This is about something very personal, in that it is not about myself, but about a parent, whom I shall refer to as ‘they’ (singular) here. Writing this has been somewhat cathartic, and any grammatical or other issues should be excused with the view that this is more an impulsive, stream-of-consciousness write-up than anything else.
Home
I came home last month, after 1.5 years of self and covid-enforced exile. The last 6 months were a mess I would not care to go through ever again, although, as many friends have suggested, this was just the trailer to the movie called life. There are a number of things to be done to resolve this very tangled mess, but so far, all I have done is come home, which in itself feels like a big achievement. I did not want to come; I wanted to stay back, but when that too began to feel like walking on live coals, I booked a train ticket that I did not know I intended to really follow through, packed up a life of 4.5 years into a higgledy-piggledy 7 boxes, and just fled. I did not trust myself till I got onto the train and it finally crossed into Andhra Pradesh from Tamil Nadu, and then heaved a small sigh of relief, amidst the inevitable tears. So I had accomplished one of the things I had been most afraid of, leaving Chennai.
Sometimes the simplest thing you can do is come home. I did not understand how much this extended separation had cost me until after the first week at home. It was as if a fog was lifting slowly from my brain. I could think of other things now, things that defined me outside the campus, beyond Tamil and Chennai and research, even though the latter is nowhere near complete. I can sleep a continuous 8 hours now, eat much better, and most puzzling of all, don’t miss Chennai as much as I thought I would. Leaving definitely does not feel like the earth-shattering event that I had expected it would be, and I am almost content being far away from the beautiful campus and the lovely deer and my friends.
Now that I think of it, more than the presence of parents, and just the general comfort of it all, it was the small things that I really missed. Parrots screeching their throats out at exactly 7 am outside my window, the clinking of my mother’s bangles as she wakes up and begins her day’s work, my parents talking to each other in muted early-morning tones (“she’ll turn 31 soon..we have to do something..sshh she’ll wake up”), children running down the slope to school in the morning shouting at the top of their lungs, the sound of mid-morning cooker whistles clashing with my father’s chanting and sound of bells from the pooja room, the heavy gusts of monsoon wind, windows banging to and fro across all the flats, the sight and sound of rain pattering on the ugly blue roofs of the flat below and the bungalow opposite, the few minutes before it starts raining when the dark clouds gather and the view from my window looks like the lake scene out of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the doorbell, the familiar voices of the paperwala insisting that its 200 rupees this month and do you think I’m a cheat madam, the 6th floor mami come to ask for some curd, the uncle from the floor below wanting to know if we are the ones cleaning our windows without notice and pouring water onto his head, the blaring of the television with my mother’s Marathi serials and father’s news in the evening, the phones ringing frequently with my mother’s huge network of cousins all across the country enquiring about today’s menu, my marital status, father’s health, and other old gossip.
I met friends I hadn’t met for almost 2 years, most of whom are married and with kids now. I haven’t yet mustered up the energy to envy them their settled lives, I was just happy to see them. Priyanka, now with a 6-month-old Prisha, sleep-deprived but happy, her mother shooting me conspiring glances from behind her back every time Priyanka praises herself, which is understandably quite often these days. Uttara, with a very demanding 1 year old Tara, with the same sparkling laughter and the undisguised awe of whatever she thinks I was doing on campus, a bevy of very comforting aunties surrounding me at her place (this energy when so many friendly women are in the same room is quite something). Vishvesh, zipping across the city with his guitar, here for a keyboard class, there for the harmonica, somewhere else to shoot for Karan Johar’s next production, eating momos and screaming at me for not attending his jamming sessions. Nidhi, laughing at all my jokes at the right moments, never letting her emotions show despite all her troubles, with her “main thik hu re” a constant refrain.
This is something I have commented on before too, the ease of old friendships, like an old dress that you can still happily fit into. It’s not new or shiny or exciting, but it’s comfortable, and you like it, and you like yourself in it.
So which of these things make home home for me? I think it’s a bit of everything, my family, my books, the sights and sounds and smells, the people, my friends, evening tea, the view from my window. A bit of my heart, hearth, and home is embedded in each of these, in a small corner of my lake city at the foothills of the Western Ghats.
Requiem for a Medicine Man
Our family doctor passed away yesterday morning due to Covid. This is the first time I am mourning for someone who was neither family, nor technically a friend, but somehow became an integral part of our lives. My deepest condolences to his family.
“Dr Joglekar’s Maternity Home”, says the board outside a building in my housing complex. This is where my brother was born, 19 years ago, when my mother was 41 years old. “There is a 1/1000 chance that the baby will not be normal, and we might not be able to save your wife”, Dr J had told my father. Even after he was born, my brother, probably in a show of rebellion at being brought into this useless world, did not cry immediately, as all babies are supposed to. The seconds ticked on, and as his face started to turn red, Dr J immediately stuck a finger down my brother’s throat, whereupon the hero promptly started crying. It is a testament to the doctor’s skill and brilliance that my brother was born safely and my mother is still with us. He has delivered countless babies and saved many more mothers and children than we shall ever know, but there was one thing that was very special about Dr J. He was not only a gynaecologist, he was also a doctor for every other disease any of us in the family had, that rare breed of doctors which is now fast disappearing, the Family Doctor. He has seen my mother through one delivery, 2 major illnesses, an appendicitis operation, and the rest of us through gas troubles, period troubles, numerous malarias, flus, viral fevers, and even given both my brother and me good sound career as well as life advice.
He was also extraordinarily well-read and was a fluent speaker of 12 languages, and could read and write in about 6. “My Bengali”, he would say in that deep rumbling voice of his, “is just passable. Not as good as my Gujarati”. He was Maharashtrian. When I last met him in June 2020, he was keen on learning Tamil. Did he ever start? I may never know now. He used to translate to and from German and French professionally, and I once found him sitting in his cabin with a literal rucksack full of German fantasy novels, reading one as he waited for his next patient. He was old-fashioned w.r.t books, refusing to buy a Kindle, “I don’t trust all these online books”, he said once, “sometimes there are mistakes and they spoil everything” and bought all hard copies only.
Any visit to him was incomplete without a prolonged discussion on books, religion, governance, or any other stuff you might want to discuss, and so all his regular patients knew to call his clinic and only then come in (unless there was an emergency, of course), which is one of the things I liked the most about him. He was rarely in a hurry. Every patient would be given a good amount of time, and if someone were to accompany that patient, well then, he would talk to them too. If you were interested, he would try to explain in simple terms what was happening to your body. For one of my mother’s illnesses, I remember him drawing diagrams and describing everything clearly, and it was not even related to his area of specialization! Though trained in and practising allopathy, he was very careful to prescribe medicines only when extremely necessary, and for a family practising naturopathy (okay maybe only my parents), he was almost heaven-sent. “Let the fever run its course”, he would say, “all you’re doing with these medicines is suppressing it; it will turn up again if it’s a normal flu”. He disliked homeopathy intensely, and would give us a very disapproving look whenever he heard of any visits to homeopaths, in our occasional earlier forays into that branch of medicine. He was also gently and laughingly critical of naturopathy, which led to many debates between him and my mother, who is stubborn and does not believe in listening much to anyone, especially about health matters (except perhaps, Dr J himself).
“Doctor”, my mother would begin, “but one must not drink water for 1.5 hours before and after meal-times…”
“So madam, if you include tea-time, this means you are not drinking water at all, congratulations!”
Once, after having listened at length to her speech about not cooking any food item for too long, since excess cooking would leach away all the nutrients in the food, he just raised an eyebrow, smiled, and said “Well in that case, just eat all the raw materials as they are, no need to cook anything, your stomach will mix them all up anyway!”
Then there was the time when, having argued for a long time over some point of her medical history, my mother, frustrated, burst out, “Doctor, your memory used to be good!” Pat came the reply, “Madam, you used to be intelligent!”
He was an atheist, and could talk for hours about rationality and evolution and science. “Prove it”, he would say, “give me proof that God exists, then I will believe you”. This is where I learnt of Russell’s Teapot (look it up, it’s very interesting). Once, having gone to him for a minor ailment, I got mired in this debate and ended up being harangued by him for two hours. “Doctor, it’s 9.30 pm, and I’m hungry!”, I cried finally. “Ahh”, he grinned, “hunger, the last refuge of the defeated!”
He was temperamental too, and would give you the cold shoulder, or worse, banish you entirely from his kingdom if you didn’t follow his instructions properly. Once my brother, recovering from a particularly severe bout of malaria, was given two tablets near the end of the medication period and asked to come back and report to him in a couple of days. But the tablets were very bitter, and my brother being what he is, feeling that he had already recovered, decided to take only one, and went back after 2 days. Dr J took one look at him (he was looking perfectly healthy to us, mind you) and shot off, “You haven’t taken Cefakind at all, have you?” My brother, caught completely unawares, tried to lie his way out, but all blustering and explanations fell on deaf ears, and he was sent back home in disgrace. Only after my father, an acclaimed veteran of many parent-teacher meetings, went and talked to him soothingly in that lovely pure Bombay Marathi they both share, did he calm down and pardon my brother.
Then there was an acquaintance who went to him for some uterus trouble, was not given any medicine initially, and told to come back after a few days. “He’s a doctor, how can he not give me any medicine?”, she cried, and flounced off to another doctor who, as behoves all great doctors, gave her some tablets which, as expected (by us, in retrospect) did not lessen her troubles. So back she went to Dr J, pretending she had never gone to anyone else in the first place, and the meeting went off fairly well. While leaving, however, her purse hit the table and the contents spilled out, along with a tablet that fell out. One look at it and he knew, “This is for the uterus, right? I didn’t give you these, so who did?”, and the whole sordid story came out, and she was banished forever, left to orbit around other medicine men who would give her all the tablets she liked.
There are so many stories and so many words; he was a brilliant man, a genius of a sort, and a hidden gem, as my father liked to say. Tucked away in his small clinic in our modest housing society in Thane; that is how he spent his practicing life, although occasionally he would be called in to many places around the country to lend an expert hand in this surgery or that. There were times when he would not take any fees and just wave us away when asked, despite knowing that we could afford to pay. He was hardly 60, and out of possibly all humanity, the most useful people are doctors, until the day they pass away. “This Covid will die down by December”, he had said in that smiling way of his, the last time I met him, “no virus can hope to survive if it keeps killing its host”, and now he is gone and I will never see him again. He will be sorely missed, for all his help, his discussions, his explanations, his affection towards his patients and everything else that he was and did. Who will now get us out of all the health scrapes we keep getting into? No one knows all our medical histories as well as he did. (See how we are self-centred even in our grief, what will happen to us now that this person is no more, we think. Do we grieve more for the lost person or the impact that their loss will have on our lives?)
Where are you now, doctor? That bookshop you had told me about, the one where the shopkeeper was giving away rare classics for as little as 5 rupees, whose address you never really revealed; I hope that is your heaven.
Nights in the City
As the traditional herald of fresh tomorrows, the day brings with it new beginnings, auspicious and filled with brightness. Night, on the other hand, carries with it many associations of darkness, evil, and death. But in the skyscraper-lined cities of today, nightfall signals the onset of a million different suns from the comfort of homes. For a long time now, ever since I can remember, I have disliked twilight; for some reason, that particular time of the day brings forth all sorts of misgivings, as also a sudden feeling of sadness that I cannot explain. As the night takes over completely, however, I begin to feel more at home, the strange unhappiness fades away, leaving behind either normalcy in its wake, or, on some occasions, a queer feeling that something momentous is about to happen (nothing does, of course), that I am standing on the threshold of an infinite number of futures, that if I reach out, I may be able to touch Luck, Fate, and Destiny with my bare hands, and bottle them all up like Felix Felicis. It is an intensely singular experience, more of a feeling than an experience really, and I have attempted, for the first time, to capture it in words. I do not know if I have succeeded, but that will be for you to judge, dear reader.
It’s twilight, the orange slowly segueing to a dark blue, and then black. In the city, the lights come on by one, blinking, blinking, little stars in a sky of concrete.
Where are you, passive onlooker of the day?
Are you in the busy city of commerce and trade, the city that never sleeps, hurrying home like everyone else, temporarily trapped in the local trains, twisting this way and that to get a glimpse of the world rushing by outside? Sunset for you happens somewhere between Kurla and Ghatkopar, and as the inky darkness descends completely, you reach home, relieved, tired, bedraggled, one struggling drop in the ocean of a million similar drops. You are now ensconced safely in the arms of home, safe until the next morning, until the next day, when you have to repeat the same cycle all over again, amidst all the hustle and bustle in this great city of material pursuit.
Or are you in the temple city in the south, bound homewards in one of the many buses winding their way through the city? There now is the road parallel to the beach, the waves a small line of blue far away in the distance, a sudden breeze ruffling your hair ever so slightly, bringing you a whiff of ocean and sweat mixed with the sweet smell of omnipresent jasmine. Beach on one side, sunset on the other. You try to look, twisting yourself in the crowded bus much like your counterpart on the western coast. You too, are at home as night falls, dredging up the strength and fortitude to go through it all again tomorrow.
Maybe you are in the ancient capital, the seat of power, the city of the rich? It is a cold winter’s evening, the street lights are coming on, and you see the pale setting sun through the double haze of your car window and the ever-present smog. Your mind wanders to hot food, lots of it, and your thick blankets waiting for you at home, and within a blink of an eye, the sun has set. Maybe you don’t have to rush off too early the next day, because it’s warm and cozy at home, and winter makes the whole city lazy and happily sluggish, so the darkness for you is a comforting blanket.
But wherever you may be, on some days, when the night starts taking over, when the last bit of sunshine disappears, you can feel it, the excitement, a strange strange restlessness, a feeling only the night can bring.
Is it the crowds, the tall buildings? Is it the temples glowing away at night, reflecting themselves in their temple tanks? Or is it the feel of your car speeding through long leafy avenues, or crawling through crowded and brightly lit bazaars? Maybe it’s the breeze flowing past your windows, making the curtains flutter and dance?
The city is now full of lights, shining against the black sky, and here you are today, being whisked past in a plush taxi for once, on your way to a date, a dinner with friends, or maybe even just walking home. Can you feel it? That pulse of the big city at night, merging with your heartbeat, bringing with it a sudden sense of new opportunities, a feeling that anything is possible, making you dream dreams of love, mystery, wealth, and music, a protagonist of your own Bollywood movie. On some nights, this happens, and though the feelings all inevitably fade away later, the dreams remain, relegated to somewhere deep in your heart, to be brought back periodically, on the nights the magic returns. Sometimes it returns when you see someone, when you hear a snatch of music somewhere, a sudden sense of longing, a craving for excitement, an inexplicable certainty that good things await, but return it does.
It is an inexplicable tug at the heart, a sort of fizzy and heady feeling, felt sometimes while in the backseat of a taxi, rushing past the Arabian Sea or the warm lights from the old colonial buildings in Fort, the wind in my hair (although it’s usually tightly plaited and not much use as a heroine-imitator), the lights of the City of Dreams all blinking away to happy glory. Many a time in Chennai, on the way to the beach, winding my way through the lanes of posh Besant Nagar, on the wide Beach Road stretch looking out on a moonrise over the Bay of Bengal, on the bus back from this temple or that, or while riding a cycle to Kalakshetra and trying to stay alive amidst the traffic, even inside Kalakshetra with the soft glow of lamps, the smell of jasmine, the tinkling of anklets and the swish of sarees.
So does this feeling have a name? I don’t know, and maybe I don’t want to know, it’s an ephemeral bit of excitement in my otherwise mundane life, and I would like to think of it that way always, enigmatic, and all the more tantalising for it.
P.S. I don’t know how to deal with all this chaos and panic and enforced solitude, and hence will try to deal with it by not referring to it at all, apart from Stay Safe, Stay Home, Mask Up.
Cricket Cramps
A possibly helpful description of the key characters:
Kiran: The keen sportsman who very nearly managed to form a cricket team, à la Lagaan
Vijayanand: The little monster who, as always, came up with this excuse to evade many a practice; “I am going to get fever on Thursday morning”.
Akshit: A cricket enthusiast and very kindhearted senior to the whole institute; very few people there are that have not taken any help from him at least once. There was even a rumour that someone had trekked all the way from the almost-mythical Metallurgy to take Akshit’s blessings.
It all began one hot February afternoon when I was stuffing my face with Brinjal Sambhar at lunch in the mess. Kiran and Vijayanand had been talking about cricket teams, so I had tuned out for a while. There was a sudden lull in the conversation, and I looked up and realized that the boys were looking at me expectantly. “Will you join our cricket team?” Convinced that no one in their right minds would ask me such a question, I looked behind to see if there was someone else. Turns out it was me they were asking. Overcome with emotion at the fact that someone actually wanted me in a sports team, I choked on my sambhar and managed to splutter out a NO. Twenty minutes later, I had agreed to turn up at 6.00 am (6!) the next day for PG Cricket League practice with Team Vijay Squad.
What? Don’t look at me in that manner…I agreed to play mainly for three reasons:
- It would be good exercise and I would hopefully lose some weight.
- The rules required that there be two girls in the team.
- The tall and silent dish from our neighboring lab was also in the team (you almost believed 1 and 2, didn’t you?)
So I turned up on the cricket pitch at 6 am the next morning, yawning and stumbling through the mists of dawn (just kidding, no mist and all in Chennai; one minute it’s dawn, and the next it’s hot, over, that’s all sunrise), and found that another team had also turned up for an early practice. This was something I had not bargained for at all. When you are looking like something the campus deer have chewed on for days and then spat out, the last thing you need is cute strangers assessing your ability at a game you last played 15 years ago (gripped the bat the wrong way round and hit my bowler cousin in the eye, whether to celebrate hitting the ball or mourn hitting the eye?). Anyway, it being too late to back out, I walked up to the ground and looked around for Kiran, who had assured me that I would just be required to turn up and bowl one over. The rules were very relaxed for the girls; we could just throw the ball without having to do that complicated arm-rotation (I am pretty sure this rule was made up because Vijayanand had seen me practicing bowling with great gusto in the lab the previous day. I had to stop after a few minutes when the people from the High Voltage lab below us turned up to investigate why their ceiling was shaking).
Since I had reached nice and early, Kiran sent me off to bowl first, so I stumbled onto the pitch nervously, where the boys were all shouting cricket-y stuff to each other, “What a catch!”, “Out, out, OUT!!”, “On your left, cover that side, cover, cover, run, nooooo”, “Oh my god why is there an elephant at the crease?!” (okay I made that one up, sorry). They fell silent as I took at my place at the non-striker’s end (that’s the place where the bowler stands. As you can see, this article has taken a lot of research, so you better be reading it properly). I could see the very cute captain of the other team sizing me up (a considerable feat) and sizing up my skills (took less than a second), when Universal Senior Akshit came on to bat, grinning like an ape at seeing me looking all sporty and determined, a look no one has ever seen me in and will never again. Groaning internally, I lobbed the ball at his smirking face, he swung his bat around like Tendulkar and…hit the ball straight into the stumps. I froze. US Akshit froze. Cute Captain froze. And then the pitch erupted into celebration (means 3 guys shouted random stuff I couldn’t make out, but you get the gist); I had taken a wicket in my first ball! Ahahaha, hello Mithali Raj, howzzat?
The next few days passed by in a pleasant blur of people stopping me in the corridor and enquiring whether I had really caught Akshit off guard, and demonstrations of this spin or that, which ended badly when I explained that I had just lifted my arm and thrown the ball. Then the second practice rolled around. Again I cycled off to the ground blearily at some ungodly morning hour and rolled up to the pavilion, which consisted of the one park bench, only to find the other girl from our team all pepped up and ready to go. Upon enquiry, I learnt that her name was H, but any hopes I might have had of finding a kindred soul in this slightly intimidating sea of sportsmen vanished when she asked if I could give her practice for cover-drives. “Cover-drives…ohh..ahh..cover-drives, yes, no doubt, but I have to…” I mumbled, feebly gesturing towards the direction of the pitch, and turned and made a desperate dash for the pitch, hoping someone would give me something to do which didn’t involve any words except bat and ball.
Before I knew it, someone had handed me a bat and disappeared, leaving me alone at the crease with the remains of an unsuccessful conversation (“I don’t know how to bat!”, “Arre it’s not an issue, just swing the bat”, “You said I only had to bowl one over”, “Yeah but you’ll be the last batsman if everyone else gets out”). So I stood there, gripping the bat tensely, waiting for the onslaught of the ball. The bowler was from the other team; they had turned up today also, replete with Cute Captain, who was eyeing my grip on the bat with a mixture of derision and amusement. Having completed the menacing little run that is such an integral part of the game, the bowler delivered the ball. I lashed out with the bat in the general direction of the ball, and heard an entirely unexpected and extremely satisfying ‘thunk’, which could mean only one thing. I had actually managed to swing the bat at the right time, at the right pace, in the right place, and connect with the ball. Yeess, Mithali Raj, howzzat again! As I stood there, marvelling at my own hidden talents, wrapped in a snug cloud of jubilation, a lone voice penetrated through, “Run, run, bhaago bhaaaagooo!” Confused and annoyed, I turned around to glare at the screaming dunderhead who was interrupting my crickastles in the air, and suddenly realized that it was me he was screaming at, because I had forgotten to run after hitting the ball. By the time my dimwitted brain understood what was happening and propelled my legs forward, the non-striker batsman had run up to my place, and I promptly banged into him (to my immense regret it was neither Cute Captain, nor the neighbouring lab dish), sat down suddenly and heavily on the ground, and ended my lucky cricket run in a trail of dust and embarrassment. Thus did I lose a future in sports, and this country a budding Mithali Raj.
P.S. What do you mean did this really happen? Of course it happened!
P.P.S. *glares dourly at doubters*
P.P.P.S.
Madras Memoirs
Someday I will walk up to you and show you the bits and pieces of Chennai that I have captured in the last two years. Be patient and bear with me then. For if you look long enough, maybe you will see my mother’s city through my eyes.
There will be hundreds of photos of the campus, lazy afternoons in the lab, the deer grazing away to glory, their beautifully symmetrical antlers pointing threateningly at you. There will be all the sunsets I captured from my hostel windows, the last tea and onion uttapam in beloved Suprabaa, the bright, happening and trippy nights of Saarang, when Rajhesh Vaidya treated his veena as half a guitar and belted out all the popular Tamil hits to a screaming audience, a photo with Manu Pillai, my first photo with any author ever, a 2-minute conversation I shall cherish ever after, and his signature in my book.
You will see a few moments from the cool December season, a few blissful concerts here and there, some food from the famed Sabha canteens, more than a few immensely mesmerising Kalakshetra dance ballets, the cast all looking as if they have stepped straight out of our myths and Puranas into this old old city for a brief time.
You will see, through my mediocre camera, the very mundane sights of mornings spent trudging through the temples and by-lanes of Mylapore, with its road full of kolams that traffic ploughs through unceasingly, somehow keeping the intricate white designs intact, and it’s Jannal Kadai breakfast, the literal hole-in-the-wall outlet that rustles up hot and greatly satisfying meals. You will see, from the bus stop across it, the Kapaleeswarar cast its divine reflection on the temple tank at night, and itch to remove the Rasi Silks insignia that shines beside it. You will see countless photos of beaches, old houses and small lanes, and signs of a vanishing era, and wonder, as everyone always must who enters this city, how the old still lives on in such harmony with the new, with such good grace, that most of the time we just pass by all this history without really noticing it.
If you have the patience to sit through a few more hundreds of photos, you will see all the steaming hot food Chennai is famed for, the dripping-with-ghee and slathered-in-podi uthappams of Murugan Idli, with a soothing glass of Jigarthanda beside it, the soft-as-a-feather idlis from Rayar mess that just melt in your mouth, the very rich and fresh pal-khoa from a random Aavins stall, the light and dreamy neer dosa and thatte idli from Mathsya, the homely vegetarian meals in Mummy Daddy Andhra Mess, with its comfort rasam and sambhar rice, and its Gongura pickles, and the flat screen television with its never-ending run of so-bad-its-good Telugu action movies. There will be photos of all the chaat and the vadapavs we ‘North Indians’ have eaten in the quest to recreate the street food of our home states in this South Indian city.
You will see my friends too, whether you want to or not, my labmates all sound asleep in the lab on a hot Sunday afternoon, the strapping North Indian boys laughing loudly as they swagger off to lunch in inimitable style; intellectual, studious, and honorary Malayali Akshit trying and failing to make himself invisible, frowning at the camera, and smiling away from it. The back views of erstwhile labmates Jeevan and Subhadeep while they dive under tables to catch a squirrel that has jumped in through the lab window, fellow-Maharashtrian Kiran looking murderous as he schemes and plots in our many Mafia nights, budding politician Vijayanand cracking his (in)famous one-liners that evoke hysterical laughter only from me, mad mathematician man-child Ramaseshan jumping up in fear because someone switched off a tubelight, and the inevitable Malayali gang setting off for chaya.
I started writing this article in January 2020, freshly in love with the city as a result of all the solitary sojourns in the very pleasant December weather, and now it’s June and I’m at home in Bombay, missing Chennai more than ever. There’s something about that city, an undefinable quality, of music threading across the roads, abuses swirling through rickshaws, water never coming through the pipes. Of dance and drama and music and lights and jasmine and dosas and Tamil.
P.S. Stay safe, stay home, read a lot, etc.
Old Friends
We meet again after ages at the wedding. Some of us have not seen each other for years, but there is no difficulty in picking up the threads. Tonight, we are all the same people we were six years ago, laughing, eating, making terrible jokes, watching the newly-wed couple wistfully.
Tonight, we forget our depressions, our failures, our fights for these few hours. It helps that it is a cool Mumbai night, heralding the onset of winter and the wedding season. The girls are gorgeous and glowing, the boys all dressed nattily.
I forget that my clothes are rather ordinary, I omitted to bring the grand stuff from Chennai. It doesn’t matter. When I leave home for the wedding, I am apprehensive; the other girls will be very well-dressed, they have good jobs, they are slim, should I go?
I go, and I’m happy I do. All the doubts evaporate once we meet. Emergency earrings are bought and worn on the spot, a sudden craving for street sandwiches is almost satisfied in the crowded by-lanes of Borivali. There is a bus ride through the greener parts of the city, and some preliminary catching-up is done in a rickshaw. These are old friends, and we fall back into our old equations within minutes.
Where is that stupid fellow? Is he late? Oh not coming? Haii when did you arrive? We met last in..a screwing up of the face here, an effort of memory..2016, wasn’t it? An unexpected face turns up out of the blue, and mock anger is affected for a few minutes, then suddenly forgiven, for there is only tonight in which to fight and make up. There is no animosity, we have all slipped into some routine or the other, and we haven’t kept in touch, but tonight it doesn’t matter.
Someone has had a sad love story and managed to overcome the resulting depression, another is struggling with drastic downward career changes, someone else is trying to wrench themselves away from the shadow of a romance gone awry, but for tonight it is enough that we are together.
Arranged marriage stories are swapped eagerly. The tall girl is too tall for her suitors, and the short girl wants tall guys but is wanted by the shorter ones. The slightly fat girl has been rejected for being over-qualified by one suitor and for looking homely by another; she does not know what to make of herself and her dreams. But tonight these things are of no importance.
The ones abroad are remembered, partly with envy and mostly with nostalgia. When did we see the first American couple last? Were you there at the second American couple’s wedding? They got married on the same day as the New Zealand couple, and so everyone had lunch in one wedding hall, and dinner at another all the way on the other side of Mumbai. The time in between was spent in travelling, a rather weird road-trip of sorts.
I make an inane giggly comment about mini-waterfalls being stairs and someone asks me if this is how I behave in Chennai also. No, replies someone else, this is her Mumbai-special stupidity. Yes, I reflect, that is true enough, everyone is their college-self today; the one giggly and on a constant high, another cracking the most adult of jokes with customary ease, the class clown making his usual terrible punny jokes, the flirts batting eyelashes at each other and pretending that neither of them is getting married anytime soon.
Somewhere, in another part of this sprawling metropolis, another one of our classmates is getting married today, but the groups don’t overlap, not after all this time, so they are talked about and Instagram photos seen, and happiness is wished for them in our hearts. By the time we are up on stage with the couple for the traditional photograph, my cheeks are aching with all the laughing, and all my other aches have dulled. It doesn’t matter that my career is in doldrums, it doesn’t matter if I’m bad at mathematics, it doesn’t matter that some of us are getting married or achieving career goals while some of us are left behind. Tonight, all that matters is that we are together, and we are happy.
P.S. I have been AWOL from my darling blog for so long now that there is really no one reason to explain my absence, even to myself. Suffice it to say that my career is currently looping around into itself and wreaking havoc everywhere, so I’m literally a bit lost for words. Hopefully things get better sometime in the future.. 🙂
College Chronicles
This was an article I was asked to write for my alma mater’s annual magazine, and since I haven’t heard back from them for months, it has most probably been rejected and can be safely put up on my blog without any copyright issues... 😛
I was 18 years old when I stepped into VIT for the first time, nearly eight years ago.
I was, as usual, late that first rainy morning in September 2009, as was the only other girl I knew then. We both hurried into college together, reached the entrance, where, as if to mark my entry, I proceeded to step into a puddle of water and slipped and fell, landing on my back and looking up at Vaidehi hopefully, waiting for her to give me a hand which never came. As she most penitently explained later, I was slightly heavier than her, and afraid of the gravitational force I was apparently exuding, she decided to just stand there and look at me instead.
Having brushed off the crumbs of this initial embarrassment, I plunged headlong into college life with great gusto, or as much gusto as could be expected from a girl with enormous eyes and a tapering rat-tail plait. Looking back now, most of those four years seem to have passed by in a blur of lectures, movies, good-looking guys, the cultural council, fests, a number of re-evaluated KTs, and a sense of carefree happiness in general, although there were a few incidents that marked epochs of sorts in our college memories, which I elucidate in no particular order below.
It so happened that one morning the lights went out in the entire college, and most fortunately we had practicals scheduled for the next two hours, so we were technically free till after lunch. Since quite a large number of (normally invisible) people had turned up for their practicals, we decided to make the best use of this MSEB-given gift of time and took the next bus to Cinemax Sion to watch (wait for it) Aarakshan (if you remember this movie, I’m judging you..and if you liked it..well..). So there we were, all bright and ready, when the class representative (CR) received a phone call from the Principal ordering us back to college immediately. Apparently, our fond hope that the disappearance of the only Electronics class in the college would go unnoticed in the dark had been too optimistic. The CR, however, was wilier than we gave him credit for. “I’m afraid we cannot come back now, Madam”, he informed the Principal politely, “we have just booked tickets for 35 people that cannot be cancelled” and cut the phone without further ado.
Then there was the day everyone decided to do a mass bunk from a communications lecture, and even the first-benchers surprisingly agreed to this plan. Predictably, no word of this reached the professor, who strolled into the classroom only to find it empty. Being a bit of a sport, he sat there and waited patiently for about 10 minutes, hoping that it was just a collective excursion to the washroom and not a mass bunk, and was just about to give up and go when in walked V (a guy from our class). V, who had no idea about the mass bunk, had most unfortunately misplaced his friends and come up to the classroom looking for them, where the professor caught him. “Where,” demanded the irate professor, “is the rest of the class?” Bewildered, V protested that he did not know, he had only come up to search for his friends, and could he please go now, since there was obviously no one to teach? “Oh, but there is,” said the professor with a grim smile “you’ll do well enough, don’t worry”, whereupon poor V was made to sit on the first bench for an entire hour while the professor sincerely eulogized about wavelet and Fast Fourier transforms to a lone and captive audience. V has been known to be allergic to communications lectures ever since.
My viva-voci were consistently terrible experiences. I could never manage to study more than two chapters for any viva, and since the external examiners could always be relied upon to ask questions from every other chapter except for those two, I was always at a loss for words. This incident happened in the very last semester during an electronics viva; I had wriggled through the attendance requirements of this subject with the barest minimum. The subject professor stared at me rather blankly as I and a friend entered the room. “Are you sure”, demanded the professor, “that you were in my class?” This was enough to set the external examiner off about the merits and demerits of the attendance system of Mumbai University, and he began to look upon me in a markedly jaundiced manner. An exhausting half-hour of questions later (exhausting for the external, repeating “Sir, I don’t know this” every few minutes surprisingly did not affect me in any way). “All right”, the external conceded, exasperated, “I’ll ask you one last question and then you can leave. Explain the read operation of ROM”. From the very foggy recesses of my not-very-full brain rose a diagram and a somewhat crude explanation of something associated with ROM, so I closed my eyes and began to spew forth enlightening electronic prose immediately, as if in a trance, which ended rather abruptly when my friend elbowed me in the ribs. I shook myself awake and found the examiner and the professor staring at me with a mixture of incredulity and awe, while my friend was looking horrified. “Are you sure? You’re absolutely sure of this answer?” asked the examiner again, staring at me as if fearful of the answer. “Yes sir”, I replied proudly, “I’m very sure; current flows through an open switch”, whereupon the subject professor nearly burst into tears and abused me roundly for having wasted four years, FOUR YEARS, of my time and his, and also a bit of my father’s money, while the external was still looking as if someone had hit him on the head with a copy of Boylestad-Nashelsky. It took me a few seconds to realize that I had managed to turn the whole engineering world on its head in a fraction of a second (in case you don’t know what is wrong with that answer, I would advise you to shift to B.A. or B.Com, there is still time), and by that time the mental processes of the external examiner had shut down, unable to sustain this assault, so we were, not very politely, asked to leave the room. Three months later, I began my Master’s degree in Electronics from another MU college (I fared pretty well in that subject in theory later, although you don’t believe me now, do you?). I was sitting on the first bench waiting for the Head of Department’s address, when, to my abject horror, in strolled that very external examiner; turns out he was the HoD there. I then spent a very pleasant and informative two years in that college, as you will have understood, and now can safely state that if nothing else, I have finally learned that current flows through a closed switch.
P.S. If anyone from ETRX 2013 remembers other interesting stuff, please write in.. 🙂 Also, if someone from EXTC 2013 is reading this, could you tell me a bit more about the toothpaste biscuit incident outside the cafe? 😛
Kanpur Days
Hello blogosphere, I’m back! If you know of any tried and tested way to worm oneself into the good graces of fellow bloggers after eight months of absence, kindly inform me, I shall try it on you. Eight months! It’s been a really long time since I last wrote, during which Gundu Meena alias Biker Chick alias Preeti from In Search of The Colloquial has decided to shut down her blog (*cries loudly*), and everyone seems to have read hundreds and hundreds of books (*cries even more loudly*) and forgotten me altogether (*bawls loudly and wipes snot from nose*). The last few months have been a bit difficult, mainly because I’ve been trying to clamber up onto the career ladder (or maybe it’s not been that difficult and I’m just trying to gain your sympathy and good graces). So anyway, following the ladder climbing, I have moved out of Mumbai and am now in Kanpur, at least for the next few months.
Having never stepped out of home before (yes, yes, all right, all you independent hostelite women are very hep, ok, I get it), the move proved to be slightly freeing, and also somewhat difficult. Coming from temperate Mumbai (which is the last thing I ever thought I would call Mumbai weather), summer in North India is turning out to be quite the revelation. Even as I sit typing this inside the cool confines of my air-conditioned lab, the temperature outside is 46C. Forty-six. 46! I will never ever curse Mumbai summers again. Never. I seem to have landed from the frying pan straight into the fire. Every time I step outside here I can feel the sun literally beating down on me. It took me two weeks of nearly drowning in my own sweat every night to capitulate and buy a cooler, and two more weeks to understand that I was operating it wrongly (I swear my engineering degree is not fake), after which I am now able to wade ankle-deep in my own sweat, which is obviously an improvement.
So am I homesick? Not as much as I feared I would be, at least not yet. The whole of the first week, of course, was full of intermittent bursts of crying followed by periods of fright and loneliness at being away from my bookshelves and the family. So does the family miss me as much? Not quite, as it turns out. My brother, poor fellow, who is now in the tenth standard, is trying to protect his brain from any possible dents that knowledge might make in it, and so has retreated into himself and allegedly keeps snarling at everyone. I doubt he remembers me, except when he’s eating junk and watching nonsense, given that those are the only things we did together. My mother is, understandably, rather pleased that there is a big cow-sized decrease in her monthly cooking, and keeps asking me excitedly about prices of dal and vegetables in Kanpur, which I haven’t the faintest idea about, while my father thinks up rather poor quality jokes about cows in the cow-belt area, when he is not writing me emails, that is. ‘Dear Sindhuja’, began one, ‘How are you? I am fine (this when we had spoken just about 5 minutes ago). Please do not venture out of the campus. That city is not safe for girls..’, went on for four more pages till my eyes began to water and I was in danger of drowning again (no no, not because of sentiment, you sops, it was because of too much staring at the screen), and ended with ‘Thanking You, Yours Sincerely, Father.’ I am now waiting for him to send himself a RSVP for my wedding, whenever that happens.
The North Indian cooking here in the mess kitchens has also been a huge revelation, in that mess food is definitely not as bad as I was led to believe, although it does have its idiosyncrasies, especially as far as potatoes are concerned. The other day, I entered the mess and chanced upon a huge plate full of fried tomatoes stuffed with potato filling, fried capsicums stuffed with potato filling, and…drumroll please…fried potatoes stuffed with potato filling (seriously?), which last would probably ensure a return ticket to Mumbai for me if my mummy ever gets to know of this. There is not a day that goes by without me inadvertently imbibing some form of potatoes; roasted, fried, boiled, in a sandwich, stuffed, so much so that sometimes I can almost fancy I see a potato staring back at me from the mirror (please let me say ‘aloo’cinations…bows politely to applause).
Also, the almost complete self-sufficiency of the campus and its profusion of trees and green cover has succeeded in dispelling any notions I might have had of myself as a nature lover. Turns out I’m more of a city lover than anything else, and I actually miss all the noise (ok, maybe not all the time). It is always very quiet here; there are no trains, no traffic, no crowds, no chaos, no noise, only loads and loads of insects which somehow sense my fear and keep getting into my room all the bloody (for them) time. There are, however, a huge number of almost tame peacocks and peahens, a few nilgai, and all sorts of other wildlife besides.
So, dear fellow bloggers, how have you all been? And more importantly, what have you been reading? As for me, I have been reading a few books here and there, and might hopefully be able to review one or two in the near future. So welcome back, dear readers (if there be any left), and here’s to a new set of books to be read, reviewed and loved.
P.S. A huge thank-you to cousin and fellow bibliophile Nandini, for having given me an impetus and loads of encouragement to post after all this while.. 😀
Love and Lies
Last month (September 7) was the seventh anniversary of my first day in engineering. The moment I started college, I decided that I would have an epic romance on which movies would be made later, and of which paeans would be sung by the KJo loving public. So I went about trying out some of the methods shown in Bollywood and soaps to fall in love. I’m afraid none of them worked very well, but who knows, someday you also might feel romantic enough (did I say desperate? Why you’re assuming?) to give these a try, so here goes.
Method 1: Attend a wedding (preferably relative’s, so you can catch the eye of a same-caste person and thus get your parents’ blessings without having to run away and Khap) or any ceremony, really, where you carry a brass plate full of rose petals and go running along with it (gracefully, remember, nobody likes to see elephants trumpeting along in sarees). Don’t stop this one-man marathon till you bump into a handsome fellow and send the plate flying (do not forget to throw the plate in the air, otherwise whole thing is spoilt), fall into said fellow’s arms, and then have eye-lock while the rose petals fall on you both. Yes, romance, thrill, love, over! Next scene: your wedding.
So, at my cousin’s wedding, I wore a saree, applied some makeup, and, brass plate in hand, eyes over shoulder, started running. A few seconds later, I bumped into someone, and feeling rather pleased, fell into their arms, sent the plate flying, and turned to face the co-star of my grand romance. To my abject horror, it was Chummi Aunty. Before she could do much more than look disgusted and glower at me, however, the brass plate returned into orbit and fell on Chummi Aunty’s head, showering her with rose petals in the process, although she simply refused to look on this bright side when I visited her in the hospital later.
Moral: This method is useless.
Method 2: Wear salwar-kameez or chudidar, along with dupatta. Make sure the dupatta is at least as pretty as you, because that is the star of the show. Now walk gracefully within eye-lock distance of handsome man and let the dupatta flutter like a flag behind you (what do you mean ‘I don’t have table fan to make it flutter?’ That is not my problem). So, make the dupatta flutter so much that it goes and gets stuck on his shirt button or watch (what do you mean ‘how?’ You are not fit for romance at all) and have deep eye-lock while he tries to free your dupatta. Preferably it should not be freed at all, you can drop the dupatta with an anguished look at him and come running away. Then he will come and find you and marry you with the help of the dupatta, or give it to his girlfriend to wipe her nose.
I decided to try this out on traditional day in college, and carefully wore a long dupatta and let it flutter behind me as much as possible. Unfortunately, I hadn’t worn it for ten minutes when the breeze died down suddenly and took the wind out of my dupatta sails, and that piece of silly cloth promptly fell into a patch of wet mud. You can still see the college gardener using a blue diaphanous cloth with golden border to wipe his hands.
Moral. This method is also useless.
Method 3: Get stuck in washing machine. Eh, what? No, of course it’s not a joke, where’s your sense of romance? This actually happened in one Hindi serial. All you have to do is climb into a gigantic washing machine and shut the door, then sit and pray that the handsome man will somehow know (by ehsaas) that you went to an LG showroom and climbed into a washing machine thinking it was a bathtub, and will come running to rescue you and carry you out while having eye-lock all the time (what ‘How did he know where to come?’ This is all internal love GPS, you practical donkey).
So I went to this electronics showroom and tried to get into a nice big machine. Imagine my shock when a shop-assistant told me I couldn’t go inside. “But I have to go inside, how will I get rescued otherwise?” I asked him. But no, he wouldn’t unbend. Really, I’m going to complain to Arnab Loveswami about this, this is sexism, chauvinism, cupidism, I want to know, how I’m going to conduct any romance if people keep shooing me away from washing machines?
Moral: This method is useless, unless you have an industrial grade washing machine. If you really have, please call me also.
Method 4: Hang clothes out to dry on terrace or balcony clothesline and have Romeo-Juliet balcony scene. For this, handsome fellow has to be standing below on the road, so you can have nice eye-lock while hanging or taking clothes off from the line (remember Alaipayuthey scene? Like that only). Remember, you have to do this every day until love is established, otherwise fellow might fall in love with your sister (or whoever else goes to the terrace) by mistake.
So off I went to the terrace of my building, having haggled for the keys with the watchman, who was surprisingly reluctant to part with them and kept giving me deeply suspicious glances. Imagine my happiness when I espied a prey good-looking fellow standing on the road looking up and smiling back at me. Yes! I had finally found love! Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm, I leaned over a bit too far, and ended up pushing the bucket full of wet clothes onto said fellow. Draped in a dripping orange saree and one of my father’s trousers, the fellow glared at me and gnashed his teeth rather violently. That was the last time I saw him, and also the last time my mother let me go anywhere with a bucketful of wet clothes.
Moral: Always do bird-watching after you’ve hung the clothes to dry.
As you can see, none of my forays into the land of hearts and flowers ended well, and I’m still as single as I was when I was 18. But don’t let that deter you, dear reader, from trying out these pearls of wisdom in your own life. So I wish you luck, and please write back if you are successful.
P.S. If you have tried these methods and failed, don’t worry, by now your mummy has understood that you want to fall in love and is in the process of fixing you up with Pammi aunty’s brother’s son.
The Random Book Review 