lane, passing (overtaking) other cars, and making sure the cops didn’t catch me for driving constantly at 15 mph above speed limit. I didn’t make resolutions that I would not stop and instead make the trip in 5 hours. Instead, all I told myself is I will keep going till I could physically and mentally do it, drive safe, and see how much I can go before I need a break. The estimated arrival time on the GPS kept pushing me for doing better and shortening the time.

All this might mean nothing to you, and it totally makes sense if it doesn’t. Just that ever since I made that trip yesterday, I am on a high. I feel elated, and a strange sense of achievement. Last year this time I could not drive from Seattle to Portland on my own (a 3 hour trip, 180 miles in all maybe). This year I have broken all of my past driving records. And ever since, I have been comparing that journey to the PhD journey I have recently embarked on. Now all this is theory, and there is always a huge difference between theory and implementation. Yet it never hurts to analyze and surmise.

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The PhD Affair

My officemate had some profound thoughts on PhD that she enlightened me with. She said that doing a PhD is like being in a relationship. On certain mornings, you wake up feeling all lovey dovey, floating on cloud 9, knowing that you are the luckiest person in the world to be in this relationship. You look forward to your research, have a wonderful time with your advisor, get your tuitions waived and get paid to obtain a degree. You network, publish, write, teach, nurture, learn, experiment, wonder, analyze, and grow as an individual while being a part of the relationship.

Yet on certain days, depending on that time of the month, the phase of the moon, or the phase of your (or your advisor’s) mood, you feel like screaming. You know you are living a lousy life, a thankless life of an underpaid and overworked graduate student. You spend days and nights at the lab, neglect your pet, don’t give as much time to the “real” relationship you have, never call back your mother on time, and never earn enough. The moron in the adjacent lab who you always thought was a loser graduated with a masters and is now happily working, driving a BMW, making monthly trips to Hawaii and the Bahamas, and has been voted the “most sought after single guy” on shaadi.com. Your advisor is never happy with your deliverables, midlife crisis has hit you, you are losing hair and growing fat, and speed dates and blind dates have been replaced with speed deadlines and blind deadlines. You hate this relationship. You can’t wait to get out of it.

And then you wake up again and feel so lucky, rubbing shoulders with the brightest people in the field, fantasizing about wearing that gown being hooded hopefully in the next few years, and telling yourself that while the moron next door spends his weekends partying, you burn the midnight oil for the greater cause of mankind.

And the cycle of I hate my PhD life and I love my PhD life continues …

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Dreaming Within a Dream

A few months ago, I had a dream. I saw that something good was happening to me, something I’d hoped for a while. It was nothing materialistic. In fact I don’t remember what exactly it was though. However I woke up and there, the dream was gone. It was sad.

Ever since, I have a pattern of dreams. I see that I dream of something good happening to me, and I tell myself in the dream that it is just a dream and will vanish, and I wake up to realize that it is true. I saw I made it up with someone I hadn’t talked to for years, and in my dream, I told the person that it is just a dream and in real life, I know I am never seeing him again. I woke up and there it was. I hadn’t made up with anyone. It was just a dream. On another occasion, I saw that Harvard had reconsidered its decision of admitting me into their program, and I was asking the dean if its reality, because I suspected it is just a dream. I was right. I woke up to realize I was still as far from Harvard as possible, both geographically and literally.

These must have been examples of repressed desires, things that I have wanted in the subconscious though in reality, I kept telling myself that it did not matter. Who cares about Harvard is what I told myself. But deep within, I think I cared. It was a good exercise, since I started asking myself the things I really want although I might have shrugged them off consciously all this while. The list, I am not going to tell you about. But I can say that it is an exercise definitely worth doing. If nothing, we can be more aware of the things that constitute our needs, things we keep telling ourselves does not matter. Repressed desires, forgotten friendships, decisions of moving on, things that make you shrug your shoulders and say “I don’t care” though deep within, you know you do care. If nothing, you will at least not fool yourself going back and forth between your inner/true reality and the perceived reality.

I want to read and know more about dreams and their interpretations (and I am not talking about dreams where you see something random like a horse and know that you are going to have a baby boy). I want to watch sensible movies about interesting experiences or explanations about dreams. It is interesting to know about our conscious, cognitive world, but what happens in the subconscious is even more intriguing.

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Small is eventually beautiful

A dark summary of how moving from a boastfully big north-western American city to a small university town on the east changed my attitude towards looking at things, and doing things.

It wasn’t a comfortable move, comfortable being synonymous with “sit-on-my-ass-and-do-nothing”. Boxes were filled, things were sorted, most were thrown, decisions were made, muscles power was spent, and so was money. Hundreds of dollars slipped through as if there was a sink hole sitting right there. Car was moved, bank balance was depleted, farewell parties were attended, gyaan about move and new life was accepted, and good wishes of “hope you meet someone there” were received with a disinterested smile. Planes were changed, a sleepless night was spent cruising through air pockets and waiting 5 hours at an airport for the next connection. Then I hopped onto this plane that was to take me to my final destination, realizing that it is the smallest plane I have ever seen or taken, so small and cramped that even my carry-on luggage had to be checked in. Sitting huddled in the aircraft, I made a mental note of losing more weight. As we descended, the landscape below kept getting greener and greener. It was beautiful, alright, but then all forests are beautiful. I was hoping to see the smaller version of maybe the Space Needle or the Downtown skyline lookalike, and there, we had landed. I didn’t see anything, not even a building more than a couple storey high. We had landed in the middle of lush, green vegetation. It was an airport alright, but so small that you had to actually hop off the plane onto the ground, pat the plane at the back as you would do to the elephant buddy that just gave you a ride across the Periyar Reserve in Kerala, and walk to the baggage claim area inside the airport.

Welcome to the typical American small town, a voice said sarcastically.

My electronic friend (friendships made over chats and emails) was waiting to pick me up. There were six more cars maybe. Not much traffic, huh? By now, my mind had gone to that mode where I was comparing everything I had there and I saw here. Space Needle, no Space Needle. Tall downtown buildings (really tall ones that gave you neck aches). No buildings at all. Rushed traffic at the Seattle airport. A few cars seldom qualify as traffic.

So I hopped on to the car, and in the next 10 minutes, I was home. Not that my new house was located particularly close to the airport. Here, everything is located close to each other. I mentally wrinkled my nose. An inner voice almost boasted, “Seattle airport is way bigger and crowded, and you take like two interstate freeways and drive for an hour before you could get to the airport. People can actually miss flights getting delayed in traffic. Whereas here I could be walking slowly and still not miss my flight”.

This attitude of comparing that versus this continued for the next few weeks. Every time someone would casually or courteously ask about Seattle, I would get into this rant about how big and bright Seattle was. I needed to get a hold on myself, I was getting paranoid. I was soon to realize that my new university town did not have a Macys. There were the other basic stores alright, Bath and Body Works, Target, Office Depot, Walmart, but there was only one store of every kind (except McDonalds I guess). I remember almost bitching to T, “What kind of a horrible place this is. They just have a single store for every chain”. There were a few English movie theaters, but the nearest Hindi movie theater was 2 hours away. In fact the next big city was 2 hours away. I was horrified that there were not that many places to drive and hike compared to Seattle. Everything looked green but kind of monotonous. The volcanic mountains and the coast of the west were missing. There was no Mount Rainier around. No Olympic mountains and no Lake Washington. The town started and ended within a diameter of a couple of miles. I was dreading the day when people would visit me and I would have nothing to show them around.

I remembered my friend from Wyoming who lived amongst fields and mountains and had remarked during her Seattle visit that America is not all concrete and big city and flashy downtown like I perceive. America could also be this boring place in the middle of potato fields with nothing to do but sit at home. And that was the America she and most others from India got to see. There are very few international students who actually get to live in big, vibrant cities.

That day I had shrugged, “Whatever !!” Today, I understood what she had meant.

Things changed the first day I woke up late for class. The class was at 9 am and I was horrified to discover it was past 8:30 am. I scrambled, skipped breakfast, and ran up to the bus stop cursing myself. I luckily got the bus and guess what? I reached the department at 8:55 am. The other day we went to watch a movie and thanks to the game, the roads were blocked. We had to take a detour and even after that, we reached the theater 10 minutes late, just in time to catch the movie starting. Think about how cool it is that you can start 15 minutes before class and still reach on time. In fact you can start for any place and in 5-15 minutes you would be there. Yes there is just one store of each kind, but this means less confusion. If I ask someone to wait for me in front of Starbucks, there is no confusion as to which Starbucks I am referring to (Only a Seattleite can vouch for how many hundreds of Starbucks there are and how it adds to the confusion). I have all my favorite chains of stores, including Chipotle, and I don’t care about the number of stores because I realize I can only be at one place at a time.

These days, I find it comforting that I don’t have to deal with the hustle and bustle associated with big cities, parking issues, traffic clogs, and the confusion and complication of living in a bigger city. Anyone who has been caught up in evening traffic on the 520 while traveling from Redmond to Seattle will know what I mean. I like the fact that I live with a bunch of graduate students (and not working professionals) and thus do not feel mentally pressurized into taking the flight and going to some place during the long weekends. This weekend I just cleaned and organized my home, read books, watched movies, and did nothing. My weekends in Seattle were not so. It used to be so pretty that I was pressurized and coerced into going somewhere every weekend. I still love to travel, but I have realized that this place is so small, I must keep those special places I want to visit for future when friends and family visit me, for I hope I am going to be here for the next few years. So these days I have developed new and more sessile interests like watching movies and reading books. I am working towards developing better relationship with others as this is going to be my social group for the next few years. And for a change, I actually like the fact that I am not pressurized into planning trips and driving on weekends all the time. This way I hopefully get to finish my PhD sooner.

It takes a while to get used to things if you are used to a bigger and more vibrant city and move to a smaller one. But once you realize the benefits and the simplicity of living in small towns, you will begin to appreciate what I mean. I no longer intend to drive to bigger cities during weekends, like I had originally planned. Instead, I am going to go to the only Starbucks in town, with a book bought from the only Barnes and Noble book store. I am going to read the book, observe people, chat with them, and write about my experiences. When I am done, I will lie by the lawn on campus and soak in the warmth of the sun. I would think of all those people caught up in traffic snarls and delayed flights at the airport and sigh in relief. I don’t need to go anywhere for a vacation. My work place is now my vacation place.

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The PhD Launch Pad

Living in the IT-hub called Seattle and hanging out with a bunch of techie geeks, I listened with yawning boredom to all the tech talks, the heated discussions about if an Ipad is better than an Ipod, an Ipod is better than the Droid phone, and so on. I was surrounded by gadget maniacs, people who lived, loved, and were wedded to gadgets. I have known friends who window shopped at the apple store for hours, or booked iphones even before they were launched. 2G led to 3G and then 4G. I don’t really get much of it, and learning new technology sure does scare me. I like to keep the things in life simple. I used my phone set, a simple one that can be used solely to talk, for four years till it’s parts were threatening to come apart, thanks to excess usage and baby Kalyani fiddling with it whenever she could lay her tiny hands on it. Last week G forced me to get a new phone, a free upgrade that I had resisted for so long. It’s a simple phone, again used solely for conversation, but just the thought of learning how to use a new device scared me. It took me days to figure out how to control volume or put it in the silent mode, how to send messages without sending it to the wrong person, and how to set the alarm clock so that I wake up on time. You get the point I hope.

My advisor is a gadget crazy person. Like I’ve noticed with most men, his eyes light up with childlike excitement whenever he talks about those cool machines he ordered and the glamorous phones and computers he uses. I am yet to see the cool machine he has that tracks eye ball movements as one gets into deep thinking. In one of those states of deep thought, he finally blurted out, “I need you to get an ipad.”

I didn’t think I heard him right. Who needs an ipad for research? He said he needs to keep in touch with me even when I am traveling. I tried assuring him such a situation wouldn’t arise as I wouldn’t travel if there was work. I mean it takes me hours to figure how a simple mp3 player works. I thought ipads are toys for the rich and spoilt CS people. I left it at that.

The next day he asked me again if I had given it a thought. What was there to think? I didn’t want an ipad, or any gadget. Why couldn’t he get me a gift card from Barnes & Noble? Or take me to his next conference where I could see a new place? But then, words of wisdom came from a senior who I asked if there was any need for me to have an ipad.

“Take it as a gift from a person who loves technology and leave it at that. It’s much simpler that way.”

So dear friends, I’ll soon be a proud owner of a 64 GB ipad 3G. I don’t know what those words mean, I just googled the name. Like I told a friends, “I usually have an apple in my bag just in case I get hungry…... now I'll have 2 in my bag :)"

How times change. 4 years ago, my school gave me a flash drive as a gift. It had thrilled me beyond everything. The world has come a long way from giving away flash drives to ipads.

How much I learn to use it is yet to be seen though.

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School of Thought

It's time to start the next chapter.

It’s time to leave those fancy handbags behind and pick up that backpack.

It’s time to hunt for free food on campus and live on Maggi, Subway, and Chipotle.

It’s time to stop living in that apartment alone, and to have fun staying with roommates.

It’s time to brag about the campus you will be spending the next few years of your life in.

It’s time to get into the vicious cycle of sleeping during classes and staying up late finishing assignments.

It’s time to subscribe to PhD comics.

It’s time to start taking the bus again instead of hopping onto the car every time.

It’s time to aim for those conferences and travel at the advisor's expense.

It’s time to push myself to do something new and creative, and to try to be productive everyday.

After a break of 2 years from school, it’s time to get back to school again.

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What’s up?

It’s been a long time since I visited my own blog. Talk about priorities. So much has happened ever since the last time, I keep penning down snippets of thoughts till my mind wanders off to the next thing.

So what’s been happening? A lot actually.

I miss Kolkata. But not as much as I miss the home cooked food. The biryani ma made for my farewell lunch was awesome.

I miss watching Indian Idol 5 live. It was something to wait in anticipation for Mondays and Tuesdays. Now I just update myself watching it online.

Germany is a very efficient country. If there is a place I would like to work in, it could be Germany.

Europe is all about nice castles and palaces, trains and trams, cobbled streets and nice little shops. US doesn’t seem as visually appealing to me as it used to ever since I left Europe.

My obsession with my favorite movie “Before Sunrise” led me to plan a trip to Vienna where the movie was shot. I wasn’t disappointed. Vienna lived up to my expectations, and more.

My other obsession with Mills & Boon, and those tall, dark hunks led me to plan another trip to Italy. Italian men look as handsome as I always thought they would, and Italian women are the best dressed and good looking women I have seen. Italy seemed like the fashion capital.

Prague was beautiful, just wish it wasn’t that hot there.

I am sporting a nicely developed tan as a gift from my Eurotrip that will take me years to get rid of.

A little accident on the streets of Sicily, I tore my ligament and am in bandages and crutches. Not that it has stopped me from doing anything, but the bandage needs to be there for 6 more weeks.

Which is why I am not driving from the western coast of the US to the eastern coast anymore. My big plans of the 3,000 mile road trip I had planned for this summer goes down the drain. Sob sob !!

I am in the US now. I entered the US in a wheelchair. Which also meant minimum security questioning for me, and minimal waiting in queues. The services and assistance provided by Lufthansa impressed me.

I am slowly catching up on emails and posts, but am spending most of my time figuring out how to ship my car and stuff, preparing myself for school that starts in 3 weeks, and meeting friends in Seattle. I never thought I would make so many acquaintances here, but for the next few days, my lunch, dinner and evening schedules look full.

Lastly, I just turned a year older a few hours ago. As a kid, you wait in anticipation for your birthday, waking up and meeting all your friends in school, your friends wishing you, your teachers being nice to you. Your perspectives change as you get older. For me, the people who mattered to me and who I mattered to were all there, personally or in spirit.

It’s time to plan the move again, but will catch up soon.

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A Big Fat-(free) Lie

At some point of my life, roughly 83 hours and 52 minutes ago, I got tired of hogging on all the Rasgulla, Gulab Jamuns, Rabri, and all those deep fried masses of sugars and calories. Nothing triggered it, it just happened. I guess it’s like giving up on smoking (or getting rid of that loser of a boyfriend you should have left 5 years ago). You have been thinking of doing it for a while, and every time you try, you just fail. Then one fine morning, you wake up and just do it. I think the same happened to me. I have been unhappy with the way I have put on weight for the last few years. From being a person who jumped at the center of the screen whenever I spotted a camera, now I started shying away from the camera, finding a comfort spot behind somebody so that my paunch was hiding. Paunch I could still hide wearing appropriate clothes, but where would I hide my face, a big round blob of fat now with chubby cheeks? It’s been years since I’ve seen my face oval, the original way God designed it. Anyway I will rant about my body and looks some other time (I promise I will). I will not spare you, I will even rant about my huge biceps, till you are bored to death. Anyway.

So one fine day I just decided to give up on the empty calories. This was the least I could do, since I wasn’t committed to gymming and working out big time. The mangoes looked at me from the fridge expectantly and I looked back at the mangoes with pain. The neighbor who makes awesome “Patisaptas” (sweet crepes stuffed with coconut and jaggery and sometimes condensed milk filling) was promptly asked not to make those for my goodbye dinner in 5 days. Convincing mother wasn’t a problem since she has always been after me to lose weight, but convincing neighbors and relatives who believe in increasing their good karma by stuffing another Rasgulla into your mouth became a big problem. I turned down two dinner invitations feigning a stomach ache because it is futile to argue and explain to these people why I will not hog on the coconut cream based prawns, the deep fried potato tikkis, and the four courses of dessert following a five course dinner. Not that I have slimmed down overnight, but I still intended to stick to my decision of not eating rubbish.

So I went to visit my ex-student’s place. I taught her Math for 4 years and though she sucked at Math, we became great friends. Ironically I was the one who told her that Math isn’t everything in life, but as long as she studies it, she should do it well. I go visit my student after 4 years, and aunty (her mom) gets me a huge brown chocolate pastry and a tall glass of chilled iced tea. Poor aunty is familiar with my eating habits four years ago when I used to religiously devour every sweet she put on my plate (I don’t just have A sweet tooth, my entire dentition is sweet !!). Today I had already reached the stage when I was having sugar withdrawal symptoms, a little dizziness in my head and a very irritable temper caused by it. Not that I was starving or dieting, I just decided not to hog on high-calorie, low-nutrient stuff.

My plea of neither touching the chocolate pastry nor the iced tea fell on deaf ears. I promised I was more than happy sipping on a glass of cold water, but she wouldn’t understand. I tried reasoning with her, feigning a stomach ache, but nothing worked. Poor aunty must have been worried what she would offer me instead; maybe she didn’t have too many options. When nothing worked out, I had the most innovative idea. The only problem with that was, well, I can plan a lie beforehand and deliver it well, but when I make up an instant lie, I usually get caught.

“Aunty, please don’t insist. I have been diagnosed with high cholesterol”.

I don’t know why I said it, but it was one of those things you say first and think later. It sounded odd to my ears, high cholesterol at 28?

“Oh dear, sorry about it”. Aunty promptly put back the goodies away.

So we sat in an uncomfortable silence the next few minutes, aunty too shocked to ask me to eat anything and me too scared to speak lest I am caught.

“So how did it happen?”, she asked. “Family history?”

Now something in me refused to malign my impeccable family history. I was already feeling guilty for making up illnesses I do not have.

“Uh, not really. Just a bad American lifestyle. Not eating well and all”.

So the conversation drifted to normal soon. We spoke about this and that.

“Where did you get your tests done?”

I must admit I was totally unprepared for the question that caught me off guard. I was about to say our family doctor’s name in Kolkata, but something in my head was screaming our family doctor is aunty’s brother-in-law too.

“Aa- aa- bbb- bbb….”

Aunty stared at me stammer.

“Bbb—bbb--- Bellevue clinic”

“Which one? In Kolkata?”, she asked.

“No no, the one in Seattle? Bellevue clinic in Seattle”

“Oh.. okay”

“My memory getting bad aunty. These days I forget names so often”, I explained lamely.

The chocolate pastry stared at me from the corner of the room for the next 30 minutes, untouched. I came back later that night and had healthy roti and subzee for dinner. I wonder if aunty ever realized I gave her some instantly concocted lie. Even if she did, I’m sure she would know it was an innocuous, fat fat-free lie.

sunshine