Shaken on a 5.8 scale

I experienced a 5.8 on Richter scale earthquake today. A first time experience for me. How did it feel? I was in the department, working on some papers, when it felt like a team of horses running and stampeding all around you. The glass window panes were shaking, and shaking badly. Within seconds, realization hit, and we ran toward the exit doors. Soon a huge group had gathered outside the building. It was the first day of the fall semester, and many were in classes. Professors and students had evacuated the building, and together we watched the glass windows shake. However, nothing shattered or broke. Even afternoon classes were not cancelled (much to my disappointment). Everyone was back to business, though unknown people kept making small talk, referring to the earthquake. I walked to the two libraries to collect a few non-academic, fictional novels, and both times, the librarians asked how it was, experiencing an earthquake of this magnitude. The irony is, living in the Pacific Northwest (an earthquake prone region) for 4 years, I had never experienced anything like this. However, this one seems to have shaken up more than half of the east coast.

I came home to discover (much to my relief) that everything in my room looked the way it was supposed to be. The mess in my room was more due to the procrastination of unpacking suitcases. Not a single picture had moved off its frame, not a single book had displaced. However, as I sit and work in my room, I felt two more minor tremors in the last hour or so. This time, I do not know if I am imagining things, or if it is just the couple next door.

sunshine

30 Rock(s)

Earlier this month, I finally did what I have dreaded the last 5 years. I left my twenties and stepped into my thirties. Not that I particularly had a choice, and not that someone came knocking at my door asking me if I was ready to be in my thirties, or if time should freeze for a while. Turning thirty came with a lot of contemplation, reflection, and introspection. If I continue to live the healthy life that I have lived so far, I would like to think this is where people break for the interval or half-time in movies. Of course, no one knows for sure.

I wonder how I would sum up my life. I wonder if I wrote a book off my life, how it would read. Certain times it has been a joy ride. Sometimes it has been painful. There have been achievements, yes. There have been failures and disappointments as well, lots actually. Did I get everything I had hoped for? Perhaps yes. Yes, there are certain things that I wish had never happened, or had happened differently. Such is life.

I wasn’t really trying to summarize my blessings, but I started to think of all those things, those eventful moments I have at 30 that I am thankful for, and all those things I wish I did. I am primarily an academically driven person, and I am thankful that my academics always got priority. I never had to choose work over academics because there was a dearth of money. I am immensely thankful for that. I have had an excellent education, although measuring education in terms of degrees defeats the purpose of education in itself. I have been fortunate enough to have two masters degrees, and to experience both, the Indian and the American system of education. I have been closely associated with two reputed research driven R01 universities in the US. I consider myself amongst the fortunate who came to the US as a graduate student, and got the opportunity to study without having to pay for it. I don’t think the experience would have been any better had I come for work on-site. My academic trajectory has exactly been the way I wanted it to be. I wanted to move to the US for academics (and not for work), and that is exactly how it turned out to be. Currently, I have a US degree to boast of, and another terminal degree in the making.

Traveling has played a significant part in my interest and development. I have lived and traveled in 3 continents. Sometime in life, I discovered the joys of solo, independent traveling as compared to traveling in herds, and have singly backpacked dozens of places. Along with travel came the interest in photography. Over the last few years, I have tried to better my photographic skills, and feel very special when a particular picture I took is recognized or appreciated. I am fluently conversant in 4 languages, and have workable knowledge of 2 more languages. I am proud that I got rid of my unfounded fears and learned to drive. I love my car (and camera) as much as I would love my family, and in the last 2 years, I have driven roughly a little less than the distance of the circumference of the earth at the equator (about 22,000 miles). I have visited 18 American states, 10 American national parks, and a handful of the wonders of the world. My first flight experience was 5 years ago, when I got to sit in the cockpit of the plane for hours as we flew over Turkey. I love visiting corners, and have been to the north western most and southernmost tip of continental US. I have had 2 full time jobs, one as a teacher and the other as a researcher, and survived a lay off during the American economic depression. I know functional salsa, and have performed on stage in Seattle 4 times, twice for dance performances and twice for a play.

I have spent 26 birth days with family, which is great. I have successfully managed to blog for the last 6 years. An activity that started out of fun and the need to do something with the extra time I had after graduating college soon became a driving motivation for me. I love my evolving sense of humor I have developed over the years, bordering on biting sarcasm mostly. I really like the way I see the world, myself included, and make fun of things around me. this wouldn’t have happened without the practice of writing for years.

I have had a brief (really brief) stint with modeling, when I modeled for a line of products. Don’t ask me more, I am not particularly proud of being in front of a rolling camera. I have managed to stay single, despite immense societal pressure and peer pressure. Most of my friends are married with school-going children now. I am not against marriage per se, I just didn’t want to marriage to become another one of those things in my check list of things to do before I died. I didn’t want to get into something without entirely being sure I was doing the right thing, just because the rest of the world has gone the same path. I have seen too many relationships going haywire, and till marriage happens, I am very comfortable living alone, globe-trotting confidently, and will not feel weird walking inside a restaurant having a meal just on their own or take a train and travel for hours just happy reading or seeing the world go by them. I would prefer it any day, than wake up beside someone not knowing why I married him in the first place.

On the flip side, there are things that I wish I had done by now. I haven’t read a single Harry Potter book, and haven’t watched a single movie from the Matrix series. I still haven’t visited Delhi, a city I have always wanted to see and know more of. I still haven’t written a book, despite contemplating it for years now. The list of things I wish to do, but still haven’t, is endless. However, beyond my entire list of achievements and disappointments, I consider my greatest achievement to be the fact that I have a job, a work life that defines my identity. I am neither financially dependent, nor work deprived. I would rather be swamped with work, looking for a vacation, than have my life as a vacation with ample time but no direction. Sometime during my twenties, my greatest fear was that I would live in the US, but as a dependent. Although I am a poor graduate student with no green card, multi-storied town house, fancy cars, or the so called achievement of bearing American children (like a friend once pointed out) to boast of, I am glad I steered clear of that dependent route, not succumbing to the panic of staying single.

I have had a great life so far. Fast-paced, eventful, and mostly the way I wanted it to be. But being 30 is not just listing the achievements and disappointments. For me, being 30 is also being wise. At 20, I was exactly the way people at 20 are. I was starry eyed, passionate, energetic, a dreamer, took up challenges, and believed that I could become anyone in life. At 30, I have an idea of probably who I am going to become, and am content with the fact that I will perhaps not become everything I aimed for, and am okay with that. Realistic is what I was not then, and am perhaps learning to be now.

sunshine

United (Airlines) We Stand

Dog tired. Dehydrated and feverish. Too exhausted to think and too eager to get home. The long journey had not exactly been a smooth ride. Occasional air pockets. The chicken for lunch at the airport that could be mistaken for leather. The constant fear of dying midair after reading a book about the exact mechanism by which people die during an air crash. The well built man on my left, whose occasional and unintentional brush of the femur sent faint shivers down my spine.

Long flights were not my forte. I would be too glad to reach home, ensconced in the familiar comforts of my bed. After a wait of a few hours, I was only too happy to be able to catch the last leg of my flight back home. I heard an announcement that didn’t exactly ring warning bells first. The flight was overbooked, and they were looking for volunteers to take the flight the next day. In exchange of wasting my time, they would compensate me with a travel voucher of $400, plus free accommodation for the night. Naah, the offer did not seem lucrative enough to tempt me. Spending the night in a hotel, with the knowledge that my luggage had reached somewhere before I did, and was lying unsupervised, and the hassle of clearing security again, wasn’t good enough to tempt me to volunteer to take the next flight. Why did you overbook your flight dear United Airlines? Don’t you always do it? Last time, you were going around offering almost double the amount, begging people to stop their work and be jobless enough to spend nights in hotels. Why were you so greedy?

No one volunteered. Which responsible person with work commitments would? The boarding started, and I confidently walked toward the aircraft. They scanned my boarding pass, and there, the familiar beep of the scanner was playing out of tune. This is not exactly the chord you sing in, dear scanner. They asked me to step aside, as if I was a convict. It seemed I was a few of the “chosen ones” who would not be allowed to take the flight that day. Since I did not volunteer to miss my flight, the system did a random search to see who had paid less for their tickets, or who had booked their flight long back. I was paying a price for planning my trip early enough, because that is how I paid less for my ticket according to them. This wasn’t good news.

To cut a long story short, they did several things that did not seem right. The women at the counter were curt and rude, and cared least about my work priorities. They did not oblige even when repeatedly asked about what was happening, and why was I picked not to board the flight. Wait, this gets even more interesting. My luggage was already in the plane, and the lady looked at me accusatorily when I asked if I could at least have my luggage, because I did not have any change of clothes with me, and because I was not comfortable with the idea of my bags lying unsupervised for the night. She rudely asked me if she wanted to stop the plane, take out all the suitcases, and find mine, as if I was responsible for my luggage making into the flight, when I was not allowed to. Then she just asked me to sign somewhere, and gave me a gift voucher of $400. Note, when I asked if I could have cash instead, she refused, with her “take it or leave it” tone. Basically, she was giving me a voucher to be redeemed within the next 1 YEAR ONLY on another UNITED AIRLINE FLIGHT ONLY. So if I had pneumonia and could not fly for a year, or if I decided to fly somewhere United Airlines did not fly, for example, directly to Kolkata, my voucher was doomed. I later came home and did some reading, only to understand that the customer has the right to information. Here is what their website says,

“If you are involuntarily denied boarding and have complied with our check-in and other applicable rules, we will give you a written statement that describes your rights and explains how we determine boarding priority for an oversold flight. You will generally be entitled to compensation and transportation on an alternate flight.”

Another website claims the following:

“The airlines are obligated to offer you either a travel voucher *or* cash compensation (in the form of cash or check) up to a certain value … Most people are unaware that the airlines have to give you that compensation in cash if you so wish. In fact, most gates leave off that little nugget of information in hopes you’ll simple take what they’re offering as a voucher. And most do.”

No wonder they did not bother to explain me my rights, and I would obviously not be reading stuff off the internet the moment they denied to board me.

They offered me a hotel voucher too, a hotel outside the airport. How I got to the hotel, and how much I spent on transportation, was not their headache. Thankfully, I was a few hours driving distance from home, and sometime during my life, I had done myself a favor by learning to drive. Hence I politely declined their hotel voucher, and rented a car out of my pocket. It was more important that I reached home, than stay at a hotel or at the airport for the night. I drove for the next few hours, picked up my luggage abandoned at the airport (unlike their claims that someone would keep an eye on my bags, they were lying unsupervised at the airport), and reached home long past midnight.

United Airlines, you were not flying me in for free, were you? What kind of a service was this, especially after I was denied boarding? I had heard the story of United Airlines breaking guitars (do watch the very enlightening video). If I was creative enough and had the time, I would not just write a song, I would make a movie out of the episode.

sunshine

Daddy knows best

Last semester, who else but academic daddy asked me to take 2 core courses in statistics together. This was along with many other courses I was taking. I was baffled, scared of failing, and wondered why he would urge me to take 2 heavy courses together, when others in the department took their own sweet time to finish them. I tried to resist, reason, argue, even sweet talk into wriggling out of this predicament, but daddy is not really renowned for being very easy going. I was definitely in for some fun times ahead.

The semester was a nightmare. I struggled for hours every day, trying to finish the assignments, trying to understand the Greek and Hebrew the theory behind both courses were, and tried to understand the logic behind why God selected me, an unsuspecting innocent who has never willingly meant any harm to anyone, to go through this suffering. Thursdays were a nightmare, with 6 hours of classes, and I was amongst very few in the department who took both courses together. More than once, I have feared failing in one or both, and have shuddered at the thought, knowing how daddy would feel about it. I could go on and on describing my pain.

Magically, I passed both courses at the end of the semester. I had cried in anguish after it took me hours of effort to finish the finals for both courses. The day I submitted both exams (yeah, to make it worse, both courses had close deadlines for the finals), I had slumped defeated, too numb to realize I had put two core courses behind me. I had felt so lightweight once I was done, that the feeling itself was surreal. I did well in both courses.

It was time to thank daddy. Throughout the semester, I was convinced that I was going to fail. Right now, while most students are to go through the torture of taking the advanced course, I am done with it. I am on to more difficult advanced courses now, but that is a different story. The reason why daddy pushed me to take both became clear much later. First, I used the knowledge acquired by taking both to get some serious research done this summer, when I did not have the pressure of taking courses. If I did not have both stats courses under my belt, my research achievements this summer would be limited. More importantly, something happened that was beyond the scope of my understanding. This summer, the professor for one of the two advanced level courses left to take up another job elsewhere. I had no way of knowing this would happen (perhaps daddy did), but my peers who were hoping to take the course next semester will have to wait for a while now.

The moral of the story: Listen to your daddy, even if you do not agree with him. For he might be as clueless about your life, abilities, and your difficulties as you are, but given his experience in general, chances are less likely that he will screw up.

sunshine

28 and Unemployed - Part 1/3

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Part 2/3 ....

Part 3/3 ......

I was a month past 28. Barely a year out of graduate school. Recent owner of a car after 3 years of dreading and 1 month of learning to drive. Happy with a job that wasn’t necessarily THE job, but was something. It paid the bills, maintained my visa status, gave me something to talk about in typical Indian gatherings when people asked what I did, and bought me enough time to decide where I wanted to see myself headed. I was married to my job- a classic case of an arranged marriage. We met on campus, the recruiters hooked us up, and although I didn’t love it at first sight, I learnt to appreciate the perks that came with it- a name, a recognition, a box of business cards with my work designation boldly imprinted under my name, an unbeatable security, a boost to my self-confidence, a steady paycheck that took care of my passion for travel, and enough time and energy to pursue it. A double masters graduate (a PhD dropout actually), I told myself that I would never go back to school to finish my PhD. There was no pride living the life of an overworked and underpaid PhD student, and the smart way was to get a job and have a life. As I drove to work every morning, listening to the bleak updates of the recession on the National Public Radio, of people losing jobs and organizations downsizing, my heart reached out to these people I did not know. I told myself I was the luckiest person to hold on to my job, more so because I was single and did not have a “fallback option” for a husband. The security that came with my job was something worth every hour I spend doing mundane stuff in office, not knowing who would care about my work if I died working on it. Little did I know about the ill-fated layoff that was awaiting me.

When the clock struck twelve, I stood in the cold and rain, watching the fireworks explode over the Space Needle. Squished in a merrymaking crowd in a pub, I had welcomed the New Year with unemployment. No more playing office every morning. No more pay checks for an indefinite period of time. Unemployed, penniless, homeless, visa-less, and barely a year out of graduate school, I had cried broken-heartedly for all the catharsis in my life.

To be continued .....

28 and Unemployed: Part 2/3

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Part 2/3.....

Part 3/3 ......

Do you know the one big thing that losing a job does to you? No, it does not drive you bankrupt instantly, it does not make you friendless, nor does it strip you off your visa status immediately. However, it strips you off your confidence big time, eating into your self-esteem, and leaving a dull void of self-doubt at the core. You know you are supposed to go out and meet people, network to ensure you find a job soon, but it seems you have ended up with legs made of lead. You do not want to meet or talk to people. The world symbolically gets on the train leaving the station and you stand there feeling deadweight, seeing the world leave you in slow motion. You hate meeting people, or even picking up the phone because they will either ask you how you lost your job, or will tell you not to worry at the time when you have lost your happiness, your sleep, and your old self beaming with confidence. You hide and sulk, stop taking calls, eat wrong, put on weight, end up looking even more pathetic, question your abilities, look at your degrees with doubt, and sift through your graduation album and cry. Suddenly your friends are nice to you, they take you out for dinner and do not let you pay, and there you are sitting and watching them suspiciously. As an outsider, it is a simple situation where you have lost a job, and you are supposed to move on and find a new job without making a big deal. However when you are in the situation, it is the biggest deal of your life. The voices in your head forever keep nagging, “Maybe I was not good enough”. Our upbringing trains us to deal with success, but does not train us to deal with failure. You tell yourself that you were the college topper, the best performing employee in your previous job, and it does not make sense that you don’t have a job anymore. Few realize that although it is sad to lose your job, you can sail through this phase of unemployment with style, so that the world around you would die to be in your shoes.

Did I sail through my unemployment with style? I do not know about that. I am a liar if I said I accepted reality and moved on. Oh, it affects me till date. It was one single, isolated event on a fine morning when I was told I was leaving. However, I have replayed that incident in my head a million times now, making me feel the pain a million times. I still have nightmares of being asked to leave my workplace. The face of my employers change, but there is someone I always see in my nightmares sitting behind a mahogany desk with an intimidating and overpowering expression, asking me to leave. I was scared, vulnerable, and somewhere in the subconscious, I learnt to believe that I will never be good enough to hold on to a job, friends, or relationships.

I tried for months to get another job, but nothing worked out. Tired of feeling sorry, I gazed out at the waterfront, and asked myself one sunny morning what I would do if I didn’t have to worry about money, success, or what people thought of me. Pen and paper in hand, I started to make a list of the things I would do if I got a break. I was single, unattached, healthy, enthusiastic, could live in whatever part of the world I chose to, didn’t have a child to look after or a mortgage to pay, no ties absolutely. I wondered how I had overlooked these blessings. As I kept writing, my “wish list” kept growing longer. There were so many things I had always wanted to do, waiting for the opportune moment that never came. My unemployment turned out to be that opportune moment in my life. I now had a plan for my life, and a fun plan indeed. My crazy list looked something like, “Going back to school. Traveling Europe. Visiting family. Learning a skill. Losing weight. Watching all the top movies on the IMDB list. Writing a book.” I knew I could not finish even half of them, but I was already excitedly planning my unemployment period. What a welcome break it was from the boredom and monotonousness of doing routine things that everyone around me did.

To be continued ........

28 and Unemployed: Part 3/3

Part 1/3 ........

Part 2/3 ......

Part 3/3 .........

By January, I found myself sitting in music class, cleaning the cobwebs off my voice and relearning my Sa-Re-Ga-Ma. I used to sing with my grandfather as a kid. He took with him the culture of evening riyaaz when he died. 24 years later, I started my classical music lessons. Now that I was singing, I wanted to dance too. I felt self-conscious, I had gained a lot of weight in the last few years, but I had always wanted to dance with the local dance wing, and realized this could be my only chance. I auditioned with them for a show, and the weekdays saw me singing and dancing to the tunes of music for the upcoming show. My muscles screamed in pain, I no longer felt that nimble and flexible I used to feel years ago, and came so close to giving up at times but dragged on for that day I would be on stage feeling proud of myself. February saw me live that moment of pride, performing on stage.

I had a lot of time now but no money, so I started living with a close friend. I helped her take care of her baby, another unique experience for me. Baby and I became best friends, and I learnt skills like feeding a 1 year old, keeping her entertained, talking to her, making her learn new words, and singing to her. By the end of my one-month long stay with her, she was singing Sa-Re-Ga-Ma with full confidence. I had circulated the gift of music I had got from my music teacher, to baby. Taking care of the little one taught me love, patience, and the art of understanding little humans who do not talk to communicate or make themselves understood, not to mention bits and pieces of Tamil. Next, I moved to another friend’s place where I had another baby to take care of, not a little human, but a very understanding and communicative cat. Anyone who knows me would know how scared I am of animals, and I would not even go close to a harmless, innocent animal, let alone live with one. However, I saw this as another opportunity to get over my fears and take temporary responsibility of a living being. Kitty and I had the house to ourselves and we would often sit together in the evenings watching television, playing, or talking to each other. I told her stories and she responded by purring and mewing. We even watched a Bengali movie together once.

By the end of March, I had heard back that I was not granted an extension of my US visa. I was expected to leave the US, my home for the last 4 years. It was yet another calamity that came as an opportunity. I looked at Google maps and asked myself if the world was a playground lying invitingly in front of me, where would I like to play next. I had my answer. I sold most my stuff, packed the rest of my life in boxes at a friend’s garage, left my car in another friend’s driveway, and took off. I took a flight to New York, and another flight that didn’t stop till it reached India. I was in India after 4 years, meeting my family and friends. I rejuvenated myself, felt nurtured with unadulterated love and support that a family provides, and went back to work voluntarily at my old school where I used to teach 4 years ago. I saw this as a unique opportunity to re-establish my contacts, and to do something I was passionate about- teach. All it took me to be happy and feel useful was to discover something I loved to do, and start doing it again.

Before I knew, I had spent months with family, possibly more time than anyone living outside home could ever imagine. It was time to move on. The next 2 weeks saw me backpacking, living, and breathing in the places I had only read about and dreamt of, but had never thought I would visit in this life. I had always wanted to walk the streets of Vienna where my favorite movie “Before Sunrise” was shot, and I did it. I had always wanted to visit an active volcano, and here I was climbing Mount Etna in Sicily. I walked the streets of Dresden, had Gelato in Rome, got a first hand experience of marveling at awe inspiring work of Michelangelo in Rome, stood mesmerized by the beauty of Salzburg, visited the castles of Prague, walked inside the world’s largest ice caves in Werfen, hiked the Alps, even took a train that boarded a ferry while leaving mainland Italy towards Sicily. Map in hand and an indomitable wanderlust, my dream of backpacking Europe, traveling in trains, and living on a shoestring budget had come true.

The best things in life were spread out for me as a buffet, and in 8 months I got a taste of almost everything I had ever desired. Music, dance performance, babies and pets, meeting family, teaching, and walking the streets of Europe. But I still had to figure out my life and decide what I would do after this transitory honeymoon phase. This was my chance to start something new, and learn from scratch, since I had already made up my mind not to go back to doing bench science again. After 8 months of a journey that seemed more like a never ending fun vacation, I wanted to be a student again, but not in the same field studying cells and molecules and writing scientific documents. I wanted to learn more about how people learnt. I applied to a dozen schools, got around half a dozen admits, and went back to school. It was time to start working on that unfinished dream of a PhD. Life had given me another chance to do something I loved, and I grabbed that opportunity and converted my passion for teaching to the pursuit of research. These days, I work on how to make the process of learning more effective. By changing fields, I relearned my sciences from scratch.

My greatest lesson from this journey of unemployment was to see things I built over years, things valuable to me, crumble in front of me, and for me to learn to build from rubble and from the ashes of unfulfilled dreams again. It taught me how to be significantly detached from my dreams to be able to work on rebuilding newer dreams again. I have learnt that it’s okay to have nightmares about losing your job or not succeeding in life or see people leaving you, because your insecurities mirrored through these nightmares will only make you wake up and work harder towards your commitments to ensure that things don’t screw up in real life. I feel like a new person, free of baggage, unfettered from the thoughts of how the world perceives me, and secure in the knowledge that I have taken good care of myself through these months and haven’t failed myself.

My journey through these 8 months of unemployment changed the way I learned to count my blessings. The door that had marked the end of things was also the same door that marked the beginning of brand new, and a better life for me.

sunshine

27 and Unmarried?

This is a work of f(r)iction, and should not be confused with the author’s intentions of documenting her subdued desires of getting hitched, or claiming that she is 27, when she is long past that age.

"27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Are you romantically challenged? Kuch gadbad hai kya? Aren’t most girls your age already married?"

You know what shaped my romantic conditioning while growing up. The fantasy world I created from reading hundreds of Mills & Boon (MB) romantic novels, and Harlequin romances. Crumpled yellow pages, a cover best hidden in a newspaper jacket. No matter how much I tried to look indifferent, the size of the book and the fervent way I skimmed through the yellow pages always gave away what I read. Yeah yeah we all know about “the lack of variety in plotlines and their inevitable happy endings”. So what?

The problem is- my imaginary world of romantic hunks sauntering half naked in towels became more real than my real world and the men I met there. In school and college when my friends were mate hunting, I drowned myself in books with these fantastic men, vicariously deriving my romantic stimulus from them. A decade later when my friends have found their mates, I have woken up to the realization that I am perhaps running a good 10 years behind schedule. I haven’t been able to find someone on my own, and the random men I talk to every weekend as a routine of this arranged marriage drill, barely live up to my expectations.

My Indian forefathers had turned in their graves when at 14 I was convinced I was marrying an Italian. To my understanding, all my fantasy men resided in Italy, Greece, and France. Brought up with middle class values and dozens of Mills & Boons hidden between my text books, I have always wondered why the fantasy men I read about were so different from the real men around me - lovers, non-lovers, ex-lovers, buddies, colleagues and the ones I talk to these days, hoping that I would end up marrying one of them. Why was it that the Kamal Kishores, the Venkat Rajans and the Obhrokanti Kumars never stood a chance to these Jakes, Lukes, and Nicks?

No prizes for guessing that the fiction writers had transported me to this imaginary world of men who didn’t exist in reality. But it didn’t make the fantasy men any less appealing. You know why? Because they are self made. Born with a silver spoon, yet a go-getter. Exceptionally tall, always towering and above 6 feet (something which Bengali men rarely are). My mother never really understood my need to tiptoe to the man I marry, and still makes me talk to these short men with the notion that “a good character and a secure job is more important than height”.

My MB men are always dark. Brooding. Broad chested. Very angry with life. It seems every woman wants to chain him down, though frankly, I don’t know why none of his flings ever made it to the altar. His charm and virility increases as an exponential function with age. Very devoted to his huge family of 4 generations residing somewhere in Italy. Usually Greek or Italian (but never Indian). He travels all around the world and he owns a chain of art galleries or Victoria’s secret stores. Drives Porsches and Ferraris. Sleeps in boxer shorts. Doesn’t snore or fart or scratch himself like a hairy porcupine. Well toned. No hanging pot bellies or a receding hairline. Never found shopping in Walmart, IKEA or Target. Unparalleled sartorial elegance. He doesn’t do menial jobs like – coding, writing software, or cloning animals in the lab.

Reality bites. I remember talking to a doctor as a part of my mate hunting routine. I placed him in the genre of medical romances where the doctor always fell for the nurse. Then I discovered that the man got his kicks describing gory details of what went in the operating rooms. He was too engaged in conversation to notice me cringe as he described the entire process of childbirth over a cup of coffee. Who did he think he was, Dr. Gregory House? I mean, for all my dreams of him undressing me mentally, who knows if he was dissecting me mentally. No, things never really went anywhere with him.

My MB man owns private islands in the Bahamas, while the common man, even after topping the JEE, the IIT, and ending up as a software luminary, spends his entire life paying off mortgages for a house in the outskirts of Seattle. My MB man always gets attracted to the plain Jane no-non-sense girl with oodles of self esteem. In fact, I never wore makeup for years, just to live up to the plain Jane image. My MB man always initiates the first kiss and is never slapped for such unwarranted animal lust. Sometimes, my MB man is the father of the baby he never knew existed because he did not want to be tied down to marriage despite his miraculous procreative abilities. Sometimes, he is the only employer in the vicinity and offers marriage when you are least expecting it. Sometimes he is that man you find in the desolate island where you went for your last field trip. Soon, you are thrown into a situation where neither of you can do without each other. A hurricane strikes the island, he discovers a secret of his life you are the key to, or he simply realizes that you belong to an exotic species naïve enough to not use contraceptives during these accidental, unplanned acts of passionate love making.

I grew up firmly believing that the man I marry would be like one of these characters. The ones who would pin me down against the wall to initiate the first kiss. Not the ones who describe how pancreatic cancers are cured. My world of romantic fantasy came crashing down with every relationship gone haywire. Tainted are those, marred by the gory wrath of society, who are unable to sail through the trials and tribulations of a socially acceptable relationship. I saw this train filled with potential grooms leaving the station while someone pushed me frantically to run after the train. I thought of my MB men and my make-believe world in Italy and how happy I was there. I wondered why I didn’t find the Indian version of my MB man. While the world eagerly awaits Mr. Right’s arrival to put an end to my miseries of singlehood for life, Mr. Right is a split personality, who in his other personality, is a mama’s boy brought up with good values who only listens to mama.

My conflicting worlds confuse me – the one with the Jakes and Lukes, the one with people pushing me to get married to whoever was smart enough to make it to the US, and the world of these prospective grooms sitting in a train, one of which might be kind enough to marry me someday. While these worlds of mine collide, I bear a heavy burden on my chest, traumatized at the thought of dying an old spinster. My feelings remain unresolved so far- call it tragedy or consider it comical. Like my friend says, “27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Aren’t most girls your age already married?”

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The C’s and the V’s: A peek into the hilarious past

Sometimes you have a chance encounter with a picture of yours from a different era, and it is like being introduced to your Neanderthal twin from a different world. An emaciated look, sallow eyes, with the only thing worse than your sense of makeup is your sense of dressing, when wearing oversized tee shirts or yellow skirts were in vogue. You look at yourself from the past and wonder, who is this obnoxious creature? I guess it is okay to make fun of oneself publicly. I had one such chance encounter, but not with a picture of mine from the past. Well, it was a picture sort of, but more of my academic achievements, or the lack of it. I happened to bump into my first ever written Curriculum Vitae (CV), and it was like having a glimpse of the outdated, backdated, anything but the glamorous past.

The first time I had ever made a CV for myself was maybe 7 years ago, when I had suddenly had the desperate realization that I will be out of college soon and will need to fend for myself. The dreams for America had just started to take shape, and an impressive resume seemed like a good idea to make initial contact with the aliens. Yeah, the feeling was something akin to that. The only trouble was, there was nothing much impressive for me to show off. No summer internship, no fellowship, no real research experience. However, something had to be written, and that was what I did. Over the next few months, the resume was forwarded to a hundred different professors across American universities, of course after some serious feedback from the seniors. Then, my life witnessed a series of disastrous phenomenon of computers crashing, email ids getting hacked, and various other cyber wreckages, and I lost my first ever written CV. After years, a fortuitous phenomenon happened and I got back a copy of my CV from the hinterlands of don’t-ask-me-where. For the next few hours of my life, I sat there wide eyed, looking at the wreckage from a disaster movie my CV looked like.

It started with a very confused-looking (also known as boka boka in Bengali) picture of mine (who gives their pictures in CVs?) with that desperate look on my face, begging to come to the US. What was I thinking, they would take one look at my beautiful face and let me in? Then came the information no one cared about. Address. Telephone number. Father’s name. Ancestral property’s location. Name of the first pet. Some of these are exaggerated of course, but I will leave it to you to figure it out. What, were they going to write me letters? The next “ahem” part was, well, “Sex: Female”. It seems I did not have the distinction between sex and gender back then, but more importantly, who cared? I am impressed I did not mention caste, mother tongue native language, and the name of ancestral village.

Then came the “Biographical Information”, which was fine I guess, but for the parenthesis that said, “In reverse chronological order”. Yeah, as if the order mattered, and more importantly, as if it was rocket science to figure out what order things were in. Of course, every institution I attended had to be listed with the “marks obtained”, because how can one trust the transcripts of my great university, assuming the transcripts reached them on time? Then started the actual meat of the CV thankfully, institutions attended, random projects undertaken, with the mention of everything, from killing a mosquito in the lab to growing bacteria on abandoned lunch from last week. Even things like “had 95% attendance in class”, “recited nursery rhymes 28 years ago”, “sung a song on Teachers’ Day”, or “could eat during class without getting caught” found an apt place in the CV. Then there were awards and accolades. “Stood 10^th out of 20 innumerable students in ICSE”, “won awards in debates and calligraphy” (who cares?), or “sat through boring seminars” would find a place as well. If only the keyboard had not taken over pen and paper, my calligraphy skills would have found me a great job in the industry. If this was not insult enough to my academic achievements (or the lack of it), there would be a separate section dedicated to extracurricular activities, because being a house caption, an indispensible member of the sewing club, writing rhyming poems, singing songs on Tagore’s birth day, or anchoring soporific events should also count. Not to mention learning 10,000 words from Barron’s, or writing research reports that would never see the light of the publisher’s shop.

Whether I like it or not, this will be an indelible part of what I was. It took years of grooming, feedback, and doing some actual research to build my credentials in the field, and to evolve as a professional. To put it differently, the present me is because that was the past me. I looked at my old CV with a mixture of both love and hatred. Is this who I used to be? Desperate to get recognition even for a seminar I attended and slept through? Or collecting chunks of tiger poop in the name of a scat encounter survey study? Was I hoping my experience with being a part of the nature club, or having a good handwriting was about to get me admitted into a good school?

Yeah, I know we all have to start somewhere, and build from there. Just that early men did not have that polish doesn’t mean they were any less successful in their environment. However, call me smug, arrogant, thankless, whatever, but it doesn’t hurt to make fun of thy own once in a while. Except that 10 years down the line, I would be reading my current CV and laughing again. “Went to Vancouver B.C. to attend a talk on the mating habits of the Hominidae family”. Who cares?

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Philosophizing

It must have been a brief moment of something significant, a tug, a pull, a communication from above, something too brief and in passing, but something that definitely was. Call it a spell, call it hallucination, or counting the years misspent and in anticipation, the years that melted away into memories and more memories piling up, of a big, fat album in the mind. I would often turn the pages of the album in solitude, in loneliness, alone in a crowd, watching the world go by me. I would flip the pages in my mind and before I know, minutes, and hours would sift and slip by my fingers, like fine silk. If it had been a message from somewhere that was destined to be, and not to be at the same time, I would not know. For when something doesn’t make sense, doesn’t have a reason, or doesn’t seem explicable using the finiteness of the senses, science turns into philosophy. I sit for hours in a crowd, waiting to catch the next plane, and think of all the philosophy packed into the head, flipping through the pages of the album that exists only in my mind now, and like a movie, credits roll and things play by again and again right in front of me. I become a spectator of my own life. To think that it is but a faded memory, living far and deep into the recesses of the past now, to try and distinguish the fact from the fantasy, or the things that exist in the mind versus the things that exist, is an ordeal. To see a carnival of people walk by me, away from something, toward something, with something, and to wonder why I see the people I see, for is it but a chance event, a phenomenon of randomness, or something conspired and connived, is beyond me. I know not if they are but apparitions floating around me, tricking me into believing they exist, but not in reality. If one could see beyond the natural, they would see thin green lines connecting people, almost like a laser beam, the tug, the pull that we do not sense or perceive, but which exists nevertheless. There was a similar line between us, something that could potentially make me sense you, your existence in a crowd of unknowns. The sun that set from your window is the same sun I just watched rise. And we continued our efforts, trying to make sense of the atoms and the molecules around us, how they behave in particular ways, and why they behave thus. To think we were all a part of the grand scheme of things we had no knowledge of, and no control over, happily walking by the ocean in a perfectly moonlit night, not cognizant of the thousand forces that make paths cross, and the thousand more forces that make people go their own separate ways. Call it fate or destiny, or call it an accident, maybe a happy accident, it is the same feeling of deciding to choose to take this bus every morning, or wear this dress one morning, and not that one. Who knows where the other bus would have led. So true it felt when you said, the future is scarier than the past. For the past is what it already is, immutable, like an imprint, a page out of a diary, a picture out of an album of memories. I speak predictably, and in clichés, yada yada yada. But for the same reasons you give me, the past to me is scarier than the future, for it is what is already is, immutable, like an imprint, a page out of the diary that is already written, and cannot be erased. When accidents happen in life, things do not come crashing into one another. It is subtle, and perhaps more potent and dangerous thus. Sometimes, all it takes is an innocuous click of the finger, a nod of yes or no, an assent, or a dissent. And years into things, you sit as lonely as ever amidst a crowd, looking back and wondering. Wondering who you ended up being, and who you wanted to end up being. And then you close the album, get up, walk past me and take the next plane, moving onto newer things, continuing to pile on memories one above the other, totally oblivious of me. Life goes on, and so do you, and I, and everyone around us. But sometimes, a random face amidst strangers would remind me of you, make me slow down my pace and turn back to look, to wonder if it was indeed another sign to be picked up, a sign amidst the million ones that were already lost on me, and then some more.

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My Traffic Theory

A few months ago, I generated a social theory stuck in traffic for almost 2 hours. I had to visit the city to get some work done. Aware of the office traffic in a big city after living in one for years, I started at 5 in the morning to be able to reach there on time. The drive was just 2 hours, but I did not want to be held in traffic at any cost.

As luck would have it, I was caught in the worst form of traffic 18 miles prior to hitting city. I looked at the time. It was still 6:45 in the morning, and the drive had been smooth so far. However, little did I know I was going to spend the next two hours cruising through those 18 miles in bumper to bumper traffic.

As the minutes ticked by, traffic started to get heavy. My plans of being there on time, or even finding street parking were jinxed. Sitting in traffic having nothing to do, I observed an interesting phenomenon depicting a particular risk-taking trait of human behavior. The freeway had 4 lanes on each side. The leftmost lane was a High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane, also known as the carpool lane. This means that at certain times of the day during peak hours (from 5 am to 10 am, and then from 3 pm to 7 pm), only vehicles with two or more people could use that lane. This is mostly to encourage people to carpool. Knowing the number of people who drive singly in the US, you would be amazed how empty the HOV lane usually is.

In the process of waiting in bumper to bumper traffic, I observed from my left mirror that more than half the people using that lane were single people in the car. It confused me somewhat, angered me all the more, not only because people were not supposed to break traffic rules, but also because here I was going to be stuck in traffic for the next few hours. None of these people driving singly had any expression of guilt on their faces. When observed closely, it is possible to notice the behavior or facial expression of other drivers. People drove in the “forbidden” lane with a stoic, business-like expression, without caring that they were breaking the law.

As I inched a little forward, I noticed that the cop got hold of one of the girls, and was giving her a traffic violation ticket. Since it was not possible to speed in heavy traffic, and since she was alone, I figured she was getting a ticket for driving in the wrong lane. However, during the entire 18 miles, I just saw 2 cop cars giving tickets.

Now let’s forget morality, traffic rules, and civic sense for a while, and see what’s happening here. I was frustrated as I was caught in heavy traffic for just one day. These people are regular office commuters who need to face this every day. They need to get to work on time. The traffic was horrible even as early as 6:45 in the morning, God knows what it would be at say 9 am. Now the entire 18 mile stretch of road (even more for some) was going to be like this. Who could afford to wait for 2 hours in traffic snarl every day? 

The daily commuters must have figured out that not more than 2-3 cop cars span the entire stretch. With hundreds of people breaking the law, and just 2-3 cop cars in 18 miles, what was the probability of getting caught? If 2-3 people get caught and fined every 18 miles, what is the probability that you will end up being one of them? We are talking probability here, and not morality, okay? For every person getting a traffic ticket, there were hundreds of cars that sped by. So let’s say you get caught once every month for driving in the wrong lane, and then get fined for say $100. That is the price you pay for getting to office on time every day. Since this is not a speeding ticket, I am hoping the insurance premium would not go up every time you got a ticket.

Of course it is all wrong, the idea of having rules is to stick to them as best as you can. But how does one cope when faced with dire situations like this every day? Should they start even earlier, maybe as early as 5 am to reach somewhere at 9 am? Every day? Or just take the risk, pay like a hundred dollars every month (which is about $5 everyday to reach on time, not a lot for people who earn), and move on in life? Certainly the roads were not equipped to handle peak hour traffic without people resorting to unfair means. Clearly there are more cars than what the roads can hold during peak hours. Thus, isn’t this a workable strategy to lessen your stress by not getting caught in traffic for hours? Surely when enough number of people do something that is wrong or forbidden, it does not remain that wrong or forbidden any more.

[To be clear here, I am not advocating for the phenomenon that was going on. I just observed a human behavior in a small sample of people, and tried generating my theory to interpret the risk-taking behaviors of these individuals]

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The beast that would not let go

It was out of the blue that I was attacked. This time, I was driving. I barely had time to look in the rearview mirror to see that it was a creature with serrations all over its body. I somehow managed to park my car, but this time, the creature was trying to jump off, run away, and hide in the forest. I have never been a brave person, never the ones who would observe fasts for human rights or be vociferous about issues that plague us. I never thought I was bold, courageous, and fearless. But something in me snapped. I didn’t want this creature, half-man, half-beast, with a green skin and serrations all over it to scare me and hide away. Not knowing what to do, I gripped it by the arm.

What happened for the next few minutes was strange, surprising, and scary. I saw the world go by me without noticing me. I saw my mom, and then my sister, talking to others, laughing, and walking by me, without a look. It seemed like I was trapped in a glass shell, wherefrom I could see people, but people could not see me. I tried screaming as hard as I could. But as it always happen with me in fear, no voice would come out. I took a deep breath, and tried screaming again, but no sound this time as well. My grip was getting slacker, the animal was trying to wriggle itself free, but I would not let go. I felt tears stinging my eyes, for I was so helpless that my own family could not see me struggle while I could clearly see them. What made is worse was that no voice would come out, no matter how hard I tried to scream. I was resolved to not let go, so I remained the way I was, unable to scream, but my grip tightly on the repulsive creature. I had not noticed before, but the creature emanated a foul smell from its body, an odor far too repulsive for comfort. With one hand, I tried reaching my phone ad dialing 911. It took me quite some effort, but I eventually managed to do it.

Within no time, the cops were there, freeing the beast off my grip. What I don’t remember is, how did they know who I was or that I needed help, when I had lost my voice? I have no remembrance. However, they freed me, and I slumped on the ground, looking at the breast, now captured by the cops. I held my hand close to my forehead and started crying. I was stunned, exhausted, taken aback, relieved, tired, and had lost my voice, all at the same time. It’s true I did not let go, but I sensed a dreariness, a sense of loss, even after having won a battle. Who this animal was? What was it doing here? Why did it choose to attack me of all people? I had no idea.

I have seen different versions of this dream for years now. Different versions because the situation is different every time, sometimes an animal, sometimes a man. But I always lose my voice while seeking help. And the dream always ends with me crying. And then I wake up, shaken, tired, scared, and relieved at the same time that it was just a dream, and cry some more.

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The Big Three Ohhh !!!

You would foresee it years in advance, coming at its own slow pace like an ominous red signal prepping to stop everything fun in your life. Like a morbid, fear instigating animal sprawled on its limbs, slowly crawling and showing its claws and tentacles from a distance, you will never be more aware or petrified of something approaching. It should not be a big deal after all, it’s just another birthday. But then, it ends up being a big deal. In a way, it’s a milestone reached and crossed, a milestone after which you are no longer considered in the bracket of energetic, enthusiastic, eligible, and highly coveted age group that you call the twenties.

They say you do not hit thirty, thirty hits you. Whoever this “they” is, they could not be closer to the truth. Like a whack of reality on the head, it hits you hard. So what changes so drastically in that one day? Everything actually. You go to sleep being 29, and then you wake up the next morning not really knowing what hit your life and changed it forever. That is called turning 30.

I have been dreading this birthday even before I was 27. Call it social programming, cultural upbringing, whatever. It feels nothing close to the energetic Jitendra, white shirt, white pants, white shoes and all, gyrating his hips while playing badminton and popping those “30 plus” pills by the dozen. When I was a teenager, anyone 30 years old was just OLD. Plain and simple. When I was in my mid-twenties, I would not even look at anyone 30 years or older. Little did I know how I would feel while I approached that age.

The interesting irony is, I do not ever remember being so petrified of entering the twenties. Heck, I do not even remember my 20^th birthday. Back calculating, I know I was in Kolkata, somewhere at the fag end of my undergraduate education. However, I do not specifically remember the 20^th birthday as being a big deal or a milestone. If anything, I was happy to be done with my teens, and hoped I would be henceforth taken seriously and not be dismissed from adult conversations and asked to go entertain the kids of uncles and aunties who visited us.

So how would it feel like being 30? I thought I have two more months to find out, but I think I know the answer already. You have perhaps never been more aware of your bones creaking every time you try to shake your hips to the beats of Beedi Jalaile at a dance party. There are imminent health issues and you have suddenly entered the “more at risk” category. The acne and oily skin nightmares of the twenties are replaced now by the wrinkles and white hair nightmares of the thirties. In fact, you would be lucky to have whitening hair, which means you still have hair on your head to boast about. Some unfortunates with receding hairlines and balding issues will not even get a chance to color their hair.

99% of your friends are married by now, and you cannot relate to 99% of them. The career and job-hunting uncertainties of the twenties are now replaced by “mother-in-law is a pain in the ass” issues, “my husband never throws the trash” issues, or “the child needs to be reared well” issues. Your friends discuss alien topics animatedly, alien to you at least, which include, but are not restricted to paying off mortgages for that house, getting a citizenship, or investing in the college education of the child who is yet to be born in 3 months. Although you are in the age bracket eligible to be the president of the United States, you realize dishearteningly that you were never bright enough to be the President of any country, not in this lifetime anyway. It is a big accomplishment training the domestic partner to vacuum the house bi-monthly, let alone having big aspirations for changing the world. A moment of truth, faced with certain stark realities, you realize you have grown more respectful towards your parents, whose opinions never mattered to you before this.

Your worst nightmare is no longer related to maintaining a perfect figure, you are long past that age when you could even hope for a presentable figure. Now, you are worried about sagging bellies and mammary glands, dysfunctional hormones, plummeting sex drives, approaching menopausal issues, and imminent health issues like cholesterol, blood pressure, and cancer. You hear horror stories about someone’s colleague’s relative who died of a heart attack on his 32^nd birthday in the process of cutting the cake. Blowing 32 candles with gusto just proved to be fatal for him. Going to the gym is no longer optional, it is the only option you have if you do not want to die like that colleague’s relative. Every time you try to sit, stand, or start fantasizing about running that half-marathon, your knees make a funny sound, mocking you. Your biological clock is not longer just ticking tick tock, it has gone berserk like the shrieking alarm that wakes you from your sweet slumber every morning. You are no longer a badass hiking the rocks of Badlands in South Dakota on the weekend. You are a well-settled, domesticated member of the species with a family to shoulder the responsibility for. Accept it, you are no longer the lion or even the wolf of the jungle, hunting singularly and living singly with pride. You are now a cow, a big, fat cow that only mingles with other cows and chews cud with other cows in herds. Your belligerent personality is gone. The mountain bike has been replaced by a family size SUV, strollers and diaper bags and all. You are found spending the once adventurous weekends (when you hiked 20 miles or had 20 straight tequila shots in a row without falling sick) at the farmer’s market or at Chuck E. Cheese.

To avoid complications, repercussions, and outcries, I will keep this as gender neutral as I can, which will still not dissolve the bleak clouds of possibilities the gates of thirties open for you. You can hate me for this post, or make strong arguments, which will only establish your lack of humor, or lack of understanding of humor as you approach your thirties. And it’s not only the lack of humor. You are slowly approaching that age of hormonal lull, and these days you can fall asleep, snoring and drooling and all, even in the middle of watching porn. You are more philosophical, sedentary, hang out in packs or herds of other people similar to you, and while you spent the previous decade being a party animal dancing away to glory high on alcohol, you feel more at peace singing bhajans and devotional songs in “satsangs” and learning the art of living (pun unintended), breathing in through one nostril and out through the other, to keep expectations low, anger in control, and to adopt pain, suffering, and the lack of materialistic greed as a means to obtain nirvana in life.

I can imagine how many people I have pissed off with this post. You would argue saying, “Hey, they say 30s is the new 20s”. Whoever these “they” are, they are a bunch of morons who either failed their math class or made a life out of bullshitting. 30s can never be the new 20s, you learnt your math way back in elementary school. If anything, thirty would always be forty minus ten. So if you are an optimist like I am, your only consolation is you are not turning 40 right away, an impending doomsday that would be approaching in a decade anyway if the world doesn’t lose you to heart attacks or high cholesterol. Although I would rather be in my twenties than in my thirties, I would any day be in my thirties than be in my forties. So I’ll stop inviting the same feeling of helplessness that I get when a dentist comes near my mouth with an injection, his assistant strapping my limbs so that there is no escape and I bear my pain and torture in silence, and stop resisting something that is so inevitable. I will try to stop mentally resisting turning thirty. For I have a few more months left to cherish the last bits and pieces of my twenties, or whatever remains of it.

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