Of rotations and revolutions.

A recently concluded week, where I was eternally looking at a certain unnatural direction due to a neck sprain led me to a few conclusions - 

• It is not advisable to wash your hair with a stiff neck. A vigorous scalp rubbing using the towel is out of the question. No amount of gentle patting the hair with the towel will get it to dry. I found it out the hard way.

• Never attempt a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle with a sprained neck. Apart from the agony of the neck, you will also be left with an frustrating, incomplete jigsaw puzzle.

• Day 1, hour 1 will get you the most sympathy. Lap it up as by day 3 you are most likely to find someone standing behind you imitating your neck alignment and laughing away merrily. 

• Smile and the battle is lost! Cry and win an ally. I smiled through my pain and therefore received very little empathy.

• The clock never aligns itself to the direction of your restricted vision. And inadvertently your sister asks your for the time.

• Sleep is an impossible act mornings or nights. And in the event that your eyes do close and your breathing relaxes, the smallest twitch will have you awake again in pain.

• In future when in pain, stay away from the person labelled husband. In case of accidental meeting, a fight within five minutes is guaranteed. 

• Things fall down. But things always fall down. The difficulty lies in actually retrieving the fallen object or letting it lie till the able necked person comes to the rescue.

Day 1 was his birthday, but I was pampered like a princess - a double edged sword situation. All you can do is stare into the outer space ( or the general direction of outer space) while he cooks under your instructions.

And how did all this come about? I am still as clueless now as I was then.

telephones part 2

I never return calls. I never message. I dont send forwards on email let alone phones. My mobile was useful to me to the extent of picking up calls and setting my daily alarm. I had deliberately bought the cheapest model from Nokia at that time.

The whole world knows that if you dont call or message someone sooner or later you are not going to get any calls or messages yourself. That is telephone ettiquette. But whether the phone rings or not, I never let the mobile out of my sight. I carried it with me to all meetings where it provided me something to fiddle with when things turned boring. I took it with me those late nights when there was no electricity at home and therefore no light except the small glow on the mobile. I panicked everytime it got lost in the jungle of junk my bag contained. Yet I never called nor messaged.

But yes when you love someone who is on the opposite side of the continent, the mobile is a very useful device to have. However I generally mailed at the end of the day while he called. I guess my aversion to phones in general started early in life when I was asked to pick up the phone and answer to whoever was calling that dad was not at home inspite of the fact that dad was sleeping in the next room.

At this point of time, my trusted mobile sits in one dark corner of the cupboard without charge. On those rare occasions when I need a number it reminds me of the life I used to lead.  No longer do I bother with missed calls or unread messages.

But even without the mobile I am still within the clutches of the telephonic wire monster. My land line with its free calls to India. Unemployed and alone at home, everyone assumes that the landline is my new best friend. I am scolded for not calling relatives back home. "Its free!" they say so whats stopping you? The anti social being in me balks at calling up friends and relatives. I often end up not knowing what to say to the person on the other side. Its so much easier for me if I were to talk directly to another person. For most part I answer the questions that are asked of me and then maybe ask a couple of my own if I remember. If only letter writing were still in vogue.

Telephones and me

I do not like telephones. Having one means you are more accessible to everyone when you would rather be left alone. Right from all the salesmen who try to sell you everything from a bank to a shoe lace to the weirdest of strangers who call you just to pull a prank on you. Several of my girl friends had a list of numbers of these pranksters stored in their mobile phones under names like stranger 1, stranger 2 etc . I too had my pick-me-not numbers.

  One such memorable number was an auto walah. "Auto chetans" generally gave us their number so that we could call them when we needed a ride to office. Being IT they assumed that our wallets were probably stuffed with more than normal non IT folks. [ A popular misconception since most of us had more cards than cash.] So all of us had numbers of a couple of auto chettans who would pick us up in the mornings and drop us off at the office at the same astronomical rates reserved for us. On one occasion when I had several stuff with me to take to office, my friend gave me a number of one such auto chettan. But he turned up really late and we had to take other means to reach office. I called him again and told him in the nicest possible way that since he had been too late we had taken another auto to office. He apologized and reminded me to call him again next time we need a ride.

 That night or rather the next morning around two 'o clock I got a call on my mobile. Its the auto walah's number flashing on my screen. Woken up rudely in the middle of my sleep I couldn't even begin to imagine why he would be calling me at this time. In order to not wake my roomie I picked up the call quickly. The conversation went like this,

Me : elo? [ The first word after being woken up in the middle of a deep sleep is always horribly disfigured]

Autowalah : hello this is me... <some name>

Me : _____ [ thinking of an appropriate response at this insane hour.]

Aw: If you need a ride next time, please dont hesitate to call me.

Me: ok. [I try to deduce from his voice whether he is drunk. But late night my detective skills are not functional]

AW: I am always reachable on this number, just give me 10 min advance notice just in case I have some other  passenger.

Me: mm.. [By now I am awake and angry.]

AW: If you need to reach office please call me. I ....

Since this now sounded like a re telecast of the earlier message I cut the phone. For good measure I kept the phone on silent mode so that I could go back to sleep. Sleep came easy since I had not really contributed anything to the conversation and within minutes I was back in dreamland. No further calls came that night nor did any autos chase me in my dreams.

Next day morning at office the man calls again! Now I was thoroughly exasperated. When I get angry I fume silently. Since this situation demanded quiet a different response I didnt pick up the call. Thankfully, I had a blood boiling in anger kind of a cubicle mate at that time, who also happened to belong to the male gender. So I handed him the phone, explained the situation, sat back and enjoyed the fireworks that followed. 

 I have never been called by that person again. After this incident, whenever an auto chettan gave me his number I diligently fed it into my mobile in order not to disappoint him and make him increase his fare. By the time I left India my mobile was full of 'madhavans' and 'karthikeyans'. Yet whenever I needed to reach office however late or in a hurry I was, I always waited by the road side holding the phone in my other hand and waving frantically at every empty auto that passed.

end of part 1

Harry potter

 The new harry potter movie is out. And I have been avoiding it like crazy. I saw a trailer of the new movie and ever since then I wished I hadn't seen it. For years now I have been battling the disappointment that comes over me whenever I see a Potter movie. The movies do no justice to the books. Infact I almost never see movie adaptations of books. I have never liked any movie based on a book I have read. And Harry potter tops the list.

The latest nail on the coffin is in the latest movie Voldemort has a face and screen space! His face is all over the trailers! Just as I was getting tired of Daniel Radcliff's face on cups, plates, pens, caps etc, now it will be Voldemort's turn I suppose for all halloween's to come until eternity. And sadly he who must not be named looks neither sinister or menacing but only horribly malnourished.

The bright lining on the cloud of that, like how I forget the Mahabharatha and every other book I have read every couple of years and have to refresh my memory again I am waiting for his face to fade away from my memory so that I can start reading the series again. But what of those children ,those unbearably unlucky children who saw the movies before reading the books? They will never be able to imagine on a grander scale than the movie.

I hope and pray that children are given the Harry Potter books as gifts and not the Harry Potter DVD collection. The only argument for the dvd collection is that no child would ever be able to hold the entire bulky hardback potter series in his/her hand. (The final volume alone is likely to tip them over.) However the counter arguments are endless.

Food woes

We are a family of foodies. We live to eat and not merely eat to survive. But all my culinary heavenly dreams came crashing down on me the moment I landed on US shores. This is a country for meat lovers and shuts the door, bolts it and throws away the key on vegetarians like me.

The only solution left for us is home cooking. But therein lies another problem. I am just a budding cook. No cookbooks to my name, no claims to fame just the average adjustment expert. You know, adjust the salt, adjust the heat, adjust the water till basically the dish has deviated immeasurably from the original intention. Everyday is a battle with the salt and the chilli powder. The salt never drizzles down in the infinitesimally small proportion that I desire while the chilli powder always seems to waft up into my nose everytime I use it and I end up sneezing over a very salty preparation.

Daily over breakfast and dinner my eyes follow the first morsel of food my husband tastes. I scan his face hoping to detect that smile of ecstacy or the mmmmmm of delight. But till date my eyebrow - springing moment has not come. So I decided early on that once a week we will eat out to give ourselves a much needed respite. But little did I realise when we started that it was all rotten tomatoes out there.

My earliest memory of eating out was when we had gone to a McDonalds in Seattle. After staring at the menu on the wall for a long while and not finding anything that I could eat, I approached the sales boy. And I asked him "Do you have anything veg?"  Veg evidently was an alien word to him, because he was dumbstruck. He couldnt understand it even after we repeated it twice. Not even when we expanded veg to vegetarian and pronounced it in the slowest possible way so that even a two year old would repeat it. Before we scared him further I understood that McD had closed it doors on me.

We walked out and Reni said "There is this great shop nearby. Its good. Chinese". Like a lamb being lead to slaughter I was lead to a Chinese restaurant.  My husband becomes like a small kid everytime he sees this place. If you have ever seen kids with their noses and hands stuck to the glass walls peering inside their favourite place you know what I mean. Ok, so maybe not so much drooling goes on. I exaggerated on the nose bit. But he does love Chinese. On the other hand, whenever I hear chinese I cringe inside. The foodie inside me jumps off the top floor of a 100 storey building to an instant death. I have only one complaint against chinese food. They believe that vegetables be retained in colour, shape and form as mother nature intended to be. So consequently I have brocollis bushes, carrot boulders and highways of peas on my plate. I have to open my mouth really wide, and I mean stretching my jaws to the limit to stuff the vegetables inside. And in public its not really nice to reveal the internal logistics of your mouth and shock the people on the next table. (However the chinese treat their chicken and beef well I ve noticed.)

Right about when I have stuffed my mouth with one giant broccoli or carrot, a waiter will appear from no where and ask if we are doing fine. Cheeks stuffed, eyes watering from the huge, hot vegetable my teeth are trying to grind and my tongue trying to escape, I would somehow manage a smile and all the time Reni would be happily nodding "everything is perfect".

So between Chinese, the bland Indian food which evokes some long forgotten hotel memories my weekly eating out has become a nightmare. We eat at American joints where I order the garden omelette. It is as promised, a garden minus the bees and the birds. Pancakes and omelette's and plain old toast bring back the twinkle in my eye while opposite side of the table the beef or the chicken dances gaily in a multitude of flavors.

The only place I truly like is this Italian restaurant where we go to occasional. But all the times we go there either we fight before, or en route or at the place itself. I remember this one time where I blinked back so many tears that threatened to fall that the folks around us were looking me curiously. And all this sadly spoils the appetite. Plus the world truth that all good things are generally expensive holds true for this place and therefore for every five times I say Italian I get heard only once. ( Ofcourse for all the times that he says chinese I stay poker faced. Touche!)

So given the plethora of options outside for someone who is not restricted by food Amreeca is a foodie  heaven. But for those of us who would rather see a chicken (or a cow) cross the street rather than end up on someone's plate, "choru, koottan and upperi" are the only option.

The worst part of all this is, if you have just read this and you meet me on the street my incredible weight gain will leave you convinced that I am a pathological liar.

Dont talk to strangers

She skips gaily, a few steps ahead of her mom humming a nameless tune which keeps rhythm to her dancing feet. At five or six years of age, when its ok to dance and skip in joy she is abound with happiness. All of a sudden her voice dies down and bereft of rhythm her feet stop dancing. She sees a person walking towards her smiling. She recognizes her as one of her father's friends. She turns and checks to see if her mom has noticed. Her mom is smiling at the approaching stranger friend. She goes to her mom and catches hold of her salwar and smiles confusedly at the approaching stranger. Her mom and the stranger friend talk while she never lets the salwar go. The lady asks her a few questions but she is too shy to say anything. All she can do is smile. Not a radiant cheerful smile, but a hesitant, awkward smile. Her mom prods her to answer but when nothing comes out , mom answers them herself. The stranger moves on and she once more starts skipping.

A couple of years later.

A young girl of thirteen or fourteen, she is now in half bloom. A lot has changed over the past couple of years and a lot unchanged. She is still painfully shy. But no longer hides behind her mom. She smiles more confidently at strangers, having learned to hide her awkwardness. When questioned she answers now, with just glances at her mom when she is unsure. At parties she is embarrassed to hand over the gift to the person celebrating his/her birthday because she has to stand in the spotlight. She longs to go unnoticed.

Time forges ahead.

A young woman now, she is out in the world. Her confidence has grown and her circle of friends. Among friends she is even noisy. She has learnt the rules of the social jungle and plays the game relatively well. Her moms friends call her polite and well mannered. One more stage of her life begins when she gets married. She settles far away from home building a new life. Minor mishaps occur and she takes it in her stride. She is getting used to this new world when one evening the phone rings. Its a long lost relative. A couple of questions this side and that and the relationship is established and the call ends and she gets invited to their home.

Time stands still.

My heart starts beating a couple of notches higher. There are no more moms to clutch or people to answer for you. I have to now ask the questions and make all the right gestures. No more passing the embarrassing gifts to my sister and ordering her to give it. I have to hand it over and appear charming while I do so. No more going to houses and staring at the bric bacs on the walls while the grown ups converse. There are only pauses now which need to be filled as quickly as possible.  I whisper in Reni's ear that I am scared. He looks at me quizzically and retorts in his matter of fact way, we have to do this at some time or the other. He has taken it in his stride that we are going visiting.
Society has cracked her whip. Get in line like the rest of them or else! From now on begins the a new chapter of the social charade.
Looking at his confidence I sense my fears dimming. A random thought sprouts inside me bringing a smile, I married someone talkative:)

Who goes there?

I wonder who I am writing for.
Is it you, random stranger
Pausing a moment here.
Or is it for you, friend
Someone I hold dear.
Is it for me,perhaps
To confess all that I fear.

When the last breath is drawn
And the final tear shed
A smile no more
Words left unsaid.
The dying fire within kindles
The burning fire outside.

And as the ashes scatter
Turning the earth grey
Then will it matter
The questions that prey.
But still I wonder
Who am I writing for this day.

A new twist to the old - Cat got your tongue

Something weird seems to happening to me. But first let me set the stage.

Day before yesterday it rained. No, not here in Seattle where it rains frequently, but way across in Miami where we had gone to escape the rains. The rain clouds chased us as we ran from tree to tree trying not to get wet. But the trees in Miami are unforgiving to strangers and we were soaking wet pretty soon.

We took shelter as soon as we found it and waited till the rain stopped. Pretty soon the sun was out and we were walking again. Fast forward one hour and we were semi dry and moving towards our car. Reni as usual lost in his world strode across rapidly with only the destination in mind. While he saw only the car I saw only puddles of water on the road. So he went straight as an arrow while I went polygonal avoiding the puddles.


Pretty soon, needless to say Reni had reached the car while I was still debating whether to jump left or right.
Right looked better and therefore I jumped. I look around and I see that now there is water all around me. There is no other option but to step into the puddle. I look forlornly towards my husband who is reaching for the car door and go "Meeeaaaaoww". And then put my new golden hawai slipper laden foot forward.

Meaow? I understand three to four languages, can make myself be understood in any one of those and yet for the stuck-in-the -middle-of-water-and-I-dont-want-to-get-wet situation out of the million zillion words there are in the world, I come up with "meeaaow" . If I were a cat I would be justified. In fact I might even get top marks in finishing school for cats for the right expression and feeling. But I am not a four legged feline and I am slightly cross with myself however right that word sounded. The average human in this situation would have generously borrowed from the ever expanding free library of bad words like BEEP and BEEP. But I never renewed my subscription to that library.

Some one needs to figure out a less primitive word to describe this situation or do I have to brush up on my language? This is just one instance of the several where I have not used any of the recognized languages to express myself. I find random noises fit better at times than the most eloquent words. Baby lingo is certainly under rated. The ooh's, aaah's and yaaay's definitely pack a powerful punch. Maybe "meaow" should be added to this list too.

Am I the only one who feels this way? The next time you become insanely happy and cant contain it, try saying "Ga Gaa Goo" instead of ecstatic. Let me know if it hit the right chords.

Laks

Lessons learned today -
1.  Every moment of your life can be potentially tweaked and exaggerated into a story.
2.  A "Meaow" is better than a <BEEP> anyday.
3. Gaaa gaaa goooo ikuukuuu. :)

PS :- My toes did get wet in the puddle.

Jennifer, Hydru, Brownie and the rest

They may not say black is beautiful. However jet black in color, Jennifer is certainly an eye catcher. She lives in the apartment above us. In the mornings we wake up to the sound of her feet moving around upstairs. And late evenings seem to be her favourite time with ceasless running sounds coming from our roof.

Jennifer is a beautiful, full grown black labrador. She is my favourite neighbour. But then I have always been partial to black labradors. Growing up Hydru was my grandfathers black labrador. There would be other dogs besides Hydru, but he was the "main man". Whether he was a good watch dog or whether he scared off the wolves and thieves I dont have a clue. He was gentle with me was all that I remember. Tied to the front of the house with a long chain he was an essential part of my wonder years.We played all sorts of games with him, which I doubt whether he liked, however he bore all of it.  He would let me do anything, even stuff cigarette butts in his nostrils. One vacation he was ill with a huge growth on his leg and next vacation there was no one chained up in front. I salute you Hydru for being the dog you were.

Coming back to Jennifer, she is an epitome of obedience. When her owner calls her she promptly runs to her. When ordered to sit, stand, and even "Go potty" , Jennifer obeys. I have never heard her bark, for that matter I have not seen a barking dog in this country. They do all the other doggy stuff like wag their tails and sniff the ground but not one barks. The only time I have seen Jennifer excited is when she is let out of the apartment in the evening. I don't know if the excitement is because she is let out or whether its the green grass where she can relieve herself. Maybe its both. Rest of the time she walks daintily behind her owner or in front. She is beautiful, and even allows me to pet her but her calmness and obedience are unnerving. If dogs became silent and curled on your lap, then what would the cats do?

Spirited dogs are the ones back home. At Piravom, we have a stray dog Brownie. A nameless breed and the universal color of most stray dogs a light brown, Brownie is as adorable as Jennifer. She goes beserk whenever I meet her which is usually every alternate weekend. Her way of showing affection is jumping up and placing her dirty paws on me whenever we meet. She doesn't understand commands like stand or sit. And no stray dog needs to be taught to "Go potty". We tried teaching her the hand shake but she would just playfully lick our hands until we gave up. She loves to play rain or shine and she really doesn't mind who is her playmate. Her kids, before they were taken away were adorable. Like heavy water filled balloons they would plod a few steps and fall over. Brownie never seemed to mind that she routinely found her puppies on our door step when she had left them elsewhere. I was forever taking those puppies and playing with them till they fell asleep from exhaustion I guess:)

White, black, brown or gold I adore dogs. The fact that I never owned a dog makes me love dogs more. Routinely after one of our fights my husbands suggests that we go to the park. He knows in the middle of dogs wagging their tails and playing my smile will magically reappear.

PS the law of opposite states that for a dog crazy lady, her man would be strangely impartial to dogs. He likes cats.

What the leaves whispered

The rain was falling hard. Between the water drops shattering on the earth, the occasional thunder and the frogs crying on the field all other noises were drowned. Dusk had come and gone taking away the last bit of light leaving behind a cold, wet night. Baring the occasional stray rickshaw that bore home someone unfortunate to be out in this weather, the streets were empty. The incessant rain, the cold wind and the dark night drove everyone home.

Her head resting against the cool window pane, Rupa was lost in her thoughts. With no school tomorrow and therefore no homework she was free to do as she pleased today. She had played with her friends all evening until the rain had driven them back to their homes. With nothing else to occupy her thoughts, Rupa was watching the rain fall. From her window she could see the banyan tree which was thirty paces from her house. There was an empty plot under the banyan tree where no one had yet build a house. Grass had grown on that empty land and the frogs and the crickets had claimed it as their own. The lone light in the street right next to the banyan tree lit up the tree more than the road below with a eerie yellow light. Strong lights shone from inside every house in the colony as if to make up for the darkness outside.

Sitting inside the dark night didn't bother Rupa. She generally loved the rain. She loved to jump into small puddles that formed on the roads and splash water. She would float small objects in the streams that suddenly sprung up every where after a heavy rain.

With the curiosity in-born to all ten year olds she looked up into the sky wondering if she could see the drops as they fell from above. With nothing else other then the black sky staring back at her, she shifted her attention to the banyan tree. Its leaves drooping under the assault from the water drops, it stood glistening in the night light. Suddenly she noticed something seemed to be moving under the tree. An odd shapeless form which moved a bit and then lay still. She looked long and hard but she was not able to make out what it was. Right then the television played her current favorite song and rain, cold all forgotten she ran inside.

The fat, heavy rain drops gradually thinned down to a small drizzle. No one noticed that the rain had thinned down and the frogs had reduced crying until a moaning sound was heard. Rupa ran back to the window puzzled at the new sound. It seemed as though the moans were coming from the direction of the banyan tree. There was still something moving under the tree and whatever it was, it seemed to be moaning. As she looked closer, the shape and form of a man began to emerge. He was lying on the ground under the banyan tree covered by a cloth, evidently sheltering from the rain. And he was mumbling something and moaning in between. Rupa ran to get her parents.

Pretty soon her parents, the neighbors and the rain were all watching the man. Rupa overheard her mom talking to her neighbor on the phone "Why doesn't he get up and leave? He must already be soaking wet. Seems like he is drunk. If he dies in the night from the cold what can we do?" Her friend Subbu's father  braved the cold and the rain and went up to the man. Rupa watched as he tried to get the drunk man's attention but the drunk was far too gone to pay any attention to the man's words or the rain drenching him. He just kept on mumbling and moaning and crying out. Frustrated, uncle returned to the comfort of his home. After a while one by one everyone stopped keeping watch over him and left him alone.

The drunk man was the topic of discussion at the dinner table that night. Subbu's father who had been the one to go and talk to the man had reported that the drunk was a frail old man who looked as though he was homeless. He had on a thin shirt and a dhoti which he was using as a blanket against the rain. He was soaked to the skin and shivering in the cold. He seemed to be distraught and was crying at intervals about his life. But it was so incoherent that Subbu's dad had not been able to make out anything. It had been decided to leave him alone and hope that when he got out of his inebriated state he would stagger off somewhere else.

Later under her blanket Rupa's last thought as her eyes closed was on the old man in the rain. The drizzle had long stopped and it had begun to rain heavily again drowning his moans.

When her eyes opened, Saturday morning had dawned without a trace of rain and the sun was shining. As her sleep heavy eyes slowly opened, she overheard her parents discussing on the old man. It seemed he belonged to the next colony where he lived with his son. He constantly fought with his family and drank away his sorrows. Last night the fight had been more fierce than usual and he had not gone home after drinking but had come to sleep under the tree. During the night one of the colony wallah's had recognized him and called up his son who had come and taken him away sometime during the night.

Rupa got up from her bed and walked out into the morning sun. There was no evidence of any sort of the drama that had been staged under the banyan tree last night. The banyan tree stood proudly in the morning light its leaves whispering amongst themselves the tearful story of the old drunk man who had poured out his sorrows last night. But the playful wind and the singing birds soon had the leaves swaying to their joyful song all of yesterday forgotten.


Laks

The bad and the ugly.

The feelings expressed in this post is purely mine, if u feel the same or different it is in no way going to change my opinion.

I lived for five years in Trivandrum where I worked. The place has its fair share of IT population, businesses as a result of IT and a whole lot of manipulative people. Most of the locals with whom I shared my working environment were the normal helpful people one finds everywhere else. I made some very wonderful friends at work from the place but step out of technopark and the vultures pounce on you.
Leading the pack would be the auto drivers. You never paid them less than Rs 15 for the smallest distance. And the rates could go as high as Rs 200 for longer distances. Auto wallahs all over the state are the same, but only in trivandrum would people refuse to take you if it were a Sunday evening. [Sunday evenings they return to their homes I suppose]

A lot of folks from the other states complain that tvm doesnt have pubs or discos etc. Since I don't frequent such places I never found that an issue, however decent hotels with good food seem to be a rarity in the city. And if there are any such hotels they definitely are not easily accessible in the evenings. Most of them are tucked into small lanes as if they would rather not have any customers.

Speaking of rather not having any customers, the experience of shopping in some places in Trivandrum is truly eye opening. I have been to several shops where as soon as one enters the sales people stare sullenly at you. If one manages to avoid the obvious hatred and picks out an item, it gets almost hurled at you by the sales person. Customer satisfaction doesn't seem to exist in this district.

So ruling out food and shopping what do we do to pass time on weekends? Movies are an option with tickets only Rs 35. But this is also affordable to the Sunday afternoon drunk who wants to pass out in a theater as well. If you can overcome the snoring drunk, the hard seats and the stench the movie is worth your money.
Else the beach seems to be a place where you can go to. Though you would have to bear with a lot of stares and snide remarks from the peverts at the beaches. But are other places any different? I guess they too would be the same, but I refuse to acknowledge that they could be any worse place than Trivandrum.

The high class society is a snob. Their establishments are not worth dealing with. I had an unfortunate experience dealing with several society ladies running a tailoring shop. They misplaced one of my cloth and when i tried to reason with them they retaliated with a vengence. You would think people with education would have the sense to talk reasonably. But whoever said education guarantees sensibility. Middle aged ladies have no sense of queue while waiting for autos. They just try to outsmart you and get to the auto first.

Once they know that you are from Technopark, you are gullible to be robbed. If you haggle with any person they would say, you are getting paid so much why are you being so stingy? If I had such a bad time, I dont even try to imagine what the out of state folks would begin to feel. But bargain we did as we did our own cooking as the food in this neck of the woods is not for everyones palate.

With the advent of IT in the city, the land prices have gone up. Everyone blames IT for it. Who do we blame? We have to pay these high rates too for renting houses which are barely big enough for two people to comfortable live in. The area around techno park, houses spring up like mushrooms. Everything from a studio flat to houses without kitchens for bachelors are available. But the quality of the construction is another matter.
I spend several years in Palakkad which is even smaller a town than the capital city. Add a couple more shops to Palakkad and enlarge the roads a bit and submerge them in water in the rainy season and it would become Trivandrum. But in Palakkad I never saw any angry salesperson nor did i ever see strangers who refused to help. I ran away from Palakkad thinking never again would I live in a town as small as this and landed in Trivandrum.

Do I miss anything about Trivandrum? Was there anything worthwhile in the place that I would recommend to others? Honestly I dont. It should never have the distinction of being called the capital of the state. Nothing in the city reflects that. Before I left work was going on laying pipes. So every road was dug up and then left with piles of mud everywhere. So the place didnt look pretty as usual.

Some advantages of calling Trivandrum home is pollution is less compared to the other major cities. Traffic is not as bad as others. The weather is pretty good most of the year around. The cost of living not as high as other cities. Does this offset any of the bad experiences that I have had these past years? This tip of god's own country is not my cup of tea.

In love and further...

I thought I loved you

I believed my heart could no more hold.

But with your every word,

Every touch and look of love

I discover love is limitless.

At times love overwhelms

The words recede and tears flow unbidden .

Last night the sparkle in your tear rimmed eyes,

Your hand seeking mine, the ecstasy

While silence spoke eloquently.

It spoke of trust, of companionship,

It sang unheard verses of love.

My eyes clouded, my heart filled

Part in love and part your tears.

Lost we were in the silent symphony.

Once more you tested my boundaries

Proving love is without an end

Time may never repeat

The moment silent, when

Two souls fell in love all over again.

Mathematics!

What is your favorite subject? Most of us as kids would have been asked this at some point of their life. You can't discuss weather nor any of those mundane conversations starters with a kid. So you stick to stock questions like this. So what was my favorite subject? The answer was always a no-brainer for me, English and Maths. English came naturally to me, I could write essays without blinking an eye so it was definitely on top. As for mathematics its a rather long story.

The responsibility of her daughters education was on amma's shoulders. We played with achan and we studied with amma. Everyday after school she would sit with us and make us do our homework. Before I proceed, you should know something about amma. She was and still is extremely good at maths. And she was also extremely quick to loose her temper. And the above two mentioned qualities have been missed in my genetic makeup.

You can add up two and two and get endless possibilities if you don't know that it should lead to four. I am generalizing here. Of course with my eleven fingers I was comfortable with all additions that stayed below eleven, but what about eight plus four? That was out of my league. Eight plus four would eventually trigger twelve in my mind after having worked on them for a bit. Then I would look at amma to analyze whether twelve would be what she would be expecting. 

Meanwhile, amma would be looking at me and wondering why the dunderhead(that's me) is looking at her and not giving her an answer, and naturally her temper would start to boil. I would notice amma's face slowly turn pink with compressed anger. It would begin from the tip of her nostrils and spread. The twelve which would have reached the tip of my tongue would dissolve into a thirteen.

So with thirteen becoming the new star on the horizon, I would again look down at the figures, round the eight a bit  more, make sure my addition sign is perfect, bite my lips and give out the impression that rain or shine I am going to solve this puzzle. But all I would be thinking of is how heat waves of anger seem to be radiating from her. Seconds would turn into minutes. My twelve and thirteen would still be wrestling it out with each other and I would be undecided. It would have been easier to keep on counting past eleven in my mind, but my mind would be strangely numb. Finally amma would ask me angrily whether I had the answer or not. I cant be expected to take this long during an exam she would say.The moment I hear her tone, flood gates would open and tears would come unbidden to my eyes as I realize that this is the edge of the precipice. My heart would stop pumping and I would look at her through blurred tear rimmed eyes and blurt out FOURTEEN!

I usually missed whenever we sat to learn maths and i would always get suitably punished either on the arm or leg whichever was closest to her hands. Whatever patience amma had would dissolve when she saw tears in my eyes. She could never fathom why I cried before every answer. And I never figured out how to stop those tears from coming. [I still haven't] So my addition days at home were a blur of pink, tears and a whole lot of beatings. But the worse was about to come.

Addition didn't give me as many problems as the rest of the math family. Subtraction seemed to have been formed to torture the souls who couldn't count backwards fast enough. And leave alone normal numbers subtraction with decimals was my Waterloo! It was bad enough that I had to borrow from the next number but the dots in between were an added distraction. I tried counting with my fingers, my toes even but the numbers always missed their mark and the punishments continued. Somehow for examinations, since amma was not breathing near my neck while I added and subtracted I made less mistakes than at home. So while I never got a hundred in maths I always managed to scrape low nineties or high eighties.

Multiplication and division also lay claim to tripping me up frequently. Geometry, algebra, logarithms also joined in the gang war. They were all on one side and I was alone in the other.Finally in my eighth standard amma announced that she was not going to tutor me anymore. Time had come for me to stand on my own to feet and face Mr x and Mr y. Was she confident that I would deal with them on my own or was she simply tired after teaching me? I don't know the answer to that yet. But whatever success I have had with numbers is because of her. After seventh standard I have been on my own with Mathematics stumbling along sometimes falling sometimes succeeding. I even went up to the extent of taking up engineering which had a lot of maths in it.

So with this rich history in numbers where am I now? I am still fighting the war with numbers. In our day to day life it is difficult to ignore the numbers. When I first calculated our bank balance and converted it to Indian Rupees we became millionaires in the league of Ambani's and I was left stunned and breathless until my husband pointed out I had added a wee bit too many zeros at the end. On some days the zeros get missed out and we are plunged into near future poverty. Thankfully, I chose wisely and married a man who can multiply and divide like the best of them. 

So after all this, why is it then that maths is one of my favorite subjects? The suspense of writing x=8 and y=4 and looking at amma, who would nod if it is right  and the thrill that followed after getting the correct solution was worth everything. Amma would calmly move on to the next question but I lived for those rare moments. When your equations balance themselves out it beats any story hands down. 

The woods are lovely dark and deep...

Two roads diverged into the woods, both leading to a dense growth of trees. I didn't have the advantage that Robert Frost had as both the roads were tarred and both looked the same. Dusk was spreading, the time when birds and animals alike call it a day and go home. But we were feeling adventurous.

We decided by some random logic that the road leading to the right was the one we would take. And so we started walking. Initially the pace was leisurely as we admired the beauty around us. Tall trees lined both sides of the path, with green ferns covering up the ground. Dry, fallen leaves crunched under our feet and moss covered up fallen barks by the road side. It was a pretty place to hike through. But little did I realize that things were about to change very soon.

The road twisted and turned like a serpent so we could never make out more than 20 steps in front of us. Beyond every turn there was always another turn. The silence of the forest began to get oppressive. There were no birds, no crickets even.It was as if we were the only souls awake in that part of the woods. Every step that I took, I fearfully scanned both to my left and right to check if something was hiding behind those trees. I felt as though eyes were hiding behind the trees watching every step. 

Midway on our trek we stopped. We had been going for close to five minutes and we hadn't seen any sign that someone had gone ahead of us. All of us were wrecked with doubts. Was it because of the late hour that no one was there? Or was it because this was not a place meant for trekking? While we stood there discussing quietly amongst ourselves, a bird flew overhead. The swishing noise of the air as the bird's wings flapped was oddly loud. It was eerily silent again as the bird flew away. And it was getting darker by the minute.

One of the guys checked his mobile and found that he had range. So with the help of the mobile, the decision was made that we continue. If we had not reached anywhere after 10 minutes we would turn back we decided. With everyone agreeing to move forward, I muted the warning bells in my head and we started again. We walked in silence as if respecting the silence of the forest. I was too busy scanning the area to talk to anybody. Perhaps the others were also thinking along the same lines. Barely had we gone forward another 5 minutes  when we saw a clearing in the woods. The path we were walking on ended on top of a hill. Our smiles returned and our steps grew quicker. As the trees started clearing I realized that there was still some daylight left.

All of a sudden we heard the car approaching at high speed. We looked towards the direction the car was coming from. It zipped past us at top speed as we stood gaping. Our forest ended on a main road! The path we had walked through was just a service path for the rangers of the park. 

There was no other option but to turn back. Looking back , the woods didn't even seem remotely scary. It was just a small cluster of trees. Our spirits returned and with it our voices as well. We were a happy bunch walking back laughing at our misadventure.

There ends part one of this story. The trail that led to no where. But this trail is the one I would most remember. On to part 2.

We went back to the fork in the road and took the left path. It was darker and quieter. The trees on either side had spread their branches over the road and cut off all the light. Again we took the decision before starting off that we would trek online 10 minutes before turning back. Barely had we gone three minutes when light began to appear. The trees were thinning with each step we took. One last turn and suddenly we were out in a clearing. It was not where we wanted to be, but it was gorgeous. The sun was setting and the sky was a painted every color possible. The colors of the sky were reflected in the still waters of the lake in front of us. A couple of deers, a few geese completed the picture. I stood there for a long time mesmerized by the beauty of the sunset. 

Lost we were still, but what a reward for losing our way. I tried to capture the beauty of that lake through my camera but realized that there are somethings that nature doesn't share with us. She keeps them for herself.

We finally found our way back and headed back to our vehicle. I cant vouch for the others, but trailing at the back of the group I kept looking back over my shoulder not wanting to leave. I was happy being lost.

One foot here and the other...

I guess I will be a wandering soul till the day I die.

I have always envied those who say I grew up in one place, went to one great school and made some life long friends. On the other hand, it seems like I was born with a suitcase already packed and all set to travel. All through my school years we were constantly shifting, so I was constantly saying bye to a lot many friends pretty frequently. So my list of life long buddies who have known me since my first tooth popped out is a big miserable zero.

But I love talking about my school days if ever someone asks me about it. From my earliest memory I have been travelling. I spent my kindergarten , stuck with a bunch of screaming toddlers in Dubai New Indian Model School. I was too petrified of 20 odd kids all simultaneoulsy bawling that I forgot to cry when my dad left me with them. Thats my first memory of my first school. 

For my first standard I got a new uniform and new bag and a new set of books and a new school in a new country! Vijayamatha convent at a small town in Chittur district in Palakkad was my next school. My only recollection of that year was getting into a jeep loaded with other tiny kids. Loaded would not begin to describe how many kids were stuffed into that jeep. Well the van lost a kid next year when I moved back to Dubai.

Second standard mom barely had barely unpacked the suitcases when the year got over and we came back to India due to the threat of the gulf war. I joined a new school in Palakkad. I stood out like a sore thumb here with my English speaking ways and inability to play the games that these girls were experts in. 

Two years later I was again on a flight bound to Dubai to a new school where I would spend the next 6 years. Std 5 - 10 at VIPS Dubai was a particularly long stretch for me considering the record so far. I loved that every year I was with the same set of people. But hated the fact that all the girls I liked where already in a gang since ages and I was always an outsider. However, I had some of my most wonderful years there and met some very lovely people. I lost some of my shyness during my fourth or fifth year which pretty much improved my over all situation.

Having given my tenth board exams I said bye to my friends at VIPS and moved back to India.Two more years and officially my school days were over. 

By now I was used to being different. I knew I would never truly be another face in the crowd. From the way I spoke to the kind of clothes I had, I was always odd one out. And finally at some point of time in life I let it be. I guess time had come, that I wanted to be different from others and my schooling helped me do that without me trying too hard. Those terrible teenage years that everyone keeps talking about missed me by a mile.

I am now a mutant in my native place. My name is a dead give away that I am a mallu. But I am ignorant of most of the old customs and traditions. I never go to sit on my grandparents knee and hear stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. So I made my own stories. I know my mother tongue but gosh its a slippery one. I would rather speak in English. I do not know the malayalam months but I do love celebrating my birthday twice a year. The couple of years that I spent in Kerala finally made me fall in love with the saree, but I love it only in moderation. I am still to get over my allergy to any TV channel in Malayalam. I find Kerala beautiful, but Seattle is equally lovely.

 

I know I am not alone. There are millions like me who live outside their native place yet neither embrace their new place nor completely let go of their homeland. We are stuck somewhere in the middle. 

I would rather be the mutant in my state than be anywhere else in the world. If someone asks me where are you from I give the answer I am supposed to give. But I don't call any place home. The only constant thing in my life has been my family. They are my roots. If my family choose to move to the Himalayas tomorrow I guess my internal compass would point to the mountain tops as my home.

The bottom line is now I love having been to so many places and seen so many people. My perspective has changed so much after all this travelling and it continues to change the more I see of the world. I don'd mind being the wandering soul anymore. But would I want the same shifting sands for my children? I am undecided yet.

At home, on top of each room we have stacks of old, broken suitcases from all our years of travel. They are reminders to the fact that my life has been like the cut kite in the sky. I go where the wind blows. 

Eeny teeny woman

Story told by a 11 year old to her 8 year old sister.

Eeny teeny woman lived under the earth. Being such a small person she had of course weeny teeny features. Her face was very small with eeny teeny eyes and her hands and feet also were so eeny teeny that you couldn't see them unless you looked carefully. She had an eeny teeny house for herself which she was very comfortable in. The eeny teeny house had several eeny teeny rooms but eeny teeny woman had no other family so she was all alone in that eeny teeny house.
The eeny teeny house was located at the end of an eeny teeny street. There were eeeeny teeeny streetlights on either side. There were eeny teeny supermarkets near the eeny teeny house so eeny teeny woman never had to walk far on her eeny teeny shoes.
Everyday morning eeny teeny woman would put on her eeny teeny dress and pick up her teeny weeny umbrella and teeny weeny bag and set out to the market. Her companion was her teeny weeny dog who followed her everywhere. She would go shopping and buy some eeny teeny vegetables and cook them in her eeny teeny kitchen. Her eeny teeny friends would come over once in a while to talk or they would call each other over their eeny teeny telephones. Eeny teeny woman was very content with her life.

If  you thought that this story was right up your alley, then either you are an eight year old or someone with the maturity of an eight year old. I take that back. In this Harry Potter era the entire world seems to be loving fantasy stories, myself included.

Anyhow my sister loved these eeny teeny woman stories! I remember for a long time she would always ask me at bed time for an eeny teeny woman story. Initially it was fun making up stories. My ground rules were , start ever line if possible with the words "eeny teeny " and add in as many inconsequential eeny teeny stuff to the story and hey presto, a story that would last 3 - 4 minutes. And obviously I would always stretch my eenies and teeneies as far i could. However there is only so much that a lonely old woman could do so later on new eeny teeny characters came into the picture like the eeny teeny guitar man with his guitar and so on. I think on one rare occasion someone from eeny teeny land even made their way up to the surface.

Thankfully this phase of our lives didnt last long. Either I ran out of eeny teeny stories or mom told us to not talk anymore in bed. How the eeny teeny saga ended is a mystery to me. And I am equally confused on what I must have told her all those nights that had her asking for more stories the next day.

Years later my sister brings home a book which she says she liked. Its by a new author Eoin Colfer and revolves around a boy and fairies who live below the earth! I read it and I like it too. However I only recently made the connection between this and my literary escapades over two decades ago. Our stories have really nothing much in common other than a few small ideas. Leaves me to ponder, if I had fine tuned eeny teeny woman, added a few guns, a few gizmos, a fight scene, or a love angle maybe I would have been the Eoin Colfer and he would have been blogging about his stories and how they were similar to mine:)

PS - Once and only once I made the mistake of asking my sister to tell me a story one night when eeny teeny woman refused to budge an inch. I will save her story for another post.

Life is not a roller coaster

For a long time I had kept this quote on my office messenger window - "
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'WOW What a Ride!'"
the source of this is unknown..


I used to believe in this... Life was certainly hectic when I was working. Work, friends, family, cooking, exercise etc my time just flew past so quickly. But just as the wear and tear was beginning to show, I married. And nothing has been the same ever since.


Since my wedding day one year back life has been a succession of one black hole after another. And we seem to be falling in all of them in succession. There is no roller coaster of a ride anymore, its more of a slow merry go round which just never stops.


Black hole number one was when we waited for 7- 8 months for a visa for me to join Reni here in the U.S. Fate was certainly very inventive and original in the number of twists that happened in those 7 - 8 months.
Imagine handing over the keys of your car an hour before you were supposed to leave and then coming back to office to find out you were going to be stuck there for another 6 months. Well that happened to me. Funny thing was I needed those extra six months to get the dealers to give me my money in return for selling my car.


But coming to the main issue, my visa to enter USA. I pushed matters from India and my husband pushed matters from US and ultimately when we were completely fed up, I was granted a visa. 
No that is still not the complete story. I forgot to mention that when the interviewer from the consulate congratulated me on getting my visa I handed her another paper which said I had to get my passport notarized. So instead of sending my passport to get my visa stamped she handed it back to me. Time froze that instant as I realized that I had just landed myself in another mess.


And a mess it was. Chasing people all over Chennai, running up and down stairs papers in hand trying to find someone who would take my passport back to the consulate. Turned out that this someone was right next to the passport office. But he was on his lunch break when I finally reached him. So while he took his lunch break I gave a liberal dose to my hubby on the phone telling him this was all his fault. Poor guy had called me to console me. Guess what I got no more calls from him that day. At the end of the hour tired, hungry and baked in the Chennai sun I handed him my passport.


No more surprises and one week later I got my passport back with the visa stamped and with a lot of good wishes I landed in the US on April mid of 2010.


So finally we were together and living plain ordinary days filled with nothing. Looking back now those days were too few because barely 2 weeks after I reached he filed his visa extension.
PLONK!!! You guessed it. Next black hole. 
For the next three months conversations in the house went like this.


Me : " Honey the sofa is almost brown in colour. Its really dirty and its stinks too. Lets buy a cover for it."
Reni : "Let my visa extension happen, then we will see. Cant risk spending too much and then losing all this when my extension gets turned down."


Me : "Honey the TV screen has turned yellow. Time to throw this and get a new one" 
Reni : "Let my visa extension happen."


Me : "Honey ...What do you say to... Oh! why bother I will tell you this after the visa gets extended."


We patched things up, covered up the stains, liberally poured room freshener over the stinky spots and stopped watching TV.


Today finally the visa petition has moved ahead one stage.
You rejoice thinking that perhaps we are moving to the happy end of the story.  But no, we are not the happily ever after kind of people. We are obviously Gods favorites. 
The next stage that the visa application has moved to is "request for evidence". This basically means that someone somewhere is not convinced that we need to stay here for some more time and that we need to provide proof to convince them that we need to be here.


So the originally green sofa remains grey - brown, the TV remains switched off and we remain Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods.


Adios...

Irony of life

A bit about me. In all honesty.

Imagine the irony of my life...

My teachers told me - I write well
I didnt say my mom wrote about three fourths of that essay.

Was I good?
My mom's help didnt last long
And I had to keep up appearances at school.
So I continued to write...
My friends said I wrote well.
I am not sure whether I do.

But I know, I can write better than I can talk
I can spill my deepest, darkest secret in any email, letter or poem
And believe me , the words gush out.
But I hate writing for the very fact that
I am not ready to reveal too much about myself.
Not yet.

Its not like I have the paparazzi hounding me.
I am no star.
I have stuff to say
But do I want you to hear them?
I have opinions to air
But do I want you to judge them?
I have tears to shed
But I dont want you to see them.
So I laugh and smile a lot
Which hides the real me very well.

But the strain of hiding what needs to be out in the open -
Catches up to me in unbelievable ways.

A pin drops and I cry
But the tears dry up easily
Coz they are not for the pin [imagine crying for a pin!]
It was for some memory some pain which I had stored away in my cupboard
Which let itself loose.
I yearn at times for someone to understand me
But most times I rather that people misjudge me.
I dont want to correct your opinion about me
But I do want to be liked.

I might not make sense to anyone out there
But to me I make perfect sense!

So this marks the beginning of my constant struggle with myself.  To write or not to write is just one small snowflake in the avalanche!
The ruins of the past ( read old blogs which never took off) warn me that this is going to be another crash landing. Fingers crossed and hoping for the best.