I had the privilege of spending this year in absolute freedom. I haven't however taken the time to be thankful for this utterly selfish existence, and acknowledge the new friends I have made, the friends who have remained and the friends I have lost. I am glad I opened up to loved ones and found favor. I am glad also to have learnt to trust those I love. This year has been a saccharine year.   

Until recently, my life felt like a cauldron simmering with anticipation, not of good times, but of the next act in a suspenseful avant-garde play. Regardless of what was going to happen, that very moment felt like it was threatening to boil over. The moments that had gone by had produced many potions, some that had horrific consequences and some inspiring feelings of wonder and delight. 

With every horrific consequence, I had to relearn the act of gathering myself and going back to the cauldron to pour in more hope, more heart, and more soul to discard some venom, some blood, and some brain. It was not the potion that I looked forward to, but the smoke that rose like a spirit and filled my senses and fogged my thoughts. And when it faded, I hoped that it will have consumed all the horror and left behind a wonderful dream.

My life has been enviable for some years now and I have only consumed wondrous potions. It has shaped in ways that I couldn't have imagined. It has masked the unspeakable, even though I see it peeking sometimes when I get anxious, and can feel its spirit around me. The past is always lurking and reaching for my present. It is in the now as much as it will be in the the future, and that is the only thing I know will remain for certain, while it is the only thing I know for certain must not remain. But until then every present day is like a rehearsal for every future day which brings with it unknown joys and fears. I have learnt to rein in my fears, and take comfort in what is known even though I can never be certain that the worst is over.  

Now when I hide, I have kindred spirits hiding with me and that is good enough. If only I could throw the beasts in the cauldron, and watch the smoke rise and fade, and take away the potions that have horrific consequences. But since that is not to be, I hope not to get consumed in that thought, and my kindred spirits help me with that.   

This year, there have been instances when I was caught up in uncertainty and feeling like I was losing perspective. I spent a lot of time learning and unlearning things, and assimilating changes somewhat gainfully.On a professional front, I am learning to go with my gut, but quietly. On a personal front, I am learning to make sustainable choices, but openly. These have been hard lessons, but none as hard as the lessons I have had to learn in the previous years.

I hope the coming year is one that I will spend thinking ideationally, favoring abstraction and emotion over logic and rationality. I hope yours in spent thinking whichever way you like, and doing whatever you want. I hope more than ever that we are each not the fear that the other is hiding from. Happy New Year!

(I am drawing the Angel Cards tomorrow. Let me know if you want one)

I was looking at my apartment today and it suddenly dawned on me that it is as large as the dasara kolu we used to have at home in India. I am probably sitting in the area that would have been set aside for Rama's Pattabhishekam. This is the part of the room that has the most amount of light coming in through the glass doorway, and is visible from every part of the house no matter where one is seated. The gold of the thrones, the jewels of the royal family, the beautifully embroidered fabric would have made a magnificent scene right here. 

There was a lot of effort that went into setting up the kolu, with at least 20 people working on it every day for a whole week before the guests arrived to view them for all the 10 days. There were drivers and cooks decorating the ceilings and walls with silk drapes and color lights, maidservants polishing the dolls and setting up the multi-leveled stages, the older generation choreographing the visual 'narrative', younger adults dictating the design and aesthetic, kids helping with the execution (mainly with the forest, water and snow scenes, and the making of garlands). It was a lot of hard-work, but well worth the effort.

The kolu made possible the symbiosis of the young and the old in every possible way. There were several dolls that had been passed on to us from at least three generations. Many of them were now to be handled delicately like holding a butterfly by its wings. They had to be polished and painted on neatly... in some cases they had to be glued together making sure that they looked unblemished. But most of them were intact and looked as new as ever. Then there were the new dolls that were imported from dollmakers in Tamil Nadu and Andhra who have been in this business for many generations. 

The oldest generation (grandparents, great aunts) always claimed that the dolls of their childhood were even more ornate and well-crafted than the new ones. I can only imagine how exquisite the dolls were a 100 years ago by making assumptions that perfection is never what I can see now (or can imagine !). There were also some of us who wanted to display our collection of barbie dolls, GI Joes, and hot wheel cars. These were relegated to the kids' corner, which was not to be mixed with the rest of the kolu.  In some relatives families, kids were encouraged to create their own dolls for the entire kolu. While, we lacked the enthusiasm for this, we boasted of a bigger, grander kolu, where the scene-setting took up a lot of creativity. Rivers for instance were made with long stretches of blue powder with the waves of many sizes neatly drawn over them with kolam (white rice powder). Forest scenes were made with carefully selected plants from the garden, fields were made with lawn grass, palace drapes were made with pattu padavais (silk sarees)... no material or detail was compromised. Kolus were a matter of pride!   

We all practiced the songs that we had to sing at our kolu and everyone else's for all the ten days. We saved the best for our own, and planned carefully so that we didn't repeat any song to the same audience, should they end up in the same houses we were visiting (which was highly possible as there were easily over 100 guests attending kolus in several houses every day). We wore new clothes all ten days and dressed like we would at weddings.

Even the gifts to guests were a place to show creativity. Chundals (seasoned chickpeas) and blouse pieces aside, people had other lovely return gifts that ranged from hand-painted boxes, to little dolls, and custom-made silver lamps. (In this department, ours were the least innovative. We went with the standard! These outwardly gestures with knickknack gifts during festivals were never our territory. We only lavished praise and made good company)

When the kolu was over, our work didn't end there. We had to wrap up the show (quite literally). The dolls had to be mummified neatly again and put back in the huge steel trunks they came out of. The decorations had to be purged into "re-use and throw" bins, the plants had to be taken back to the garden, the sarees and drapes had to be dry-cleaned and the rooms had to be restored to their original layout. This was again a few days job. 

As I reminisce the kolu today, I can see that that era has passed. There are grand kolus still occupying whole rooms, but not the magnificent ones I remember from my childhood. I suppose no one has the time for it, even though we all look back at the past with much longing and fondness. As I think back to the older kolus I also realize that they were expensive affairs, which don't seem practical today.

That being said, the really ones that I have seen lately both in the US and in India, while are smaller (occupying a whole room or half a room), are much more polished than the ones of my childhood. They use expensive showpieces collected from all over the world, and seem refined in the aesthetic... and somewhat contemporary even though they boast of dolls that may be many years old.

I have an aunt who has the grandest dasara kolus every year with beautiful dolls collected from her travels, and several dolls that she has made herself. Her kolu makes me relive my nostalgia and in someways also surpass them because they not only transport me to the past, but also to a whole different world that is new is unfamiliar :) There are few other aunts whose kolus makes me smile.

At one point, I used to snobbishly deride the step-kolus (traditional kolus arranged in steps) for showing no creativity, but today as I look at pictures, I find them beautiful and elegant. I wonder why we never tried to fashion our kolus that way at least for change!

Read the rest of this post at your own discretion :) This is just a description of the kolu at home for my cousins to share nostalgia or remind them of what we used to have. 

The kolu was split into several parts dedicated to different mythological and historic stories. On the left were the scenes from the Ramayana, starting with the Putrakameshti Yagna.
 
Dasharatha and his three wives perform a fire sacrifice to appease the gods for progeny •  Rama and Lakshmana (two of Dasaratha's four sons) accompany Vishwamitra and help him fight the demons while he performs a yagna •  Rama breaks the bow at the swayamwara and wins Sita's hand •  Kaikeyi, after being provoked by her servant Manthara, wails to Dasaratha and claims two boons  - to make her son Bharata the successor of his throne, and to exile Rama to the forest for 14 years •  In the forest Lakshmana having accompanied Rama and Sita, cuts of Surpanaka's nose for seducing the brothers •  Sita is enamored by a golden deer and asks Rama to capture it for her •  Rama kills the golden deer to find that it is Maricha, who is Ravana's aid sent to separate Rama from Sita •  Ravana disguises himself as a brahmin and tricks her into crossing the Lakshmana Rekha and carries her away •  Jatayu with a broken wing from fighting Ravana informs Rama and Lakshmana of the abduction •  [There were no scenes from Sundara Kanda where Rama and Lakshma meet Hanuman and the entire monkey-entourage] •  Hanuman sets his tail to fire and destroys Lanka •  Hanuman has himself captured by the warriors and sits in Ravana's court over a throne made out of his tail and urges Ravana to return Sita to Rama •  [There were no scenes from the Yuddha Kanda where the battle between Rama and Ravana's forces take place] •  Rama and Sita's Pattabhishekam takes place after much rejoining over their victory over Ravana •  [There were no scenes from Uthara Kanda detailing the lives of Lava and Kusha] 

On the center floor were scenes of Vrindavana from Bhagavata Purana.

Vasudeva escapes Kamsa's prison with baby Krishna and crosses the River Yamuna to Gokula and hands the baby over to Yashoda and Nanda •  Krishna tames Kaliya, the poisonous naga serpent living in the Yamuna and dances on his head •  Krishna climbs on top of his friends and reaches for the pot of butter in the ceiling •  Krishna is reprimanded by Yashoda for eating butter and is amazed to see the whole world in his mouth when he opens it for her •  Krishna plays the flute as the gopikas dance around him •  [There were several scenes of Krishna and gopikas in the kolu]

On the right floor were a miscellany of scenes from other mythological stories •  There were scenes depicting stories of Vishnu's Dasavatara, scenes of Shiva's many manifestations in Mount Kailasa, representations of the several hindu gods and goddesses. 

On a separate aisle there was a scene of Vikramaditya's kingdom •  some contemporary scenes of villages with whole huts and people interacting with other. •  there were housewives going about their everyday chores such as drawing a kolam (or rangoli) in front of the house •  maamis gossiping with each other •  a family watching TV together •  farmers working in the fields •  cricketers in full white attire playing a match, etc.

Have you ever had a friend who hurt you so bad that you wonder why they get away with it? It's the equivalent of watching a really bad movie and somehow preferring to suffer through all three and a half hours of it instead of turning it off. Not just that... you then watch the same film again and again just because it is playing on TV... you learn the dialogues, sing the songs, and can't get the tunes out of your head. 

At some point you wonder if you had been pretending not to like the film, while secretly enjoying it immensely.  

In case of the friend, you wonder if you are just incapable of not liking them. Loving them is all you know how to do and want to do ...

In both cases Hum Aapke Hain Kaun comes to mind! 

and "Mein Madhuri Dixit Nahi Banna Chahti Hoon" ...

Ok. Now I am off to watch Dabangg in far far away land. I hope it's worth the long drive and the late night show.

How much is a pint of blood donated to a friend-in-need worth? 

It's not a rhetorical question. I just learnt that my cousin flew all the way to India for a day to donate blood to his friend. It sounded like a scene out of a melodramatic cliffhanger film where when the hero learns that his best friend is in the clutches of a gang of plane thieves, he jumps on his bike, whizzes to the airport, flies on top of the moving plane, crashes the cockpit window with his bike, knocks the pilot unconscious, fights the criminals and safe-lands the plane on a mountain cliff and saves the day! 

Of course, it is commendable what my cousin did. In fact so commendable as to sound unbelievable! I almost imagined a long tube of blood passing from my cousin's hand in Kaiser Permanente here to his friend's hand in Apollo Hospital in India, through several oceans and continents... then I thought the actual image of him looking jet-lagged and gray from his long travel was dramatic enough.

But, now that he did it, I have to wonder in my own cold-blooded way how much his pint of blood donated to his friend is worth?

My family has a very over-the-top way of reacting to situations. Sometimes it is hard to say if we are more admirable or more spontaneous (and in my case also stupid). It is almost like we managed to absorb the melodrama from generations of watching NTR, Sivaji Ganesan films into our bloodstream. TV-drama must flow through our every vein. Now it also flows through my cousin's friend's veins (and you would have thought the doctors would have contemplated the repercussions of passing on this deadly melodramatic disease to another normal human). I wish him the very best...

And to my cousin - You are rock star! :)

Living in a joint family, where there were always more kids than adults, everyone learnt to change diapers, feed and entertain babies by the time they could count to 100. Most often it was the young kids who took care of babies than the older generation... and not a lot of thought went into it!

The idea of parents keeping watch on kids was not only absurd, but if they showed concern for their kid, it was considered borderline offensive... as if we were being questioned if we are capable of the job or care about the baby's well being.

This time when I went to India, I saw my 14 year old cousin take my nephew to the men's room and change his diaper (and this he did while taking care of three other toddlers). He then dropped the clean baby on my lap and went to play football with his friends! It was as if it was the most normal thing for a teenage boy to do. It was such a relief to see that things hadn't changed much back home.

Over here, I can't tell you how much it bugs me when I see parents whine about how difficult it is to take care of kids. I find all the theorizing and over-analysis sickening. I don't understand why they need to be the center of all conversation. Babies are the most low-maintenance of all humans. Lets just leave it that way and let them be. There! I said it.

Ok. Entertain them, and entertain yourself with them. But just chill please.

When I was a kid eating my ice cream in school on Independence day, I would wonder if August 15th meant anything to Britain at all. Did they think of it as a Black Day? Were they terribly unhappy to leave?

I also wondered why we weren't commemorating the days when India annexed the French and Portuguese colonies as well. That could have meant some more ice cream for us... maybe in a flavor that was not vanilla!

I would then start considering all the princely states in the subcontinent that were never annexed or conquered by European colonial powers. They were hundreds of them that quickly became integrated into India in a matter of days (or months or years) after Independence.

If we saw those annexations as historic victories, that could have meant hundreds of ice creams for me almost every day of the year! But what would they (or we) have celebrated? Happy Integration Day or Happy Annexation Day? Were they happy to be integrated or annexed? I thought it wouldn't have hurt to consider these very important questions while eating those ice creams.

There was also the formation of language states to consider. We got ice cream for AP formation day on November 1st. But, we didn't really celebrate the accession of hyderabad into the Indian union... which was such a big deal and very ice cream worthy!

I never really understood this importance of Independence day beyond the ice cream. The map was full of places negotiating their freedom or loyalty. Several states seemed not to want to really belong to the country and had their own independence movements . But the schools even in those states hoisted flags and celebrated freedom like everywhere else. So I suppose they chose to contemplate freedom and loyalty over ice cream just like me.

When I was in class 5, my granddad casually pointed to me that the India map in my social studies text book was wrong. It included disputed territories (like Aksai Chin, parts of Arunachal Pradesh), northern area of Kashmir that was controlled by Pakistan and so on. He wished there were boundaries of indian-claim and foreign-claim to teach us what was happening in our country. I agreed (more strongly that he would have liked!)

The next day, I went to school and wrote on the exam paper that "This map is wrong" and walked out of class! When my dad was summoned in school, he was shocked to see a zero on my answer sheet... my teacher looked wounded, and they just stood there staring at me with this aggravated expression that bordered between violent and not knowing what to do. My dad then mustered some words out of his mouth and requested the teacher to let me write the exam again... and she did...and i wrote it that very day... and excelled in it :)

From then on, all was good! I never understood what I did wrong and wouldn't dare ask my dad. So I resigned to the fact that Independence was more a state of mind or sometimes a state of denial (that there is no independence). But, why did I care? I shouldn't have mattered as long as I was getting my ice cream!

I still think it doesn't matter as long as I am getting my ice cream. Only, now when I am done eating (like right this very minute), I am amazed at the peaceful unity we managed in our country in spite of the odds :) I am thinking to myself... what a fascinating country we are...so flawed and yet so wonderfully perfect!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ... ?...


for?


come on...


There's only one right answer and it is not a rhyming word that means India or Independence...


I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! :)

And that is one question you can answer fairly easily. At any given point, he is experimenting with some truth he picked up from a book. Lately, it has been Gandhi's Autobiography, prior to that it was Matthieu Ricard's Happiness, and even before that it was Herman Hesse's Siddhartha...

And while that may seem like he is on some metaphysical quest, I'll also add that he is equally influenced by his round-the-clock newsfeed (from NPR, the Economist...), several graphic and cyberpunk novels, science and technology magazines and every other kind of media he picks up.

He is the only guy I know who can pick up any book or movie and completely go into character. He will imbibe every word in it with utmost sincerity, like there is no greater truth in the world than what he just learnt... which is what I most adore about him, and what sets us apart.

I usually read the same books and casually reflect on them for a bit, but I can't say I have in it me to assimilate what I read into my life as much as I would like to "in theory". It just may be that I have chosen to bypass his quest for self-realization because I am inherently more self-centered and in no mood to realize anything.

But, while I go on contemplating about these books on some diaphanous level, he is living what he learnt in a more meaningful and life-altering way. The trouble is, we live together and influence each other's life choices, which means, I can't always choose to be purely contemplative, and he can't always fully acknowledge his changed attitude... even though we consciously try not to impinge on each others choices.

Here's where it is exciting for me. I find that his receptive and reflective attitude makes him the ideal companion for everything I want to share with him. He is open to any diversion you throw his way... so I totally feed his "open mind" with all kinds of baloney-garbage I find entertaining... and at the end of it, my baloney-garbage becomes his baloney-garbage and he is more excited about it than I was to begin with... which makes him so much fun to be with. :)

Also there is nothing I say or do that shocks him or he's complained about.

The one thing that he is less influenced by but completely immersed in is music. But maybe that's more a statement on the intangible quality of music, where it's influence on people is well... intangible :)

Anyway...

Gandhi's Autobiography that he is reading right now is making me slightly nervous. As Tapi is turning the pages next to me, my mind is shifting a million gears and flashing all the ideas from the book that will become actualized over the next few weeks... Checklist: truth (ok) vegetarianism (ok) nonviolence (ok) simplicity (ok) faith (umm.. ok with me! he might fail Gandhi in this one), celibacy (please, nooooo!) :)

My selfish side is looking to simultaneously supplement Tapi's Gandhi-quest with some mindless TV entertainment ... something that will neutralize all the idealism he is feeling and make it more workable (for me!). I am thinking food and travel shows, some nature and wildlife films, some romantic comedy movies, reality shows, anime, sci-fi and fantasy films... anything and everything that will encourage vicarious exploration or kindle empathetic behavior.

But then, I think he will gobble up all the aforementioned entertainment and delight in this abundance of diversion and then go back to reading Gandhi again...

So that's Tapi. :)

No. It's not his birthday. And I write this knowing fully that he will never read this.

I know Tapi is not listening to me when

I say "what are you reading?" and he says "sure!"
"do i look fat?" "i dont know!" (he'd better not be listening),
"should we have a baby?" "awesome!" (definitely not listening!)
"i love blues" "I love you too!!!"... :) (teehee. sometimes listening isn't all that it's cracked up to be)

Amina clap clap clap
Katamina clap clap clap
Sing-a-Song clap clap clap
Ding-a-Dong clap clap clap
Carrom Board clap clap clap
Barom Board clap clap clap
S.T.O.P Stop :)

(I wasn't happy to find that all my friends and cousins remembered the last two lines and I did not!)

Whether I inherited my grandmom's beauty and aesthetic sense or not, I certainly inherited her taste in lipstick shades! She always uses lipsticks in the most uncompromising shades of nude that are striking and subtle. And finding those shades of pink and red with the perfect amount of sheen of her liking is exasperating. But, I'll do it for her :)

Nude lipsticks are never nude in the true sense of the word. They have just about the right amount of color to complement one's attire and enhance the oomph that one needs to make a statement. I think it is especially sensuous when paired with smokey eye makeup.

But, I wonder if I use nude also because I don't have the artistic flair to try out other looks. But, if I did, wouldn't it just be lovely? Especially now that I feel like I need a miracle to look half decent!

I was sitting across this really pretty asian girl (also immensely-talented, as evidenced by her makeup) who looked so much like Kim Kardashian. She wore a figure-hugging black dress with cascading frills, some bold shimmering accessories, and dangerously high stiletto heels... But, it wasn't any of that or her long gorgeous hair and smokey eyes that I was covetously admiring.. It was her voluptuous lips in a shimmering silver! (and mind you, it looked far from glitzy... in fact, it was delicate and almost muted because of the way she wore it... in varying hues) It occurred to me that I have never tried that color on my lips! My life suddenly seemed dull and hollow. :)

Makeup is such a beautiful and intimate form of self-expression. One would think that all the skill and imagination it requires, the reciprocal interaction that it inspires, the emotions it conveys and the stories it tells would have made it an admired art form, but it only seems to have achieved that status in some circles! I wonder why that is... especially given that it is so ubiquitous (and varied)!

(With Nainamma- Dad's mom and Ammamma - Mom's mom)

I just got back from spending several weeks in India with family. The only way to describe the last few weeks is to go the Victorian novel route -- which is to use a million analogies and adjectives to describe the collision of emotions I felt with every breath. Either that, or I spend the next several weeks *scratch that* days processing my experience before presenting it to the external world. There is a fear that the longer I wait the farther I will go from it.

How do I go back and freeze time? How can I move on?

Last week I went to Boston to visit family and savored the joys of idleness.

This week, I am back home and look forward to mom's short visit to DC.

She's here for three days, so I know we will get along mighty fine. :)

The week with mom in Boston was surprisingly blissful.

I think she gets that I am a wondrous procrastinator :) (finally!)

and we have both been quite preoccupied getting acquainted with my brother's babies.

They are such a joy. :)

It was also one of those rare times when we were together without our other halves

Mom--no Dad, Anand--no Miru and me--No Tapi

It was like old times. (At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, it was awesome!)

Every time I visit my brother in Boston, it feels like I'm returning home on vacation.

Will India feel that way as well?

There is a good chance Tapi won't read this post, so I will take it and quickly sneak in a post to narrate today's incident. :)

Finding an Indian concert in Strathmore Hall is a bit like catching gold dust. When you hear of one, you really have to jump at the chance and run to it. So we headed to the Tirtha concert and speculated all the way how crowded it would be. Hard to say! The usual crowd we see in Strathmore are middle-aged-to-old white Americans, who I don't really associate with Indian fusion jazz music (although nothing about this country surprises me anymore!)... but we expected to see a fair number of Indians.

Strathmore is just a few minutes away from home, so we reached fairly quickly and parked the car in a more-or-less empty parking lot. Just as we got out of it, we saw an old couple walking past us looking visibly disappointed. We overheard the lady whine in telugu to her husband that they should have come a bit sooner, because the tickets were sold out. Sold out? Really? We were both quite surprised. We've been to R. Prasanna's concerts before and they were never sold out, even when he managed to attract a large audience!

As I was building up curiosity on who these people were, I turned back and saw Tapi jumping over a hedge, running down the stairs and vanishing into the parking lot. So then I walked the same route (albeit less hurriedly) and found him talking to the old couple in the distance.

By the time I reached there, the couple and Tapi were like a mini-andhra family and I said "namaskaram" and they said "namaskaram" and asked us if we were sure we wanted to forego the tickets. To which, Tapi responded in his usual adorable style (hand-folded sincerity, indian head-nod and all) "No no. You have to see it. I guarantee you will love it. We've seen R. Prasanna play before... he's pretty cool. Those guys will put on quite a show... (long pause)... their ensemble is impressive... the piano dude especially is the shit." ... the old woman looked baffled but she managed a smile after a bit... and then the couple left looking quite happy at the end of it.

Then Tapi said "It's funny how they looked suspicious at first. The lady was skeptical about taking the tickets and the man insisted on paying for them"

So I told him, I would have wet my pants if I saw a 6 foot tall man vault over a hedge and stretch out his hand to offer free tickets while heaving and panting for breath. It's a rare kind of enthusiastic generosity that could be mistaken for suspicious behavior! :)

But, isn't Tapi just wonderful? He's the sweetest guy ever! :)

Well anyway... as we were driving back home quite peacefully, he suddenly took a sharp U and started driving in the opposite direction. He then picked out some comic books for me from Barnes and Noble... cos it dawned on him that the tickets he gave away were a birthday gift to me :)

Now we are home listening to some good music and I am off to sit next to him and read my new comics...

Looking back at the last five years, the two things that have been consistent is how perfectly my age catches up with my waist size and how change has been the only constant!

Last year, I quit my job to pursue an entrepreneurial dream, worked on some interesting educational projects, went on a few vacations, survived some freak accidents, missed my husband sorely, but things haven't been entirely unpredictable... Everything I did, including choosing a risky career path, were conscious decisions! There have been times when I have forgotten that. I have been so caught up in this raw change and with questioning my dubious choices that I haven't relished the good times that have been staring at me. I have spent many days just thinking about how inadequate I am, and how alone I am in this inadequacy. There is always this wonder and amazement and how well everyone else seems to be doing, and how much more commendable their life choices are.

I have been telling myself that by 30 I want to be where I can look back at my life with some sense of self-worth, so that I can look forward to a more contented future. But, that would make 29 the cheerless gateway to an equally unknown decade. So perhaps, this year will be better spent regaining some spunk and clarity, and doing the right things with confidence?

Now I'm off on my awesome dinner date with my most favorite person in the whole entire universe!

---

I always do a gifts list cos I get the coolest gifts ever. :)

This year, I got:

The Taste of Tea DVD, 
Snap Circuits, 
6-in-1 solar robot kit (wrapped in this really cool paper with a little dog stuck on top of it), 
An ipad, 
A wireless keyboard, 
Tickets to The Blue Mug play, 
Tickets to Vijay Iyer's Tirtha concert (with R.Prasanna and Nitin Mitta), 
A few inches in my new TV :)
A pretty salwar with matching necklace and earrings, 
Two beautitful vases (to paint on)
Some pretty handmade earrings,
An amazing pencil sketch of me,
Tons and tons of birthday wishes - some very endearing emails, birthday songs, some old photographs,  
Lunches, dinners,
Some IOUs

For many years, it was a struggle finding a bed to sleep on in my house. Every night, I would have to look around to see if there was an unoccupied bed in one of the rooms that I could sleep on. Sometimes, it would help that I slept off while watching TV in the living room, and then my dad, or older brother, or one of the uncles would lift me and drop me on some bed. The next morning I would get reprimanded for putting them through the agony. It never really occurred to me to complain that I had no permanent bed to sleep on. It was almost an absurd thing for me to ask for... like a kid demanding his own car. For one thing, I didn't see my brother or cousins demanding a bed. I didn't know how they dealt with it. It seemed like a thing to figure out on your own and I clearly wasn't smart enough. So, I was both sheepish about this ploy of mine where I acted like I fell asleep while watching TV, and at the same time proud of outsmarting them.

For a few months I used to sleep in my grandfather's room, except for the few days that his brother, or some other relative visited us!

If I was tired of looking for a room, I would knock on my parents' door in the middle of the night and ask if I could sleep next to them. Mom always thought it was because I wanted to snuggle with her, and would choke up with motherly affection. When mom's maternal instincts kick in, she can give the melodramatic soaps a run for their money! But soon the halo of maternal love would fade and give way to her whining about this becoming a routine. Dad would then arrange for a place for me to sleep and all balance would be restored! (at least for a few days until I was forced to go back to my nomadic existence and this cycle would repeat itself again and again)

Then came the festivals and functions. You would think having a house full of guests would make my life hell. But, working out where I would sleep was the easiest during this time. Come night, when it was time to go to bed after all the festivities, the living rooms and studies (yes, we had multiple studies and also many empty, unused rooms) would be transformed into sleeping areas, with dharis (quilts) spread out all over the floor to accommodate everyone. All I had to do was settle on one of them and that was that! Imagine my excitement when suddenly I was indulged with choice! Usually all the kids were accommodated in one room, and we would stay up all night, talking and playing until we were so tired that we fell asleep clueless about how or where we were sleeping.

All this was new and exciting to my visiting cousins, but to me, it was an everyday affair! The excitement for me was in that both entertainment and accommodation were both getting resolved!

In summers, a lot of us would sleep in the "triangle room", which was the main living room that opened to an indoor courtyard! All the bedrooms had air-coolers, but we were still too young to enjoy the privilege... so "triangle" was where we slept. Hyderabad winters are quite hot. In the month of May and June, the temperature rises up to 44 degrees. But, the nights would occasionally get breezy, and it would sometimes rain in the courtyard and the room would smell of earth. This was my most favorite part.

Then one day, my uncle and aunt who were in the room next to my parents' room moved to their own apartment! I then jumped at this opportunity and bawled to my mom that I wanted a bedroom like every other normal kid in the world. I finally thought I was old enough to demand it! (I was about 13 or 14)

She thought it was a fair demand, and was quite surprised that I didn't express this desire earlier... dad on the other hand thought it was "highly unnecessary". Bedrooms were considered something of an extravagance and he didn't want to spoil us with it. But, finally, mom petitioned for the room to my grandparents who halfheartedly agreed, and it was the greatest day of my life!

I have to clarify here, that in a joint family like ours, we constantly had guests coming and going, who would sometimes stay for weeks or months with or without notice. And it was therefore necessary that we always had furnished and unoccupied bedrooms to accommodate them whenever they wanted to stay over. Bedrooms therefore were a luxury! I can appreciate that better today than I did as a teenage kid craving my own space.

But I finally got my bedroom and was to share it with my two brothers who were as thrilled about it as I was. My younger brother especially was ecstatic. I still remember that sweet toothy smile he had plastered on his face for days. We first ran to Synthesis library next door and picked up two posters - a huge one of Shahrukh Khan, another small one of Aamir Khan, and some stuff toys. My younger brother also bought some stickers of Yokozuna, Hulk Hogan, Undertaker and a few race cars. We then went with mom to the fabrics store to pick curtains and bedsheets. We got flashy mickey mouse curtains for the doors and windows, and I picked a bedsheet with lots of cartoon characters for my bed. My younger brother picked a batman bedsheet for his bed. By the time we came home, there were three old, rickety cots, each of a different dimensions arranged in a row in the bedroom. On them there were three really dusty mattresses, each of a different thickness! With the help of the servant, we got off as much dust as we could and got on with decorating the room. Our decoration sense was less governed by aesthetic and more by the stereotypes of what we dreamed "kids bedrooms" were like. So we tried to incorporate as many of the cliched styles as we possibly could! Who knows how long this bedroom extravaganza would last!

My older brother eventually moved to his own bedroom. In fact, it was an outhouse bachelor-pad with two rooms, a courtyard and a terrace, a separate entrance from everyone else, and also a makeshift-study in a small area behind the staircase that could fit his study table and a book shelf. I think he was the only person in the house to whom it occurred that the empty rooms could actually be occupied! To everyone else, it seemed like sacrilege to break this tradition of letting the empty rooms be! Why did I have to wait for my uncle and aunt to leave to claim my space?

Still, now I was lucky that my bedroom was the biggest one in the house! It was also next to a huge verandah the same size as my room! With mom's help, I planted a few flowering plants and maintained a little garden there. My uncle also gave me a passion tree that I tried to grow rather unsuccessfully. Part of the problem was that I had to battle with the monkeys that visited that verandah every evening and broke my pots! To add to this, at one point mom also bred some rabbits in that verandah for her school. They were white rabbits with bright red eyes and looked adorable. But, rabbits are also smelly and multiply very quickly. It became a nuisance having them around. But, I couldn't complain.

Eventually, our bedroom acquired a small tape recorder, a 17" color TV, a large aquarium with over 15 fishes (my younger brother was crazy about fishes)... four steel almirahs (that I hated but had to live with... although until I had a bedroom I had no closet for my clothes and had to make do with a shelf in my dad's closet...so it was a privilege that I could have appreciated, but didn't!) Life was blissful!

Eventually the novelty of having my own bedroom wore off. I also missed my nomadic adventures. Then one day, my aunt had a really bad accident. And being the workaholic that she is, she needed help with typing her reports into a word document on the computer every night! At that time, I was also addicted to the internet and thought it was a perfect arrangement that I could use the computer for my pleasure, also help her out with her work, and sleep in the bedroom next to her. Eventually, I did this for over a year, and found myself becoming more and more interested in her work. It was the last room I was to sleep in before I moved out of the house! (Incidentally, the room was called "question mark room" because of its unique shape... and it really settled the question of where I slept in that house)

Did you know that the Anagram for Relationships is "Phoniest Liars"? And we wonder why relationships are so troubling! :)

First a disclaimer: Seeing as most astute people in the world give relationship advice only if they can rake in profit (self-help books?), you will have to credit me for being less opportunistic! I am not trading my relationship-wisdom for your "rainy day" money! I am giving it away for free. Also, there's a chance you might think I am being very boastful, but don't judge me too badly for it. Afterall, boastfulness may be a disreputable virtue, but it is not the antithesis of truthfulness. So I request you to focus on the truthfulness of this post, while I focus on the boastfulness (and being disreputable!). :)

I was telling a friend that had I not been married to Tapi, I would have been disqualified from all matrimonial websites by the uncles and aunties of the world! (also, as someone rightly pointed out, even being married to Tapi disqualifies me from matrimonial websites). They would have written me off as a disaster and ostracized me for maligning their morally pure online space!

Every marriageable man and woman listed on these matrimonial sites are an epitome of beauty, comeliness and perfect-morality! They seem to have no flaws!

I on the other hand am short-ish, dark (in matrimonial terms: "not entirely white-ish and somewhat wheatish" complexioned) (!), chubby-ish, not much to look at, casteless (with no tradition of arranged marriages in three generations on both sides of my family... except rarely and that too disastrously...), in an unconventional line of work (also currently without job!), easily attracted to men (the more the merrier), need constant entertainment (whether with spouse or otherwise), borderline alcoholic (to brahmin standards), not religious (except second-handedly... erm.. i mean, i maintain some high-level curiosity), don't cook (note: i didn't say can't cook), prone to hiding my favorite food, love to hate family, don't (yet) care about having kids, and in the rare occasion that I do have some unquestionable values they are unconventional and one doesn't know what to make of them... I am opinionated, judgmental and argumentative.

But, somehow, seeing as I have been in a long term relationship for over 10 years with one very admirable man, I can take credit for excelling at this committment-thing like nobody's business! (TAKE THAT you judgmental uncles and aunties! Slap!) :) I can challenge most people that my marital life is more honest, peaceful and exciting than theirs! Tapi and I quite enjoy our questionable lives together (although his life is much less questionable than mine) and are madly in love with each other! I can't remember the last time we had a fight. I get jittery if I don't hear from him for two hours when he's at work. I rarely take a vacation without him, and when I do, I drive people nuts with my sulking and whining until we are back in our intertwined hug like Richandamy in Zits. My family thinks this obsession we have for each other is borderline unhealthy... and we might come to regret it one day, since we make no time for social life. But so far, so good! (Social life doesn't seem to miss us either!)

Here is what I think about most 'rocky' marriages (please forgive my generalizations. Today I am celebrating Blanket Statements Day.... which happens to coincide with Prabha is the Greatest and the Best Day)

I think it is very petty why most people get married or divorced! And this I think is true not just for arranged marriages. It maybe true for every kind of relationship that ends up in a marriage. When you get into a relationship it is because of a long laundry-list of qualities you like about a person, and when you get out of a relationship it is with a long laundry-list of complaints about the person... Finding a spouse seems to be no different from finding a roommate or buying a hair product! Then there are these "surprises about" and "disappointments with" each other that keep us amused or frazzled. Everyday is like an episode out of a soap opera. You feel like you have to have a say is what this other person IS... you comment on their values and choices as if you have earned your right to do so. (I so despise the nagging-variety couples... especially when they nag the hell out of each other in public and think it is funny, or acceptable! It is disrespectful beyond words... not just to each other, but to everyone they put it through)

I constantly keep hearing words like compatibility, adjustment, compromises, sacrifices, expectations and rights when people define marriages. In fact, these words seem more synonymous with marriages nowadays than they were a generation ago! (Am I wrong?) Is this all people think marriages are about? (Come to think of it, my single friends impart this wisdom about "adjustments" more than my married friends do!... ok... some of my newly married friends do as well...This I think is ironic. How can people (want to) get into a relationship feeling THIS pessimistic about it? If it makes them feel better, I'll say, I don't find happily married people using these words to describe their relationships! Also the "not-married-but-madly-in-love"-varieties can't be bothered about defining their relationships... which is lovely and refreshing to see! They look so smitten and adorable.)

In fact, getting married is not "life changing" at all... sorry to disappoint. It is really nothing! While change has been the constant in my life, change because of marriage remains an elusive concept! (Likewise, Tapi may be losing hair, but I have little to do with it! I can only take credit for his good looks.... they say when two people live together for a long time, they start resembling each other ... If you don't agree with me, wait till I lose hair!)

If physical attributes or a person's interests or character are the only things that attract us to them... then seeing as these are not permanent attributes, and that we could also be wrong in our judgment of them, it makes more sense to get into such a relationship in a non-commited way than in a committed way! If you suddenly find yourself less attracted to a person... isn't it more convenient to get out of that relationship without having to make rounds to the court than otherwise? There has to me more to a marriage than physical and intellectual attraction! There has to be that whatchamacallit that will never cease to exist! There has to be that whatchamacallit that continues to exist even after the novelty of the physical and intellectual attraction wears off. And that whatchamacallit can't be something you can define in words!

I am also quite certain that it is near impossible to adjust, compromise and cater to the expectations of a person in the long-term... At some point it is bound to boomerang and all hell will break loose.

Committed relationships are more about being and letting be. It is about two people ungrudgingly letting each other make selfish choices and taking pleasure in seeing them feel blissful and contended. It is the most deferential and considerate thing you can do for your loved ones (also applicable to other family members and friends!) :) I think it helps to focus less on what we like about our loved ones and more on that we love them!

Moreover, divorce is the worst thing that can happen to good people (when I say good people, I mean those who otherwise don't deserve to go through that kind of hurt)! It is disrespectful, condescending and speaks very little about your own morality! ... how can you marry someone and then not find anything nice about them to like, to the extent that you don't want to see them for the rest of your life! If divorce makes you happier, you have to question your motive for marrying this person in the first place. Like I said, this is more understandable in a non-commited relationship than in a committed relationship (I'll even say, the break up in a non-committed relationship is less disrespectful even)... And why must we like or not like people that badly, especially if we don't find them morally reprehensible?

I don't know if I have this relationship thing figured out. So this is just a thought that I am going to consider... and I am going to consider this for my other relationships as well. The world is so full of attractive people. I think we ought to work on creating meaningful, committed and non-committed ties of many different kinds with everyone... :) (Ok. Stalkers. Keep out!)

(By the way my blanket statements don't apply to unequal relationships dictated by chauvinism, or the kind of arranged marriages where two people are forced to come together whether they want to or not. In these, the rabbit warren is more convoluted and confusing. I won't know how to find my way from one burrow to another. I am safe for having not entered it!)

Final disclaimer: This post is full of generalizations. As I read it I can see some erroneous statements. But, in my defense, I also scattered disclaimers all through the post, and also couldn't have explained myself anymore, seeing as it is already so long!

Since ACs and I don't get along, Mom wanted a portable fan -- the standard oscillating pedestal kind with circular blades enclosed behind a steel grill. I can't bear the thought of that "homely" fan sitting in my living room. I can deal with a small, quiet, aesthetically pleasing tower fan maybe. -- like this one or this one. But, the monstrous, space-hogging ugliness she wants I just can't do!

To my utter delight, the tower fans have better reviews than the standard pedestal fans. They come with multiple speed settings, a remote control, dust/pollen filter, and an automatic shut-off feature. More than anything, they are lightweight, and less prominent!

Of course, I show this work of art to mom for approval and she views it with apprehension. What she wants is a fan that will blow air like a wind tunnel. She is used to having the ceiling fan on full blast even in winter, and is addicted to that breezy feeling with the air circulating all the time. For that purpose, the pedestal fan is a tested and proven contraption that has serviced mankind for generations! I call it the "thatha fan" (not that my granddad ever used it! It also occurs to me that our house never had one in all the years that I have lived there... but thatha fan it is)

Anyway, the phone conversation with mom was getting frustrating. For one thing, I wanted her to see beyond my predilection for aesthetic over comfort. I wanted her to acknowledge that the tower fan was more practical and sensible from every point of view. Just take the fact that we will use it for 10 days in a year when mom is here and won't know where to store it after she leaves. No matter what I said, and how I said it, she insisted that all I care about is the aesthetic! I lamented that reasoning with her was no different from reasoning with a blind man about color or a deaf man about sound! "I don't care about color or sound, give me breeze", she said!

Then, I wanted her to see that bigger is not always better and "small and sleek" does not mean "less powerful". I went on an analogy rampage: Gramophone vs. ipod, Air Cooler vs. Air Conditioner, Tube TV vs. Flatscreen, Grandfather clock vs. small digital clock... Much to my annoyance, my analogies had the opposite effect on her. Mom went off on a nostalgic excursion. I don't blame her. I could see myself buying into her nostalgia and craving the Gramophone, the Air Cooler, the Tube TV, and the Grandfather clock as well. :) But Screw nostalgia. I was not going to give in so easily!

Much to my disadvantage (and hers, I insist), Mom is stuck in her old world of tubelights and tape recorders and continues to adamantly disregard the awesomeness that is the 21st century... :)

So I finally screamed:

"Mom. Tower fan is all you are getting, period. It comes with three settings... Setting 1: Balmy October Night in Hyderabad; Setting 2: Blustery Evening in Besant Nagar Beach; Setting 3: Netherlands Wind Turbine. Setting 1: Underwear; Setting 2: Shorts; Setting 3. Sweatpants!"

"Fine. Wind Turbine Explosion in Sweatpants sounds good", she said.

Why do I feel like she won?

In the mean time, Tapi had a fun time representing our argument in paint!

Last week, I had a really dull heart. Nothing would inspire the slightest amount of joy and believe me I tried! But, it didn't help that I watched a film about a young girl abused by her parents and made pregnant twice by her own father, another film about a Holocaust survivor who was used as a human guinea pig in genetic experiments, and a third one about a girl kidnapped and sold to prostitution at the age of 7!

In retrospect, I didn't try hard enough to cheer myself up.

It was depressing because I had to say goodbye to a few friends. Some of them moved to a new city and that's fine. I don't mind those kinds of farewells at all. They mean a whole new world of possibilities for them and I hope they will translate to joyous reunions at various points in our lives!

But, the worst is where you lose your friends forever. They are gone whether you say goodbye to them or not, and their absence is the only kind of presence you are left with for the rest of your life. Sometimes these farewells happen suddenly where you have no time to prepare, but they leave behind a deep scar that may never heal.  

But what do you do about the kinds of farewells that come with a lot of notice? How do focus on the now, and make the best of the time you have without thinking of the eventual end? And what if you can't make the best of the time you have but don't want to look back in regret!

Death is really cruel on people who are alive. I realize with each person I lose that it becomes harder and harder to cope with.  
   
I used to sit in front of the green screen in the film studio wondering which part of the world it could put me in. I could be in the dystopian future or standing in front of the blue waters in some tropical island or driving a flying car in space... My favorite places to go to were the busy streets in Hyderabad. Sometimes, I liked to imagine that I was sitting in the verandah with my grandparents and watching the rain while having one of those loud, passionate discussions about really absurd things.
   
The reality was, I was setting the green screen up for someone else who knew exactly where it would put them. And soon they would not only be able to see themselves in that world but also make us believe that they belong there. I was to make that happen as believably as possible!  

Still, I used to tell myself that I was luckier than the actors for several reasons. For one thing, I can't act to save my life. But more than that, I was lucky because these actors couldn't let their imagination go wild like I could. They were limited to their preordained roles in a preordained setting! If the scene demanded that they fight a giant squid in the middle of the rainforest, they have to put that thoughts of driving a flying car to rest and pull out the sword and attack the now defenseless (and invisible) squid to the director's screaming instructions! 

The other exciting thing I could do was go into the editing suite and change the backgrounds behind the actors as many times I wanted. So the fight could take place in Mordor, in the realm of Sauron or in a Jedi temple. Of course, I would have to eventually put them back in the rainforest as was ordained by my boss!

These were the small perks of working as an entry-level cinematographer or editor. I think of my green screen days when I am reminiscing the good times with my friends... only, now I am beginning to feel more and more like the actor whose character and story was predetermined, and there is nothing left to imagine.

It always started off as a scene reminiscent of the ones you see in hindi movies picturized with song and dance. There were a few excited young ones among us, holding water guns in one hand, and packets of color in the other. The dry colors were unobjectionable even when they came in the most unspeakable shades of green and black. But those suspicious looking small packets they brought that had shiny crystalline powder or gold-silver paste were insufferable. We squirted some colored water on each other and gently rubbed dry colors on our faces and clothes and made ourselves look as varicolored as possible! There were a few new ones in the group who were worried about dirtying their clothes too much or having their faces dominated with just one color. It always amused us how silly they were being. We knew they would grow out of it by the end of the day and laugh at themselves for being daft as well (either that, or it was the last time we were going to them!).  

Then the moms and dads brought in some more huge bags of color (the ones in our hands weren't going to cut it), turned the water pipes on, filled big drums with colored water, oiled the cars and scooters so that they wouldn't catch color, and set up the boom box and an assortment of fast music (mostly telugu and hindi street songs... and never songs related to holi). They blurted out some quick instructions like "wash yourselves well before entering the house", "don't walk barefoot on the roads"... You could tell they were not entirely committed to giving instructions, because it was a pointless exercise in futility. The one instruction that came with commitment was "DO NOT RESIST ANYONE" Some of us knew what that meant, some were about to find out. 

We played on and giggled and laughed and tried to pull a smart one on each other. This lasted the first one hour. 

Then the hoodlums (young adults) among the family and friends arrived like a pack of hungry wolves, ending all tranquility. Nothing can prepare you enough for being liquidated (literally). There was no running for cover or screaming for help. You were cornered on all sides and lifted like a bag of grain and flung in the air and into a tank full of frigid water. In you went and out you came to gasp for breath only to go back in again from the force of the second person being thrown into it. Then the third person was flung in, then the fourth, the fifth, the sixth... anyone who attempted to get out of the tank was pushed back in forcefully. Our heads bobbed up and down and up and down to the whim of the hands holding them. The few who escaped this treatment, were dragged by the leg, pulled up and smeared with a thick layer of the silver paste... their teeth were rubbed with dry red powder and their body attacked mercilessly with eggs! The air was filled with sinister laughter. 

I can't remember why I thought this was enjoyable. I suppose evil is only evil only when it comes from an unknown source like the bike rowdies. As soon as an innocuous balloon full of red water broke on one of us, the whole group ran towards the biker (now victim) and attacked him ferociously by giving him the most savage treatment of color you can imagine. Some bikers who managed to whiz past us after throwing water balloons got a loud cheer, mingled with swear words and glorious hoots! (Few bikers even threw glass bottles at people. These were the dangerous kind, we hoped wouldn't visit our streets. They rarely did). 

Some friends would stay indoors out of fear of all the aggression, only to have fifty people screaming in front of their houses. A few of them would climb over the walls and try to kick the doors open. Finally (and I never understood why), they succumbed to this threat, and became unwilling guinea pigs of a horror experiment.  

The violence usually came in cycles. As the hours went by it got less and less fierce. By now the uncles and aunties from neighboring houses arrived and brought a different kind of celebration with them. It was spirited in joyfulness of a more pleasurable kind. In a good year, the crowd added up to two hundred people (most years were good years... the bad years were when a majority of us had our final exams and were restricted to playing holi for a few hours with our immediate families at home. These were the terrible years. If you squirted more water from your gun than your mom thought acceptable, or rubbed too much color on a cousin's head, you had to listen to a long lecture on toxic chemicals and safety).  

There was a whole lot of music and dancing, and delicious food contaminated with color (despite all efforts)! Bhang flowed like a river and befuddled the minds of the young and old alike. Some people went ahead and threw the bhang in the water tank, which was by now entirely black and full of kids. 

After a few hours, when most of the neighbors dispersed, and the close family and friends remained, several other groups of friends and family who had celebrated elsewhere joined in. We drove to someone's farm house or someplace in the outskirts and spent the rest of evening and night there in wild celebration! This was my holi until six years ago! Now I think of it in past tense and wonder whether it was celebrated in India yesterday or today and if it was as dramatic as it had been before! (The answer is never yes)

HAPPY HOLI. (This year, I will spend mine learning the significance of holi... something that I never cared to learn before)

My grandmom is an avid reader who devours literature like she also does cashews and dark chocolates! :) When I think of her, she is usually sitting on her bed next to this large window and reading one of Corbett’s books. For a long time, everything I knew of Corbett was through her accounts of his narratives of his exploits. Perhaps from that and her love for nature stems my own love. Now I read books about nature, often thinking about her. I also read them with this sense of awe for all that the writer observes and the thoughts that they inspire in him-- something that would have been lost on me had it not been for her.

I hear my grandmom complain that she can’t sit up too long or hold a heavy book in her hand. While I am convinced that she is inconvenienced by this lack of strength, it can’t be enough to stop her from holding one in her hand. Now when I read a book, I often wonder if she might want to read it, but is too big for her to hold, and that doesn’t sit well with me.

I am contemplating whether to buy her an eBook reader (Nook, Kindle, iPad) or not. Then again, I realize her handicap is with holding books she already owns, for which the eBook reader is of no help. A book holder perhaps?

The ergonomics of book holders is lost on me. Would she find a book pillow convenient, or a stand that can be placed next to her bed and positioned to eyelevel, or an adjustable bed table like the breakfast table that can be placed on top of her?

I am lost. I need your help.

Sitting on a warm bed.

Sunlight pouring into the room.

A book in hand.

The sound of traffic.

The smell of jasmine

Mom’s long winding conversation on the phone.

Cousins floating in and out.

Laughter.

Unbearably loud TV.

Servant sweeping the floor.

A nanny for every kid. A driver for every adult. A helper for every task.

The smell of rain.

The taste of mangoes.

The sight of my grandmom. My missing granddad.

The company of my grandparents.

Their beautiful study. Lovely old books. Their old furniture.

The gardens where time stands still.

The arguments. The opinions. The pride. The criticism.

Politics. Money.

The gossip. The lack of silence.

Variety in Advertisements.

People selling things.

People staring...gawking... gazing.

Me Avoiding, ignoring.

Us Fighting, Bargaining...always Negotiating.

My brother on the guitar.

Dad on his cell phone.

Several pictures on the wall.

Newspapers and magazines all over the table.

Missing memorabilia, fading nostalgia.

The battle with the geaser.

The whirring of the fan.

The sight of a lizard next to the tube light. Roaches in the kitchen. My mom’s denial of their existence.

Cousins in palatial houses. Cousins in tiny flats. English speaking cousins. Artsy cousins. Intellectual cousins. Brainiac cousins. And the rest.

Idlis for breakfast. A jam session with food. Variety, spice of life.

Concerts. Music. Movies. Entertainment.

Art exhibitions.

Drinks. Chaos. Mayhem.

College kids. Fat bellied men. Beer.

Crowded pubs filled with smoke.

Being driven and then driving :))

Nature. Old trees. Cows. Dogs.

Buildings of every kind and size.

Zoos, Museums and other pretentious “avoidables” that I must not avoid!

Fashion. Bragging. Class. Mass.

Abundance of religion.

Shopping malls. Markets. Book Stores. Tiny Shops packed to the brim.

Weddings. Parties. Gatherings. Socializing.

Dad's constant traveling.

My touristy explorations and wistful pursuits.

Living it up. Fitting in. Getting out.

This is the India in my head. Is this the India of May 2010?

Among the many cheesy things I do (example), there is one that is becoming my favorite. Every birthday, I pull out a card from a deck of angel cards and try to follow the word on it for the rest of the year.

The original intent of the card may have been to suggest a spiritual pathway that gets you closer to your angel. I like to think of it more as an inspirational start to a year, much like with new years resolutions where we take on new projects or reform bad habits. Only, with angel cards there is no success or failure. There are just thoughts or qualities to be aware of and encourage for the rest of the year.

Some of the words in the cards seem quite direct, like "Adventure" or "Commitment" and then there are some are more abstract like "Resilience" or "Expansiveness", but they are all as simple or as deep as you want them to be and can have meanings beyond the obvious.

This year Tapi and I decided to do the angel card tradition together, so we pushed it from birthday to new year. Tapi’s word is "Harmony" and mine is "Respect". We both made our grumpy faces at what seemed like the most unexciting words for the year! Tapi is already Harmony personified. Anyone who has met him will attest to that. "Respect" and I are like Mayonnaise and Sunshine. I suppose his challenge is in figuring out how to follow his word better than he already is, and my challenge is to follow mine, period. :) (For some reason, the really exciting cards that say "Exploration" or "Celebration" always elude me!)

If you like, I have an angel card for you. You can tell me at the end of the year how you did with it. :)

What does it say about me that my website received most hits when I was least active!

I am back from my vacation and feel a lot like Alice after her adventure in Wonderland, like Gulliver after his voyages through Liliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and Houyhnhmns, like Dorothy after her return from the Land of Oz.

For one thing, my monopoly board game came to life and in such style! We arrived in London on Christmas day and drove the night through eerily empty streets, all brightly illuminated with Christmas lights of all varieties. It resembled an impressively geared-up set just before a flamboyant musical is about to begin. And just like that, over the next few days, the curtains opened and the streets began to fill up with traffic, the sidewalks came alive with the hustle and bustle of a teeming metropolis, much like in Time Square on a bad day with no place to drive, park or walk!

Most people I met were dressed in colorful costumes of fantastical creatures, and did things like playing the violin while walking a tightrope, juggling five balls with their mouth, singing and dancing in the most evocative ways.

We sat through a glorious performance by the Belmont Ensemble of London in a beautiful baroque setting at St.Martin-in-the-Fields. The violinists played familiar yuletide masterpieces by Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Corelli, and Torelli.

Then one frosty morning, we witnessed Christmas Crackers, a very festive blend of acrobatics, comedy, music and burlesque in a vibrant setting at Shakespeare’s Globe. It was a bit like a Pantomime with actors walking amongst the audience, telling stories through jokes, songs and dances, mostly satirizing Shakespearean plays and Christmas carols.

We also watched a traditional Pantomime of Snow White and Seven Dwarfs in Manchester, with kids in the audience booing the horrible witch and cheering the Prince as he saves Snow White.

There was a beautiful jazz concert by the Scott Hamilton Quartet at the Jazz Club Soho.

The highlight was a dazzling Cirque du Soleil in the Royal Albert Hall. Every time, a winged creature gracefully tumbled from heaven onto earth, rotating, whirling, spinning, spiraling in unhumanlike ways, I lost my capacity to react.

It was very unlike what happened at Mathew Bourne’s Swan Lake ballet at Sadler’s Wells the night before. The dance sequences with the male swans were so graceful and emotive, that I could see myself drawn to their sensual beauty and physical expression like a moth to a flame. The intense scenes of romance were titillating, those of loneliness causing physical pain.

The concerts and shows are one side of London. There was a divine side to the city, with cathedrals and churches of beauty seemingly unmatched anywhere else in the world. We walked into Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a small Anglican church, each time expecting to get out in a few minutes, only to be drawn to the extraordinary beauty of the sanctuary. The ambience stirred feelings of awe and wonder and we stayed on for a few hours. I have never thought myself religious, but how do I explain that transcendent joy I experienced when listening to the Evensong in this sacred setting. I saw myself crying my eyes out in what felt like an overwhelming feeling of religious guilt and love for God.

I have heard so much about the unthinkably old pubs in London, their architecture competing with their reputation, their beers with their character… we went to a few over-packed pubs that more than lived up to the buildup. I couldn’t also help admiring the contemporary ones, and some small street-corner locals. (To my beer-loving friends: I liked some of the well-hopped pale ales, but I still prefer to be “lager than life”). The coffee shops and bars were just as charming.

We did a few touristy things as well, including some guided tours through museums and such. When there was no guided tour, there was the distraction of very good company to keep us entertained. (It is never a good idea to go to museums with really good company… especially not in London where there are both buildings and artifacts in the buildings to admire!)

The (window) shopping experience was splendid… all those secondhand bookstores at Marylebone High Street and Charing Cross, toys at Hamleys, the vintage clothes at Seven dials, everything at Harrods, everything else at Westfields… the visits to American stores in London… the food... the south-asian food! It was a sensual feast, a tactile banquet... a very expensive sensual feast, an overpriced tactile banquet. :)

I am left feeling a yearning still. Like this was just a prelude to many more vacations. There seems to be so much to see and do in London and I haven’t even begun exploring. I feel like an actor in a musical who has been asked to wrap things up after the interval, without finishing my performance because I have already been singing and dancing too much! And when I am not feeling like the actor, I feel like the audience who is waiting for the actor to show up after the interval, only to find that the show has been declared over, because I have already been given my money's worth!

I think I most regret not watching Sherlock Holmes (the movie) in Baker’s Street. I also regret watching the New Years parade. It was a "profound" disappointment (profound because it brought to mind a lot of philosophical questions that I would much rather not think about!) ... But it was exciting to be in Covent Garden right where the My Fair Lady scene takes place, or Darcy’s home in Lyme Park, or the Poet's corner in Westminster Abbey … among other things.

Some of my most favorite people in the world, also the most talented people I know personally live in what is now one of my most favorite cities in the world. I have had extraordinary experiences with them… traveling with them; meeting their "famous" friends; pouring our hearts out; listening to them recite their poems, sing with the choir, play the piano and the guitar… It’s been one heck of an emotional (borderline melodramatic) and memorable trip.

We also went to Paris… which felt like the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. Through the Looking Glass?

It’s a long post in itself, but I just don’t have it in me to dash off some more … :)

But here's something that occurred to me. Why do people say the Brits and French are not friendly. I have had the most interesting conversations with complete strangers.... it's not quite my everyday experience in my talky adopted country even!

Tapi and I have never seen our wedding videos... or all of our wedding pictures, but these ones I came across today were quite entertaining (I can't promise you will enjoy them as much me). Ours was a really long wedding, which stretched a few days and a million ceremonies. These are from the first ceremony on the last day. Tapi's leaving with his umbrella, walking stick and slippers to renounce the world, when my parents request him stay back and marry me... then I do my bit to impress him and consign his renouncement to oblivion! (I think! I could be wrong about having to do my bit to impress him. I may have had to be coy.)











You can tell from the necklaces around my neck that I was being hogtied into commitment a few hundred times! :)

Our November tradition is to give thanks to happy family reunions either at Tapi's uncle's or my brother's in Boston.

It's been a while since we saw Tapi's side of our family, so there is the excitement of catching up with everyone, including his cousin's brand-spanking new fiance and an aunt who is visiting from India.

I also can't wait to see my little niece and nephew. Romi is "this" close to crawling, so I am going to pretend like he's been waiting for me to show up for inspiration to embark on his first exploration. Hopefully, he won't fail me, especially if it means that he will have begun crawling before I see him.

There is an old childhood friend who recently moved to Boston from India. There's also another friend who moved to Boston from DC... some new folks, great food, and merrymaking. :)

Hope your Thanksgiving promises to as special as ours :) Have a good one.

"So, who is your best friend this year Prabha? (wink wink)" 

That was the question I was asked every year after the first day of school. For some reason, I couldn't keep a best friend for longer than a year and we broke off for the weirdest reasons. My most favorite reason is "she now has a dog..." or some such thing. But soon, I ran out of choices and they were back in my life, only, thanks to the lapse of time, we met on a different plane from the previous time we were best friends! 

This "Best Friend of the Year" tradition continued all through school and  college, and eventually in every new city I lived in. I can now tell when I am ready to move on from a relationship with a friend much before it happens. Now, what does having this kind of wisdom make me sound like (!)

Fortunately, none of my relationships really ended. They faded smoothly from one to another, and I managed to keep in touch with most of them. But when I think of the few friends I've lost over the years, it triggers feelings of guilt mixed with hurt. I wish we hadn't moved on. I wish I could undo some of the damage, if only to part on better terms... But, more than anything, I hope we have both gained and lost something from it, even if it means a more enviable relationship with some other person. 

I say all this now because the last hour has been rather melancholic. I spent it recalling lot of fun memories with friends I have now lost touch with.  

Sometimes, all it takes is one incident or a change in circumstance for a great relationship to come crashing down. Had things not changed, and we hadn't tumbled forward, perhaps we would have been together still, sharing our silly jokes, and doing ridiculously embarrassing things.    

Then there are those that just end without episode. Hours turn to days, days to months, you are living special moments together and feeling snug about being able to do things you couldn't with anyone else, but before you know it, you have less and less of those moments with each other, and more and more of them with someone else.

I don't know why this happens. I think it has to do with feeling claustrophobic in relationships after they get to a point. The more you are with a person, the more whiny you tend to get around them. You want to share every little detail about your life with them in an unpleasant bellyaching tune. The conversations about distress eclipse the fun moments, and before you know it, every part of your friends body has vanished thanks to your whining, except for the shoulder on which your big sobbing head is resting... And when that happens, your friend who is carrying your weight begins to  find an outlet to have fun. And then, the inevitable happens. She has moved on even as she feels utterly terrible for doing so, but you really brought it on yourself! I know I sound rotten for saying this, but perfectly happy people can become whiny because they are allowed to! A best friend is as much a gift to you, as alcohol is to an alcoholic.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know this sounds terrible. But, I don't speak of people with genuine problems... only those who whine only because they have the luxury of doing so!

Today I have a few close friends I can't imagine my life without. Some of them have known me since kindergarten, and some others, I was fortunate to arrive at more recently. It seems to me like we get along because we are able to gauge each other's tolerance for whininess and adjust our comportment accordingly. Mostly, we are all in it to have genuine moments of fun. And when someone is distressed, you know they have every reason to be, and want to do everything you can to bail them out.   

Still, as I look back at the past and recall some relationships that came to an unexpected end, they prompt lingering feelings of love and hurt. Can I say that my relationship with them has ended, even if we haven't been in touch? Perhaps not. At least, not as long as I wish they were still part of my life.

Forewarning: This may not be history, but it is some story alright!

Blessed Enrichetta 
O pray, o pray to the lord
Mother Enrichetta
O pray, o pray to the lord
Lover of Nature, Lover of Creatures
Lover of God, Lover of All

That's the best my school could come up with to honor Mother Enrichetta Dominici who was proclaimed "Blessed" by Pope Paul VI, in acknowledgment of her heroic virtues. She extended the apostolic commitment of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Ann's to the farthest regions of the world (Hyderabad!) that were not enlightened by the preaching of the Gospel.  

I found a romanticized version of the early beginnings of the school in The Hindu, which begins with

In the balmy spring of March 1871, six sisters from St Ann's Convent, Turin, Italy came to India, precisely Secunderabad. The mission on hand was to teach orphans of the war accommodated here. Sister Enrichetta, the Superior General of the Sisters of St. Ann was elementary in sending the sisters from Italy when Bishop Barbero knocked at the convent one Friday requesting for help. Legend says it that the sisters thought him to be a burglar to be ringing the bell at that time of the day.

Orphans of which war? Why couldn't the bishop wait until daylight to enter the convent? And why would a burglar ring the bell before entering a convent! The lack of logical reasoning in this legend should have dissuaded my family from putting me in this school, but as fate would have it, I, like my aunts and uncles, cousins and many victim friends, endured the teachings of the legend makers.  

My aunt seems to be celebrated as popular alumni in all the articles, including the "balmy spring" one. I don't think she realizes her fame, or that she shares it with Astronaut Rakesh Sharma and wait..  Sonia Gandhi (!)
  
I have always wondered how the catholic missionaries set themselves up without incident in Nizam's dominions. I know now that it wasn't easy. There's an interesting article called the "Diocese of Hyderabad", which speaks of the spread of christianity across the country between the early 1500s and late 1800s. The Diocese of Hyderabad seems to be the only one that had no regularly appointed missions in three centuries, although missionaries visited the dominions from time to time for short periods. However, there were Portuguese and Armenian Catholics in Golconda and Hyderabad during the 1600s and  missionary activity of some sort throughout these four centuries. 

The 1800s was an exciting time. Hyderabad was under the The Vicar Apostolic of Madras and then Calcutta for sometime, until Bishop Carew built a beautiful cathedral and church in Bolarum, (there is a brilliant business lesson in this - "marking territory by erecting huge symbols of supremacy"). This led to the envitable ---- missionary activity picked up dramatically, and the mission of Hyderabad-Deccan was made the Vicarate Apostolic with Bishop Murphy as its first vicar. Ironically, the bishop had to  live in Chuderghant on the borders of the Nizam's dominion owing to the intolerance, not of the Nizam, but Sir Henry Pottinger.

Pottinger has his own interesting story. He came to India in the early 1800s to serve in the army and travelled extensively between Indus and Persia disguised as a Muslim merchant and studying local languages under the orders of Sir John Malcolm.  He eventually joined the British East India Company, fought the Marata war, and became resident Administrator at Sindh and eventually Hyderabad. (Much later, he was also the first Governor of Hong Kong) 

Despite all obstacles, the Bishop Murphy applied to the Foreign Mission Seminary at Milan for more missionaries, and Fathers Pozzi and Barero were sent to him. There were british regiments quartered near Secunderabad, and the catholic population of the place thus went up to 4000. Between 1857 and 1864 six other missionaries came from Milan, and the Christian communities began to increase. But in 1864, owing to failing health, Bishop Murphy was forced to leave India and stayed on in Tasmania until he died.

The vicariate was then entrusted to the Milan Seminary of Foreign Missions. Father Giovanni Domenico Barbero (the burglar in the St. Ann's legend)  became vicar Apostolic, and was consecrated Bishop of Doliche, at Rome, 3 April, 1870. He procured some Sisters of St. Anne from Turin, and in 1871 established them at Secunderabad where they opened an orphanage and a girls' school. There ends the story! 

Today, the intimidating school building, whose forbearing grey walls ran from one end of the long street to another, and went all along, and all around the other side of the main road, with no beginning or end, plan or direction, has been brought down and with little protest! It feels like the end of an era!

Despite all the folklore surrounding it, St. Ann's was a simple school with simple people. We couldn't possibly feel strongly enough about anything. Our aspirations are only for that which is realizable without much effort! (This is the sort of generalization that gets me in trouble! I can feel it coming.)

My niece Ananya is my favorite topic of conversation. I am always looking for ways to show off how smart she is. My brother has a twitter page for her called Anyaism, which is thoroughly entertaining, although he skips some of her funnier gags having to do with her antics on the throne! Here are my 10 most favorite Anya-tweets.

[On the movie Over The Hedge] Yesterday I saw this movie. It had a bad bear, a bad man, a monster woman and a good turtle with a green bum.

[Ananya, please close your eyes and sleep!] My eyes are not working. There are no batteries in my eyes. Mom put the wrong batteries.

[Look papu, a white cloud made of vanilla ice-cream!] Appa, LOOK! A pink cloud made of flamingo.

MOMMY! DO NOT START GIVING ME A TIMEOUT! I am cutting something.

Bicycles are not animals. Maybe they are cars!

Obama? That's a funny name. What does he do?

Appa, I don't need you anymore. When Mihir becomes big like you, he will be my daddy.

No is a bad word. [That's right]. Yes and please are good words. [That's right, papu]. Yes, I want some chocolate pleeeeease!

Appa, can you eat a man? [No sweety, that wouldn't be nice] How about Spiderman? Can you eat Spiderman? I don't like him.

Then that guy said, *gruff voice* "Who is going to take care of Ananya's life?". I can take care of my life.

My Dearest Panther Kaza, (you will remain unborn for a few years I hope)

This is a side profile of your Dad at 6 in the morning while he is reading the Wired! It has been a little over 6 years since we got married, but you can tell he is balding already. Not long ago, his head was full of hair and he looked snazzy and irresistible. But your grandparents (my mom and dad) are here on a short visit and his hands keep reaching for his head. You know the rest.

He loves you very much (and so do I).

Mom

Mom and Dad are here and we are experiencing a full range of emotions everyday. It is exhilarating and exhausting at the same time!

Every visit of theirs is varied. We do the usual touristy thing for the most part - visit monuments and museums, go to parks and gardens, attend some shows, travel a bit, spend time with my older brother’s ever-growing family, meet relatives, indulge in good food, go shopping, take in the ambience of curiosity and self-gratification, relax, and express our opinions unabashedly on everyone and everything throughout all this!

Last visit, they also experienced the nightlife in DC. Dad particularly enjoyed the live music in all the bars. Mom was mostly caught up in the excitement of it all.

This year, it has been two days since they arrived, and our days are already action-packed. We are barely out of one event, and there is frenzied planning on where to go and what to do next. The center of interest seem to be festivals and shows. I have a feeling we will end up doing everything.

When my younger brother was here last month, even while we used our hands and feet a lot more, it was less chatty and therefore less tiresome. We did some hiking, attended some concerts, drove around a lot, but everything seemed so much more chilled out. I can’t think of anything we did that was particularly touristy. It was an ambiance of "quiet activity"!
When I think about this whole family bonding experience with my brothers and parents (throw in a few friends and relatives here and there), I have to wonder about what is more gratifying at the end of it all. Is it the tranquility of action, or all the fun wrangling and passive spectatorship.

One thing is for sure: On the whole, it is a good mind and body workout! ... and to think that we have just begun.

During my parents stay in DC, my most favorite uncle and aunt (my dad's siblings) will be spending time with us for a few days each. I can’t wait to see them.

“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man”

-- William Shakespeare

Do you think Shakespeare had a non-beard phase in his life? That phase where he was less than a man? I go back and forth on his manliness. In some ways he seems overly so, and charmingly so, and in some other almost pansy, but perhaps in a good way!

Every man in my life seems to go through the beard phase-- something of an external statement of an internal state of mind. It’s quite thrilling to be a part of the whole cycle.

First there is his nonchalant before stage, which is usually when you get on well; his casual indifference is appealing and desirable. This is where you share good times.

Then there is the crisis stage -- the defining moment before an important decision needs to be made. In a bullfight, this may be when the bull is about to be killed with the final blow. Somehow, with my male friends (the matadors in the metaphor, not the bulls!) the result of this intense emotional experience is characterized by the growing of the beard! Of course, some of them actually find this stage in their life amusing...you can tell from their aura of contentment... it's almost like they found a peaceful nonviolent way of dealing with dilemmas.

If you haven’t been through this stage with them, please note carefully - this is a delicate moment. This is also when you define your expected function in this experience. You are either about to drift away from what you thought was a lifelong relationship, or get up-close and intimate (not necessarily physically of course!)

The final stage is the metamorphosis. If you are lucky, the caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Once in a while, the tadpole turns into a frog and that’s just too bad... But, I have come to realize somehow that my bearded male friends are usually endearing through all three phases.

Living through someone’s change is heartening and perhaps in the end when all goes well, elevating even. You don’t want them to have to go through a rough time, but rough times are not always undesirable, especially when you are able to look back at them and see how they (and to a lesser extent you) have grown from the experience.

Here’s to the bearded friends I love… especially those in phase 2! There's a phase 3 coming, and if I look too excited during your whiskers and fuzz phase, it is in the anticipation of the insect you are about to become - the one with the brightly colored wings and knobbed antennae. :D

I am back! My absence from my blog has made me realize that it is only I who has to lose from abstaining from things that give me pleasure. Funny how I should begin with a post on beards though! You can say I went through my own beard phase with my blog. But in my case, the frog turned into a princess, with some help! :) Miss me?

My brother's blog and his quips parted ways over a year ago! But, here's something he wrote on his flight to India, which I hope will bring his blog back from the limbo!

My struggle with the bat has reached historic proportions. It has been more than a year since I scored a meaningful run.
 
The last time I scored a few runs, three to be precise, was in an early season game last year when I frantically waved the bat at the bowler like an impotent wand before I was put out of my misery by an apparently innocuous delivery that homed in on middle stump. I walked out to greet the ball, flailing wildly like a marooned sailor would at a distant ship and heard the deadly sound of timber behind me. Suddenly I find that regaining hand-eye coordination is a challenge that is as compelling as finishing the Boston marathon.
 
I shall first state two facts. The first fact is that I have not played much cricket in the past three years. I managed to squeeze in four games during this period for my local club in Nashua , and have nothing to show besides those aforementioned three fortunate runs. I was out for a golden duck each other time, which truly reflects the state of my batting form. The second fact, perhaps the more relevant one, is that I am not the second coming of Sir Ranjitsinhji. As lovely as I have managed to look in front of a mirror or even on the shadowed wall, my game has always been what one would call highly limited. So my recent batting struggle is not particularly shocking, but it is worrisome only because I make such a big deal of it. After all, the air I breathe has three elements to it, family, cricket and tennis, not necessarily in that order.
 
Let me submit to you a little bit of my cricketing history, since I find that it is so important in the larger scheme of things. As a young teenager, notably the puniest of my age group, I spent many months fielding in corners of the field where devils wouldn’t venture. My comrades wisely knew that I wasn’t capable of doing much more good than avoid the cricket ball. So it came to be – I was an afterthought in the batting order and never bowled a ball in anger at any living soul. I did, however, diligently practice my trade at home bowling to a yellow battered wall that morphed into the entire Pakistani batting line-up while I kept score in a way that would make Narottam Puri proud. In my spare time, I would commit every living statistic to memory, including Neil Foster’s 11 for 163 at Chepauk in 1984-85 in the test where Fowler and Gatting both scored double centuries. I think I secretly aspired to be a Richie Benaud on Channel Nine, and would have reasonably settled for being an Anupam Gulati on Doordarshan.
 
Two things changed my life. First, my father caught hold of my frivolous notions firmly put my career on the infinitely more grueling engineering track. Second, I had a growth spurt that matched Laxman’s career path. I grew a foot in about a year as a fifteen year old. In my friends’ circle this amounted to conferring some long-deserved respect. Suddenly I found myself batting at number nine (a big promotion) in a key “bet match”, and our pocket money depended on the outcome. In the 110 degree heat of the Gymkhana grounds at Hyderabad , I announced myself to the world as young Sachin did in Karachi , scoring my first two runs ever against real humans, off the last ball, to win the match. At 2 not out, I was a hero and carried off the field. My batting prospered that season because my captain, one Karimullah, took fancy to my match-winning talent. I was the scrawny kid who couldn’t buy a boundary but would never get out. By the end of the season, I was opening for my team, like Ravi Shastri, my other hero.
 
I humbly state that my cricketing graph grew non-linearly afterwards. I nearly topped my college batting averages in my first year, even scoring the first six ever on one of the large grounds. Mainly I had acquired the knack of staying unbeaten. Through sixteen matches in my junior year, I was dismissed only once and I grew confident enough to start imitating my new batting idol, VVS Laxman. Cricketing statistics took a backseat for real exploits and I could not have been a happier kid. Sadly I realized that I had probably reached the peak of my skills at age 19. In a year, I was about to embark on a journey to America, where a baseball bat would be more apt and I would be consigned to memorizing those damn scorecards yet again as I pursued my graduate studies.
 
After coming to the US , playing cricket became a distant pipedream that rivaled dating a certain Ms. Salma Hayek. All changed in 2003, when I ran into a group of enthusiastic cricket aficionados who had recently formed a cricket team, Nashua Spearheads. My enthusiasm knew no bounds when I met them – while they did not play with a real cricket ball, they played with a hard tennis ball and that was good enough. My cricket starved senses didn’t mind it one bit, I showed up for practice at the neighboring baseball fields that summer and was thrilled to see many others that shared my interest. Like an old flame that shows up at your doorstep begging for forgiveness, I went back to cricket despite knowing things would never be the same.
 
Maybe it was the ball, maybe it was my waning focus, maybe I did not play enough or maybe those four years in college were just an illusion, I never regained my batting mojo. I was an average batsman for my new team in America , but luckily I hadn’t regressed to my middle school days when I was a water boy. Hitting the hard tennis ball required strength that I never possessed and I never really played with the free mind that guided me through my youth. Like a pianist that loses his spontaneity with age, I lost my ability to place the ball through narrow gaps. Still I was a little kid in his playground every time I joined my merry band on weekends.
 
Three years ago, I stopped playing cricket because worldly ambitions and general drudgery took over. I missed the game once more as I grappled with everything else in my life, including the birth of my new breathing apparatus, two lovely children. Cricket does not hold the place in my life it once did, yet I long for the occasional taste of nostalgia.
 
So I rejoined my group and showed up for play last weekend. My turn to bat came pretty soon, and it was not against one of the better bowlers on my team, and here I am being generous. I took my guard pointing to my left leg. The handle of the bat felt cold and strange. I patted the bat hard on the ground to proclaim that I was the master even if I hadn’t ridden this horse in a while. The bowler ran in, and I heard every step. The ball was wide off off-stump and so friendly I might have been tempted to ask it out for a drink later that evening. Instead I swung hard at the ball aiming somewhere between long off and outer space.  The ball took the edge of my bat and went spiraling upwards towards the one fielder who wouldn’t drop catches in his sleep. I felt a sense of doom even as the ball descended.
 
Another duck, a golden duck, and my horror run continues.

Death sites depress me, not because they deal with death and have sinister-sounding names like Death Switch, Slightly Morbid, or Legacy Locker, but because they take care of who has access to your online content after you die! I suppose it makes sense. A decade or two ago, matters related to death were a lot more straight-forward. You had some tangible personal belongings, that you could easily divy up among your friends and family. Even intangible assets - negotiable instruments, intellectual property and such could be easily passed on. The more assets you had, the more complicated it got, but on the whole, bequesting assets to an heir was less and less labyrinthine in each previous decade.
 
But, now given that much of our time is spent on the net, and we participate in confidential online activities that may (or may not) involve financial transactions, you have to think about who has access to you digital property, that is your online accounts and documents after you have given up the ghost! This is especially something of concern if you want to keep all that information private as long as you are alive! The net is littered with email accounts, blogs and social network profiles of people who are no longer with us and who have no one to claim their accounts. Their online life is there somewhere, lingering like a poltergeist. Who knows when they might show up and what they might reveal to the world about them! I am willing to bet there is millions of dollars in unclaimed money sitting on the net in many paypal accounts and such as I write about it! A huge waste of wealth!
 
If I were to make a quick list of all my online accounts that mean something to me, it would add up to at least 20. Tapi and some of my family already have the key to my online life. They are free to go into my email inboxes and read my email, tweet from my twitter, spy on my friends on facebook, edit all my blog posts and defame me all they want, whenever they want. It's besides the point that they don't do any of that despite such free access, except watching my netflix movies and occasionally messing with my queue. I suppose they have no reason to. I don't live that covetable life that they would want to experience vicariously through me.  But what this means is, I am clearly not the best patron for these death sites. My loved ones already have access to my online assets and don't have to wait till I've met my end.

But if, unlike me, you are that buttoned-up person, who likes to keep your online activity private, you may want to consider these sites.

Not just death, Slightly Morbid for instance, provides the same services to people who are in an emergency situation, like a serious accident or a natural disaster. Death Switch has an automated system that prompts you to type out your password on a regular schedule. If you do not enter the password for some period of time, it deduces you as critically disabled or dead, and sends out your pre-scripted automated message to your loves ones. This I find scary. It's a lot to put my family through by having them read my death letter when I am still alive! I also have accounts on sites that I've stopped using. I don't want them thinking my lack of activity on their site is because I have gone to meet my maker! But as far as they are concerned, I may very well have. It's all the same to them! I also don't want to have to keep proving that I am alive on "Death Switch", even if they let me set how frequently I want to prove it to them.
 
But, here is the thing. I am one of those people you don't like! My job requires me to spam people every once in a while to promote some of the excellent work we do in our organization. I am not about to tell you what I do for a living, and get dissed for sounding preachy. But, I deal with online marketing and I send out a lot of emails to a lot of people. 
 
Every so often I feel the need to purge my office email database off deceased people! It's a dodgy and depressing decision. You may wonder why I care that deceased people continue to receive my emails in their inbox. But, if someone has inherited the inbox of a deceased relative, I have found new audience to promote my cause (healthy living!), which for all you know is advice they need (especially if the relative passed away as a result of ill-health) or may be interested in (if the relative was an admirable advocate for healthy living) They may want to carry on the tradition and contribute to the cause or even pay a tribute to their relative for having gone through a difficult time or serving a great cause. In essence, they have inherited goodwill and good health! 
 
On the other hand, you want to be respectful and not spam a deceased person's inbox for ethical reasons! It's not the most wonderful feeling to think that there are people out there wanting to make money off you for having lost a loved one! It's a matter of perspective whether it is okay that death is such a huge business. But death is business to many. I can easily think up a hundred important jobs related to death that I am glad are being addressed. In the case of nonprofits, it is not even business, it has to do with passing on the legacy of serving a good cause.
 
Another reason I feel the need to purge my database is because, if an email I send out goes unread because a person is deceased, it throws off statistics on email performance, making it difficult for me to gauge accurately how many "living" people were inspired to act on the cause after reading the email.
 
When you work in a health organization, dealing with death is inevitable! But the fact that reading about death sites is making me think of how it will affect my work and not so much my personal life is really disturbing! What I find amusing is how much we take the whole religious concept of "life after death" to a whole new level! We seem not only to want to live on forever, but also control how we will the live and with whom we will live, after we've crossed the great divide. 

High sign in red: This is one of those unpopular "dear diary" posts my friends will be forced to read. Rest, be forewarned! ;)
 
The weekend in Syracuse was eventful, although oddly unremarkable. I met some new people, we did a few fun things, but at the end of it, there was something missing. A hollowness of some sort! I can't seem to put my finger on it. It may be that it was Mother's Day and I was missing mom!
 
The two days in Syracuse went by like an evening of bar-hopping with no time to have any drinks in between! We got from one place to another with no real agenda, meandered a bit, performed some tasks, and that was that! There were times when I wanted to ignore everything around me and take in the ambience, the beautiful still lakes, the open fields on our drive to the winery, the imposing churches, the assortment of colors. There was so much to absorb, but my mind kept racing from one moment to another quite restlessly, and we covered more and more ground without assimilating anything! This is usually fine by me, given that my typical weekends are even more haphazard, but we let ourselves go and have a really good time! This one just felt like an assortment of cocktail snacks at a dinner party that you relish greatly, want to have more and more of, even though it won't fill your appetite. There was no substantial main course in sight! The food distracted me from the people, the people from the ambience, the ambience from the experience, the experience from the absorption! There was no stimulation, no provocative discussions, no mindless bantering or funny repartees!
 
I could have reflected on the commencement speeches at the graduation ceremony. There was Colin Fanning, the university scholar with a very eloquent and charming speech about the importance of play in a world burdened with obstacles, then there was Joe Biden earnestly persuading students to reshape history by embracing the promise of change!     
 

Your hands are on the steering wheel, the automobile is going straight, and one slight turn sends the car into a direction fundamentally different and initially unalterable from the direction it's been going in. Few people get to put their hands on a steering wheel at that moment. There's not a single decision confronting us now that doesn't yield change from non-action as well as action. My favorite poet, William Butler Yeats, writing about Ireland, in 1916 wrote a poem about the first rising of the 20th century called "Easter Sunday 1916." In it, there was a line that's more applicable, in my view, to today than it was to his Ireland in 1916. He said "The world has changed. It has changed utterly. A terrible beauty has been born." Well, it’s clear things have changed utterly in the last 12 to 15 years. A terrible beauty has been born. It's a different world out there.

I sat through the speeches, amused, inspired, but kept feeling the need to suppress my animated reaction for some reason. I came out of the stadium pretending to be dispassionate, as if the words I just heard made no dent on me, as if they were like any other I had heard before -inspiring as the event demanded, but quite meaningless for all practical purposes! But, no. I don't quite see it as flaccid words in a flaccid speech. Biden said something that I am inspired to act on. I need to know how! Perhaps, it is not knowing how to act on his words that is frustrating me at the moment! It's been the lingering frustration that I have been feeling for a few weeks now. This constant desire to do something substantial and not knowing how is getting to me! I am in a state of suppression! 
 
I thought a lot about rivulets and tributaries, and it bothered me that i didn't know the difference between the two! I wondered if the former was just another word for a brook! I wondered how a creek was different from a stream, if bayous were synonymous with lakes, if most ponds are man-made, if springs emerge from caves, if basins were lands naturally drained by a river, if burns are the meetings points of rivers and seas. I wondered about how many different types of waterfalls there were, if falls cause erosion, or if erosion creates falls! My head was exploding with questions and it got to me that I didn't have the answers! How can I be in love with nature as much as I am and not know one kind of stream from the other! How can a mechanic not know the difference between a nut and a bolt! Would it have been bizarre if I lived on earth all along and did not know what a mountain was or a desert? At what point is it okay to be unaware!
 
I came home and read about streams and fluvial landforms. I am less ashamed now. Suddenly I am aware of how little I know, and how little I will know no matter how much more I read! There is a world out there that I can't even begin to fathom, let alone acknowledge! I can only hope I will pick up more and more books on rivers and absorb as much as I can about them until I run out of patience if not interest!
 
I think I am being hard on this unplanned weekend drive. The 6 hours of continuous music back and forth, and the company of fun people should have done it! I think it did! At least the people did! :) But, I need to go back and do some more soaking up! Not now! The hollowness is still raw! Maybe when I am ready for Syracuse, and not when Syracuse is ready for me!

It's Mithaki this time! She did the 20-mile Walk for Hunger too, and for the third consecutive year! How does one beat that!!

By now she is a total pro and can do the whole thing in her sleep!

Come to think of it, I too can do the walk in my sleep. It's real life that I find challenging! ;)

And while I am still stuck on little 5K runs, Sveta did the "practice" Thames Bridges Bike Ride "from Tower Bridge to Hampton Court across all the bridges in between to raise money for the Stroke Association - about 33 miles"! The real event is on May 31st when she will be doing it again! How cool is that!!

You kicked butt Batanirani!!!! Well done you!! xx

What an inspiring lot, these active philanthropic friends and family! You guys are making me look bad! I am going to have to build up more stamina to cheer you! :D


Love and Hugs xx

Anand and Akshay did the 20-mile Walk for Hunger today in 5.5 hours and raised $500! It is SO incredible!

MORE POWER TO YOU and your legs of steel!

YOU GUYS ROCK!

LOVE AND HUGS xx

I have two seconds to sneak in this post in between all the celebration, but I'll try not to make this too mushy! 

It's one of those big celebratory years again! Last year was our 5th wedding anniversary, which was a big deal for everyone in the family, whereas this year is our 10th real anniversary!  

Tapi and I met each other when I was 17! A month later, on the day that I turned 18 (today), he gifted me 
   a blue pot that he painted with yellow flowers, 
       a cute red elephant that he uses even now to drive me up the wall! 
          a sketchbook with his sketches of calvin and hobbes, mowgli, baloo and bagheera, 
             a book about France because he couldn't give me the real holiday,
               two striped pajamas for when I think of him at night
                  a purple scented candle, 
                    and a box of ferrero rochers .. 
 
Everyday since (almost actually!!) he has had a surprise for me, like the little contact lens kit he hid in the car yesterday so that I can crash at a friends place after one of those wild nights, or today's masala dosa breakfast! :)  

Tapi and I have never been big on celebrating anniversaries and birthdays. He thinks there is nothing he can do specially on that one day that he doesn't do everyday! I think he should think harder! (I can totally rustle up a laundry list of new things he can do that will make me ecstatic)
 
Last year, I wanted to do one of those sappy posts about Tapi for our fifth anniversary and couldn't bring myself to say anything that would even come close to describing who he is or what he means to me. 

There are some words that I am sure were created with him in mind, like being 
 
sensitive (in the good way, bad way, every way)
nice (in the ramudu manchi baludu (rama is a good boy) way!)
tolerant (in the "you can't be for real" way)
cool (in so so many ways)
funny (in the intentional, unintentional way)
adorable (in the things he does and the things he says way)
loving (in the more-than-necessarily overwhelming way)
melodramatic (in the guilt-tripping on an exponential scale way) and
completely selfless! (in a very admirable way)
 
Come to think of it, there isn't much else I can add to this list! :) But that still doesn't do much to explain the overwhelming love that we have for each other! I feel like I'm a better person everyday just by being married to him! :)
 
But, now I have decided to find real reasons to fight with him and make him look bad for a change!
 
So here's to the third of my life I've spent with him, the last 10 years that we've agreed to agree and the next 10 years where we will disagree for the sake of disagreeing! 

Louse you Toipeepoosxx!

-----------------------



Aaaaaaw! I can't remember the last time a gift made us this happy! xx
Love you Aru Ananthanarayanan. Dr. Engraver!

(On Request: Last year's posts on Earth hour can be found here and here!)

Last year, we switched off the lights for Earth Hour and played scrabble in the dark, which was a lot of fun and also the only way Tapi could beat me at the game! Will a billion really go dark this year? Will Earth Hour galvanize support for the fight against global warming? I wonder what happened from the time I turned off the light for an hour last year until now. My life continues to be the same. People continue to pull my leg about my pseudo environmentalism! I stay awake all night almost every day, when in fact I could be sleeping and saving power by turning off the lights! It is now 4 AM and I haven't slept! But, the issue was more than just put on the political agenda... an environmental revolution is taking shape in many parts of the world, and a radical alteration in our mindsets is happening in a big way!

I remember asking mom to turn off the lights for an hour last year and she said "I will, when the lights come back on after the power cut!" My mom is a horrible audience for my harangues on going green! I can't ask her not to buy liquid soap because she never does! I can't ask her to take her own bag to the grocery store, because she always has! She recycles newspapers, and donates clothes! Indians take the whole fun out of being eco-friendly! They seem to do all the right things without meaning to!    

We also missed out on Ugadi, the Telugu New Year's Festival, which also happens to be Dad's birthday according to the Hindu Lunar Calendar! What I miss about Ugadi is the show hosted by Dharmavarapu Subramanyam, where they play different comedy scenes from movies. He's a very entertaining host. His humor makes you laugh and want to tear your hair out at the same time!

Speaking of environmentalism, and the news about Earth Hour, I wonder what makes some kinds of stories newsworthy over others. With Earth Hour it is quite obvious why! But, sitting in my office everyday, I read tons of news reports on bone health that I find quite fascinating and noteworthy even: like how space travel offers insight on improving bone health; how hibernating bears hold the key to keeping our bones healthier; or how beer and wine can be good for your bones because they increase bone density (although binge drinking can cause bone disease among other things! and that's not good!)   
 
Beyond that, the environmental news I read on obscure websites everyday are quite sensational as well, like how we have finally saved the ozone layer (!), or that water production is the next big green tech innovation (!!), or even that the next step in space tourism is the development of space hotels, which is happening right now  (no kidding!!! I first need to learn to dance before I can "moon walk" and set up camp!)
 
But going back to health, last week I read about how scientists at Johns Hopkins University found the key to stopping malaria (by silencing a gene called caspar). Now, given that malaria kills nearly a million people every year, isn't this finding newsworthy? One million deaths a year is a lot more than all the reported casualties of Iraq war in over five years! If we were to look at malaria as an economic issue, where people spend close to half their annual income on treating this ailment in countries like Malawi, notwithstanding the exorbitant costs of healthcare, decreased productivity at work and eventual unemployment, I wonder why this new discovery that can possibly revivify people and economies isn't being celebrated on the front page of all big newspapers! To say that malaria seriously hinders economic development would be an understatement! 
 
In our many hundreds of years of progress we have come close to completely eradicating only a handful of diseases - plague, small pox and leprosy come to mind! We have fought many more wars than eradicated diseases, which as I pointed out, kills many more people!! Moreover war is an example of a horrible human transgression, finding a cure to a disease is an example of a great human triumph. Now, why do we "entertainment" and "maximum utility" seeking people want to do and hear more of the former and less of the latter? Why is it that when we hear that a disease has been eradicated, it seems less exciting than the news that the "I am a PC" ad was staged!
 
This baffles me especially given how small our world is now owing to globalization. People, goods and capital flow across geographical boundaries at such vast numbers, that it is hard to estimate their effect on global environment or human health, except to say that it is not entirely positive! Some of the deadliest diseases known to humans have spread over continents switfly killing thousands at a time, including malaria! They spread from one to another in all five transmission modes - air, water, blood, contact and germs!  
 
If you think the Bubonic plague of the 30s that manifested in china and raged through europe or Leprosy that began in India and spread all over the world through crusaders, spanish conquistadors, arabs, american slave traders, etc.. think of how much more faster diseases spread in this era and the impact they have on our health and the environment! (HIV  (AIDS) being the newest deadly disease entry!)

Now going back to space travel, shouldn't the giant cruiser ships we are developing, or the different space tourism options that are being made available, make it to the front page as well? Who would have thought, that we will have travelled to the moon even a few decades ago and now we speak of not just walking on it but vacationing!! This has got to be more exciting than political news which seems to be the only thing reported significantly in newspapers everyday!
 
I have reams and reams of thoughts waiting to explode on why development news never gets reported as much as it needs to be even though some of them can topple the economies of their countries simply by being unreported by the media. I understand the line of reasoning for doing this, even though I don't quite agree with it. At the same time, I think it is deplorable that only very bleak and gloomy news about developing countries gets reported internationally. But news about breakthroughs in research that can eradicate diseases is not third-world news!! It should interest anyone globally, and especially self-important people, like me who want to live longer and disease free! It is a life-altering human victory... a feat of defeat... that ought to be celebrated!

Happy Earth Hour! and
Happy Birthday Appa!! :)

Anand and Miru just had their second beautiful baby. So I went to see my brand new nephew Romi and his proud big sister Ananya who is all grown up now and says things like she “has an idea” and is “frustrated”. She even takes care of Curious George by changing his diapers and putting him to sleep next to her brother in his crib.



Come to think of it, the poor baby is having to learn the important lesson of “sharing” right from the beginning. He even has to share his crib with all our brothers. My brother for instance, is this very genderless effeminate doll with blue eyes and blond hair.



I have always found dolls very creepy even though I wouldn't dare admit it to Ananya (she reads them stories even). Can you imagine what a real human might look like if he or she were to have the same disproportionate features and body parts as the cute little dolls we adore? You may argue that cartoons and comics too have disproportionate features. While that is true, it is not quite the same as a two year old kid walking around the house with a sexy doll that has a swivel waist, an extraordinarily large bust and an eerie smile (a.k.a. Barbie! - Ananya's soon to be Best Friend Forever); because there is something very disturbing about kids playing with an adult-like toy! That being said, I can't imagine an adult playing with Barbie either!

Even the dolls that open and close their eyes when you turn them vertically and horizontally are disturbing. And to think that there are baby dolls that cry from time to time when they are hungry, or need to have their diapers changed! Aren't real babies enough? Do we need fake real babies too? Anyway, the important point to remember here is you won’t catch me imagining myself changing Calvin’s diaper in Calvin and Hobbes!



But here is what is incredible. I am looking at Lil’ Romi. This baby was in a stomach just a few days ago. Isn’t that incredible? Now that I see him: eyes, fingers, hands, legs and all, it is hard to imagine him inside a stomach looking just like he does now!

Romi is the quietest baby ever. I haven’t seen him cry in the three days that I was in Boston. He wasn’t awake for more than an hour or two in the day, so the little time that he was awake, his small glittering eyes were staring perplexedly in no particular direction. His expressions are priceless. His face changes in totally unexpected and marvelous ways. He has the softest skin, and a lovely baby smell. I could stare at him all day! I miss him already.



And I cant wait to go back and discuss Dora, Thomas the Train, Caillou, and Clifford the Big Red Dog with my niece, and sing “do re mi” and “when you’re happy and you know it” out of tune.

Ok. Enough of this baby talk. I can see this post making Tapi very nervous :)

In Waratah House, my grandparents’ bedroom window faces their small private garden that is closed to the rest of the world, but open to them and anyone who will peak through the window. It is an enchanting little area. Twenty feet from the window is a tall cold grey wall that serves as a frontier to our neighbor’s residence. Fortunately there are a lot of trailing plants and creepers that the eye must pass before spotting the wall.
The strong heady fragrance of sugandhi, jasmine and other flowers that I didn’t care to learn the names of are fresh in my mind thousands of miles away from home. For some reason, the trees in the private area, and especially the pomegranate tree seemed to attract a lot more birds and insects than the huge front open garden with more flowers and fruits, and the backyard, which too is thick and woodsy. It may be that they too needed the quite that the secret garden offered, and made themselves at home there.

The windowsill has a small wooden ledge protruding towards the outside. My grandmom used it as a feeding platform for sparrows. She fed them raw rice, and to my fascination they cleared off the rice every day. It used to be my pastime with her. I remember staring for hours and hours as the birds came to feed on the ledge and fly away in turns.

At home it was largely the monkeys that kept us occupied with their exploits. Monkeys were all over Secunderabad and especially Marredpally where I lived, almost competing with the stray dogs, cows and buffaloes for space. The dogs were on the street, the monkeys on the trees, men and women trying hard to walk in step with both while jumping over animal excrements. Sometimes it was comforting to walk next to the cows and buffaloes that although passive, at least offered psychological protection from the monkeys because of their size. My favorite incident with the monkey was one where I walked into mom’s bedroom to find one on the dressing table trying out mom’s makeup. That was the only time I stood there with my servant watching him from behind the door for quite sometime without calling for help. There is also a famous story that has been passed down for two generations, about an aunt who hugged a monkey in her sleep thinking it was her niece.

I have always been afraid of monkeys. They could tell the brave people from the timid, women from men, kids from grown ups. I was neither brave, nor a man nor grown up, so for most of my life, I was in the bottom of the hierarchy of domination. That being said, there is no escaping the walk to and from school, spending time alone in the terrace, or playing in the garden. So you pretend to coexist with them and find your balance. This is much like being a young woman in India any way, coexisting with stalkers who will try to feel you in the bus or as you are walking alone, whistle at you, call you names! You live with it. But, monkeys are certainly cuter. They generally keep to themselves except when they feel threatened. They are usually less harmful when in large groups.

But on the whole, notwithstanding dogs, cows and monkeys; rats and bandicoots; squirrels, cats, roaches, lizards and ants; there was no real animal life where I lived. At least not the kind that I see here, the horses, deer, the colorful birds, and so on.

Speaking specifically of birds. For a long time there were crows and sparrows that we saw everyday in Secunderabad but over the years they stopped visiting for reasons that I can’t fathom. First the crows left and then the sparrows.

At my grandparents place, there were still some crows and sparrows, and occasional visits by parrots as well (Tapi says, growing up, he too has seen parrots in Jubilee Hills and Sainikpuri). In the rainy season, just after it rains, we would hear the cooing of koel’s perched on the tall eucalyptus tree. Very rarely, we spotted monkeys, not the rhesus macaques we saw in Marredpally, but the long tailed langurs, which are more elegant in form and have a graceful movement, even though I am told they are fiercer, and more shy of people. We never knew where they came from. I believe there is a man somewhere releasing these monkeys from time to time, but god knows why he would do that. One theory is that he (and perhaps many like him) catches monkeys from nearby towns and releases them at different locations in the city from time to time, and is then hired by the local authorities to get rid of them for a fee. I’ve heard this story enough times to want to believe it is true. But, how one contacts the monkey catcher and pays him to catch the monkeys, I don't know.

Even in Manipal, we lived with rattle snakes and cobras, we saw foxes and monkeys, walked side by side with peacocks, fed cows, avoided street dogs and so on. And still I had been more overwhelmed with what nature has to offer here in the US than back in India. It’s perhaps the novelty of the wildlife here!

When I went to India two years ago, the first thing that occurred to me, was that I will never have those monkey experiences again. The apartments that have replaced the houses, razed all trees, including the oldest in the city, and with them went the birds and the animals. I am filled with indescribable sadness as I think of it. My grandparents house is still in tact with the lovely garden and backyard. But, for how long, I don’t know.

But, now as I sit in a distant country, watching the sparrows in my patio or in the open area by the plaza, I feel a close bond with them. Funny how they should exist all over the world, a common comforting thread, the ambassador’s of commonality, so to speak. Same with the rock pigeons or red jungle fowls, although I have never quite grown up with them, they seem to exist all over the world. When I see the black American crow however, I feel more like I have left home, but to visit a close cousin, who is just as lovely :)

Having lived away from family for five years, not counting the two years in Manipal, I can answer what life is like without family with some certainty. I miss my parents and grandparents, but beyond that I feel detached from life back in India. There is nostalgia for time, but not nostalgia for the place or the people. This puts me in a predicament so to speak. If the place and people change over time, and if it is time or "life as it was" that I miss, what do I go home to? (aside from parents, grandparents, and my brother that is)
 
I realized this when I went to India last year. Most of my month's stay was spent in adjusting to life at home, reconciling to the shock of not being able to connect to anyone or anything, and coming to terms with the way things worked or did not work. I think it may have been the result of coming home after a long gap of 4 years. There was so much that I was looking forward to, and I almost forgot that time does not stand still. All the accumulated excitement and anticipation of going back home after so long resulted in the worst case of disenchantment when I finally made it back to India. By the end of the trip, I still didn't come to the point of enjoying my stay, except for "awkwardly" adjusting to it.
 
Funny how, mom (especially) and my family kept calling Tapi to come to wherever I was, because I was so much at ease with everything when he was around. I would open up better, and just kick back and relax. But as a result, he spent lesser time with his family and I hope they don't hate me for it! :-( He's the only constant I have had in my life in the last 10 years, and to say that I can't remember what life was like before I met him wouldn't be an exaggeration. I was 18 when we met, and all my formative years were spent being in love with the most awesome guy on the planet! :) I feel paralyzed without him! (as I did today, when I had to find a gift for my office party on my own!)
 
What did my India trip do to me? It's made me cynical. I realized nothing lasts forever. I am afraid of becoming attached to places or people. I have weaned off close friends and cousins, including people I used to speak to every day for hours together. I felt like I didn't want to cling to a hopeless situation. Is there a point to keeping in touch? Are we just clinging to that "nostalgic time" that does not exist anymore? Haven't we all just moved on? 
 
I don't feel like reconnecting with anyone unless I feel assured that things will be just as they were many years ago. However, in saying this I think of all the people I still talk to very often. The cousins I am still close to, old friends I still keep in touch with. With them, I managed to put the nostalgia behind and am getting to know them for who they are right now. It's like a brand new relationship. These are the same people I grew up with, but see in new light.
 
There are some people who have changed over time, just as I have. I can't relate to them anymore, but still want to hold on to them. I think it may have to do with my fear of losing people I have known for so many years! It's like that old rag doll in the attic,sitting there for years, unseen, unnoticed and collecting dust. It will never even occur to you to throw it away! It will remain with you forever, and every once in a while when you see it, it will bring a smile to your face and evoke forgotten memories. But, you can't help but feel sad for the lost time, and for not taking better care of it. You can attempt to clean it as best as you can and put it on your display shelf, but can you really revive it? Does it need reviving? And if you do, will it ever be the same? 
 
Somehow this attitudinal change has impacted how I see newer relationships. I react to people like it might very well be the last time I talk to them. I make no effort in trying to please them. If it happens, it happens. Relationships are not as important to me as the idea of being myself in one. As a result, I am surrounded now by fewer people, but those I am most comfortable with. People I can totally be myself with! But, will I be okay again if I were to lose them, like I did many others?

I love this pic.

Don't be fooled by Andaponda's deceptively innocent smile (case in point, pic below.) She was a total scheming, conniving brat! I don't understand how even though we did everything together, I was the only one getting lambasted for all crime committed! Ajay (the lone man in the pic below) was the real honcho! He taught me everything I know about climbing walls and trees, escaping mad dogs and monkeys, stealing and boodling! He was my guru! Dad always thought he was a bad influence on me!

In this pic, I am clearly wearing Sudhakka's old tattered cloth belt. I know because by the time I was in 1st or 2nd class, (I can tell from Andaponda's white kindergarten badge), we had advanced to those shiny fake-leather belts (that you can see my other cousins wearing in the pic below), which in my defense broke very easily, or somehow ended up on top of some tree and were also very susceptible to doodles. You could write on them with all kinds of writing instruments, and they would still render perfectly. I even doodled on them with appa's office erasers (those long red erasers used specifically to erase pen marks on paper. They erased pen marks alright, but bled color and left red marks all over the paper. What's the point?..... Come to think of it, they may have been appa's factory erasers, meant to erase marks on construction material maybe? Thanks to that stupid eraser, my ears were once subject to painful twisting by my telugu teacher for "coloring" on my exam paper. I tried so hard to explain to her that it was my dad's fault not mine. But, did she hate my dad or what! She continued to wring my ears with greater enthusiasm. I was short of hearing in that ear for days. Aren't school teachers really cruel?)

I am also wearing the belt upside down, with the logo facing the wrong way. I don't think it matters because our lovely logo says "sicutapis operosa" which means "busy as bees"! I never quite understood "busy doing what!" They never cared to explain either.



As you can tell from the second pic, my shoes have lost color! (how?)! I'm wearing the badge on the wrong side and it's not even my badge. The red Roses badge has to be my best friend Pallu's (there was no one in my family who was in Roses!). I was in Pansies (pink)! I know!

A word about Pansies: On the first day of school, your fate for the rest of your life is decided by one reckless decision that your class teacher makes by assigning you to a house! The minute you are in Pansies, you have relinquished what little self-esteem you may have had prior to that. The only thing it guarantees you is failure. I fought to be Roses all my life! I felt just as Hermione would have, if she were sorted into Hufflepuff! It is objectionable. We need a Sorting Hat for real dammit!

Our house uniform for special occasions was supposed to be the same color as our badge, but Pansies did every shade of pink and violent you can think of. Daffodils too did every shade of yellow - from mango to mustard. Roses and Shamrocks (green) were the only guys who got it right.

What I love about this pic is also how you can see the height-wise regression of personalities. There's the class captain on the left, next to her an ambitious looking kid smiling with pride, and from there on with dipa's eyes closed (symbolic or what!) things went down hill. Isn't Ajay just adorable?

There's that broken see-saw behind us that we always stood and see-sawed on! There were usually at least four of us on it at once.

By the way, the pic doesn't show all the kids in the family. Just one small group of same-school-goers (a few still missing, like Sravanthi and Meena... ).

You can see a tiny bit of our lovely garden on the left. Gosh. What didn't grow there! More about the garden and the "real" monkeys of Marredpally later. I have SO many monkey stories to tell.

---

There's another pic where Ajay and I are wearing the St. Anns school badges and matching blue and white shirt and shorts and pretending to be "important school-goers" back when I was still in kindergarten and he was too young to go to school! I need to find that.

There is also one with me and my school friends, where there are all wearing the regular uniform and I am wearing the sports one (dressed for the wrong day. sigh! )

By the time I was in high school, I ended up wearing the Guides uniform by mistake so often that my teachers began to assume that it was meant to be worn everyday! It worked well for me. I thought it was cool you know. The scarf, woggle, all the proficiency badges, rope, whistle and all...

Did i tell you? I am the only one in the family who bought
8 pairs of brand new school uniforms (not including two sports, house and guides uniforms) every year;
new black shoes and sports shoes at least twice or thrice a year;
badges, ties and belts almost every other week,
and still ended up wearing tattered hand-me-downs because I lost or ruined them!

Doesn't it tell you a lot about my prankster cousins? I think they have something to do with it, even though they won't admit it. I have been victimized for so long, I don't know freedom even today!

Life has made me vulnerable and world weary!

I have been given the prestigious “Brilliante Weblog Premio 2008” awards by Sita and Suhas. With a lot of pleasure, I present mine to bloggers who make my day everyday!

Anil: for his abundant creativity.

Anita: for her outlook and latitude of thoughts.

Deepan: for his way of thinking

Sita: for her mad outbursts.

Sharan: for his simplicity

Soumithri: for his theories

Suhas: for his reminiscences.

Tushar: for his edifying features and line of attack.

Anand: for his writing. Even though you have stopped blogging, I give the blogger in you a posthumous award, with the hope that he will somehow come back to life. :-)

I have come to admire you all through your blogs. I visit yours everyday, so please don’t stop blogging. My day is less complete without it.

I was supposed to give this to 7 people, but since I am giving it back to Suhas and Sita, it is only fair that I add two more.

And now if the awardees will
1. Award seven other people.
2. Buy me any food or drink for this award, not necessarily a pitcher of beer. (Suhas and Sita, someday I will. I promise. Until then, if you will have a glass of milk daily, my employers will be happy)

Anand joins

C. Michael Armstrong CEO and chairman of AT&T Walter Tenney Carleton Founding director of NEC Peter R. Dolan Chairman & CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb John Donahoe CEO of eBay Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Former CEO of IBM, CEO of Carlyle Group Ronald Grant Chief Operating Officer of AOL LLC Donald J. Hall, Sr. Chairman of the Board and former President and CEO of Hallmark Cards Gardiner Greene Hubbard Lawyer, financier, and philanthropist; developed Bell Telephone Company; founder and first president of the National Geographic Society Jeffrey R. Immelt CEO of General Electric Janet L. Robinson President and CEO of the New York Times Company Christopher A. Sinclair Former CEO and Chairman of Pepsi International Ned Skinner An original owner of the Space Needle and Seattle Seahawks Owen Chamberlain Co-winner of 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics Karl Barry Sharpless Winner of 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry George Davis Snell Co-winner of 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Steve Russell Computer programmer and gaming pioneer, creator of early video game Spacewar! Richard Eberhart U.S. poet laureate; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1966 and the National Book Award in 1977 Robert Frost U.S. poet laureate, winner of four Pulitzer Prizes Paul Gigot Wall Street Journal editorial page editor, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary David K. Shipler Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction Joseph Campbell Author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which inspired Star Wars and The Matrix Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) Children's author and illustrator Warren E. Preece General editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica Gregory Rabassa Acclaimed translator of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, and other major works of Latin American literature. ... AND SOME FICTIONAL PEOPLE Stephen Colbert Titular character of The Colbert Report (real Colbert did not attend Dartmouth; the fictional biography on colbertnation.com, however, lists Dartmouth as his alma mater) Michael Corleone Character from The Godfather Thomas Crown Titular character of The Thomas Crown Affair Evan and Fogell Main characters in 2007 film Superbad [402] Meredith Grey Titular character of Grey's Anatomy Jack Trainer Male lead from Working Girl, played by Harrison Ford [400] "Trapper" John McIntyre Character on M*A*S*H novels, film, and television, and Trapper John, M.D. ... and many more business people, doctors, scientists, entertainers, and political figures. CONGRATULATIONS ANAND!!! You are by far, my favorite tuckie.

This pic isn't so much a display of my drop-dead gorgeous looks as it is of Tapi's abundant talent. Isn't he an amazing photographer? It was taken when I was talking to Smitha on the phone. It was the first time that I spoke to her since she came to the US, so I was obviously excited to hear her voice. I have the most fun when I talk to her. She got married very recently and is walking on clouds right now, which is all the more reason why the conversation was so enjoyable. She has this very innocent way of saying the most obnoxious things, which I am sure her husband will find amply amusing! It is a talent that I would love to acquire some day!

I thought I should put this pic up also because that beautiful dress I have on is a gift from Anand. I bought another dress for my birthday but this one seemed perfect for the weather. It was supposed to rain outside but it turned out to be a beautiful day, warm for the most part, but slightly windy in the evening.

Speaking of gifts, I thought I should show you how generous my friends and family are.

	one Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTI, so that I can stop blaming the camera for badly taken pics
	one Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet so that I can stop cribbing that my mouse wont let me draw
	one Crumpler "The Customary Barge" laptop/camera bag, for the heavy load on my back to feel light AND look cool
	one eco-friendly handbag, made out of jute, wool and recycled plastic bottles and with this I've officially stopped "receiving" leather gifts.
	one necklace from my grandmom that I'm waiting to collect from my brother.
	one dress from Anthropologie, for me to celebrate the end of winter
	one necklace and earrings set from 10,000 Villages to look yuppy cool.
	one INCREDIBLE pong (poem-song), from the very talented yemen lemon.
	one laugh-out-loud funny story, from the WICKED dimmy mami
	some very entertaining movies - forgetting sarah marshall, harold and maude, the counterfeiters and jab we met (and the forbidden kingdom a day before).
	some restaurants (one indian for some awesome idli, one thai for some spicy drunken noodles, one brewery restaurant for a dash of barley a pinch of hops) to help me keep the weight
	one chocolate-mocha cake representative of the day
	one birthday dress to remind me of indian birthdays in summer.
	some very funny ecards,
	lots of synchronized singing of the birthday song on the phone
	some good red wine
	some bad white wine
	some awesome beers.
	one visit to the temple to make my moms day

one day down and one more to go... so the celebration is still not over...

THANK YOU everyone! You are the best! Love you all!

Dearest Prabha,

I know you are a very busy person as you are on a full time job and have no time to see e-mail attachments forwarded to you but I disturb you only to show you and Tapasvi some things which interest you both which you can see together during weekends, may be. The write up was very funny and the slides of oddly shaped trees, I thought, would give joy to a person who loves greenery...

That was my grandmom's email to me right after she sent me two forwards, one with oddly shaped trees and another with a beautiful article by Michael Gartner, President of NBC News. Gartner is a fantastic writer, as you will see soon. He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1997. When I started this blog, I had intended to share all the great essays and speeches I had been reading. Somehow, that purpose faded and my obsessive desire to review anything and everything took over, not to mention some occasional ranting about this and that. I do listen to and read speeches even now, except I don't feel comfortable writing about them on my blog anymore. I feel like my writing does very little justice to the works of these great people. They deserve more than that.

Anyway, here is Gartner's very touching essay.

My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."
At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse."
"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.

But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first. But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.

Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning.

If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio.

In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."
If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

"No left turns," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

"What?" I said again.

"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."

"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

"Loses count?" I asked.

"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

"No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."

My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving.

That was in 1999, when she was 90.

She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.

They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."

"You're probably right," I said.

"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.

"Because you're 102 years old," I said.

"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.

That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet"

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

A short time later, he died.

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, Or because he quit taking left turns."

Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about those who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."

---
Both my grandparents had been self-reliant drivers. My granddad has lots of memories of road trips on the East Coast, like the 12-hour drive from New Hampshire to Washington DC with my mom and my brother who visited him from India. My brother and I have taken over that job as I live in DC and he in New Hampshire. Unlike Gartner's father, my granddad enjoyed driving and was happy to do all his traveling by road. Even in India, I remember many trips to places around Manipal to which he drove with the entire family. After his heart attack in 1987, he cut down on long distance driving and took the car only to work and back. We still travelled to a lot of places, but with Nayak (the driver) in control of the wheel.

In 2000, my grandparents moved back to Hyderabad with their old fiat. The car is as basic as it gets and serves as an oven in summer, requiring the driver to wear mittens to hold the steering wheel if he didn't want to lose the use of his hands. It was an embarrassment to say the least, especially since my paternal grandfather was a car enthusiast who collected all the latest cars like my brother collected stamps. But, my maternal granddad argued that it was all the same on Hyderabad's pot-holed roads where all cars move at 5 kms an hour. It would be stupid to throw money on an expensive car, he said. There is no challenging that!

Until he could find a driver, he did all the driving. As part of his everyday routine he drove all the way to Secunderabad to pick up my younger brother and take him to the club for his swimming lessons. If you can navigate the mad traffic from Hyderabad to Secunderabad, you can drive to Hell and back in shorter time. By the time he found a driver, my younger brother was too embarrassed to be seen in the car (or swimming with his granddad) and with that his swimming lessons stopped. :-) Kidding, my granddad had another minor attack and wasn't allowed to swim anymore, with that my brother's swimming lessons stopped and my granddads driving too.

My grandmom too used to drive a lot. Most of my moms memories of her driving were to the University for her french classes every evening. She was known for her nervous pinched look while driving and was the victim of a lot of imitation by family for that. The last time she drove was almost 10 years ago. They had just moved back to the city from Manipal and she took her old fiat out for a spin. I sat next to her as she drove to Food World. The store was two blocks away, but thanks to traffic congestion it took us forever to get there. I have never seen anyone cling to the steering wheel as dearly as she did, focussing all her attention on the road. With utmost silence we sat as the car plodded inch by inch to our destination. It was a very amusing experience but, she never drove again.

Now, they are happy to depend on their driver to take them everywhere. But it is sad to hear them say "we can't go anywhere today, because it's Sunday, and the driver needs his rest."

Last year my grandparents bought a new car after an incident that forced by grandmom to have to lie down in the backseat while traveling. She's better now, but the driver is happy to park the primordial fiat in the garage for good and drive in a new state-of-the-art one.

I wish the countdown to my birthday started with a round number. Imagine having to remember the number 22! Every year, I have to subtract 4 from 26 cos I can never remember!

Oh, Happy Birthday Annapurna! :D


So you vaar TONTY FI ees eet? And 25 is a life-altering year. Boy o boy, that quarter life crisis. Things will start to look abysmal. What are you going to do? The whole world's crumbling down around you. There's no sight of that bright future––the one that you saw as a teenager. You have a mountain of complexes to deal with, not to mention a low self-esteem. Those puffy eyes, those dark circles, those smile lines, they are just not helping are they!

Do people think you are funny enough Annapuski? Can you make smart conversation?

And what about your career? Do your colleagues take you seriously at work? Does your boss think you are too young to be a manager, even though you know you can do it? No wait. Can you?


And your friends? Are they moving ahead of you? That must be hard to bear. Your (once) equal buddies in high school are doing way better than you, and the ones who are worse off don't matter anyway.

You can't even better yourself. A few years ago, when the time was ripe, you shoulda woulda coulda but the Times Up! It's too late. At 25, a nurse can't aspire to become a doctor, a peon can't aspire to become a manager. There is no one to ask you what you want to become––only what you have become.

So what have you become Annaachiever?

Think about it! Here's some inspiration...


But really. You are something else Annapurna! Not the regular 25 year old having to deal with all that crisis. I know you feel the need to feel that crisis deep down in your heart, but you are really beyond all this. If there was one person in our generation whose ideals I aspire for, it would be yours. You define perfection to me!
=)

I SAID IT! I expressed how I feel about you! Have we done that before?


Still, no matter how much older you get, you will be two years younger (than me)! Make of it what you want. I just had to say it. Put the facts out there for your interpretation. But, to me, it seems like it's all working in my favor. :)

He turns 60 on the 10th of April, but the big event is going on right now as I write this post. The date adjustment had to be made to accommodate the schedule of as many people as possible. Still, it does not accommodate mine and I don't get to be a part of it!
My brother left for India with his wife and kid, but I will be sitting in my little apartment in DC, waiting till the party is over to hear from everyone on "how it went". It's times like this that I wonder if it is worth living away from home.

The last few weeks have been quite eventful. The whole family went berserk over arranging things, inviting people, deciding the venue and the menu. It's the kind of craziness that you want to be a part of but dread entirely. My only contribution to the whole event is the designing of the invitation card. I thought it would be sweet to have my one year old niece invite everyone for her granddad's birthday. The guests are meeting her for the first time too.

It's hard to believe that my dad is 60. It was just a few months ago that he was here in the US to see his granddaughter. He said he couldn't imagine himself as a granddad. Neither could I. Thatha's are supposed to be older, possibly bald, and coming to terms with retirement. My dad is anything but. In fact, thanks to him, it’s official now that 60 is the new 20! His hair is still black and shows no signs of receding and like a road warrior he is out on his conquests, never in the same place long enough to even unpack his suitcase.

It's always interesting to hear about where he had been and where he is headed. During my one month stay in August, he went from China, to North Korea and then to Taiwan, when he was not traveling inside the country in Delhi, Chennai and Dehradun, making a halt in Hyderabad as often as he could to spend time with me.

Someone needs to tell him that he is breaking the "over the hill" law and disrupting the balance of the universe. If I was not busy writing this post, I would be researching if his compulsive need to work hard and very long hours could be causing our globe to heat up. Thus my interest in global warming and the environment!

Workaholism seems to run in the family, I see that my dad and his siblings get it from their mom and dad, and now my elder brother shares that work gene too. Somehow it seems to have evaded me (and my younger brother, but I’ll let him speak for himself).

I am more a cool cat! and the type of cat that compelled my dad to up his game and lose the few hours of sleep he had after his long days at the factory, just in trying to wake me up to study. Whether I was more of a persistent annoyer than he was a relentless sufferer is debatable.

The picture above of me on my dad's lap was taken around the time of my “aksharabhyasam”, a ceremony in South India to initiate my “education”. His struggle began there.

In class 1, my final science exam went way better than I imagined. Knowing that my dad would never be able to see my answers, as the teachers don’t give back the corrected exam papers to the students to take home, I decided that it was more important for me to share my achievement with my dad than submit it to my teacher. I am sure I thought it was an excellent idea back then, but my dad was perplexed as ever. There wasn’t much he could do than to explain the gravity of the situation to me, which made no impact whatsoever.

This went on till he taught me trigonometry in my class 11. I was a month away from my final, and quite oblivious to the world of sin teta and cos teta. My dad stood behind me one day as I drew a tree in full detail with the bark and the leaves and a tall building next to it with many windows, before measuring the distance between them to solve the problem. He really thought I was a gone case, but sat next to me and taught me everything I needed to know to get through that exam.

Why he never gave up is beyond my grasp, but that he didn’t really shows some willpower. I know I am not the only person in the world who didn’t have the required textbooks a day before the finals even during my undergrad, but he is the only one I know who managed to build a small army of concerned cousins and material before each final to get me through my exams.

All this in the midst of wheedling me to go to my dance class or music class, the occasional painting class,some “sports” activities, summer camps as a guide (girl scout). Somehow with both mom and dad, extracurricular activities were a bigger deal than education.

Even my birthdays every summer were outdoor excursions, including after I got married. We went to Disney in Florida with the whole family. I suppose the idea as a kid was to take advantage of the bright summer day to give me, my cousins and friends the ‘exposure’ we needed.

In all this, I can say he did more than any dad would do to tackle a little horror.

Anyway, he thinks big birthday events are for people who have accomplished a lot, and was hesitant to be the celebrity of the event today. I don’t think there is anyone who is more deserving.

He usually shares his birthday with ugadi (the telugu new year festival), but i am glad he gets to celebrate thrice this time... today, on ugadi and his real date of birth. That's got to make up for all lost celebrations over the last 60 years.

Love you Appa! Have fun!

This post is for the writer, the mom and the fiancée – three people I said bye to four and a half years ago, and who have since accomplished so much and moved to different phases of their lives.
Thinking of you guys as little bonnie’s mom, as the author of The Ghost That Killed Babu, as a soon to be wife moving to a new country and starting life afresh is amazing.
I am so proud and excited for you guys! Love youx!

(pardon my tinglish)
I miss diwali
the hundreds of family members
together in marredpally
including some new faces, young and old
who join in the fun, very amicably without an introduction
i miss fighting for the thousand wala ladis
hiding some in secret places
preferring the smooth sparklers to the karkar ones
lighting two three flower pots at once
jumping over vishnu chakrams
playing laddi wars
usurping all the sirens and other cool crackers
I miss byhearting the names of the crackers
Cribbing about the rockets that always go sideways instead of up
being audience to uncles who show off their rocket launching techniques
some successfully and some blaming the wind
i miss proving to grownup cousins that im not afraid of hydrogen bombs
and then using agarbathis instead of sparklers to burst them
i miss arguing about whether its pataas or tapaas or pataka or tapaka
and teasing mom that tamilians say "theebavali" and not "deepavali"
i miss getting burnt every year despite all precaution
i miss getting yelled at for not wearing shoes or "at least chappals"
throwing bombs into the bonfire in the end.
not washing my hands and smelling like crackers until the morning after
I miss diwali, my family and friends.
i even love the mellow diwali at waratah house the night before
with just me and my two brothers
playing with tukadas, flowerpots and vishnu chakrams
with ammamma and dadpop watching on the side
I even miss bursting crackers in the office terrace
but more than anything, i miss the expensive clothes
that i used to buy every diwali knowing very well
that i will be wearing them only once
but never feeling like i've wasted money
even with dad rebuking that
"i should have been feeling ashamed about barely passing my half yearly exams"


Now diwali is all about missing diwali and talking endlessly about it over dinner at a chinese restaurant. :-(

Post Earth Hour, I received some emails and phone calls from friends and family asking if there really is a point to Earth Hour or if we are fooling ourselves into thinking that we can do something about the climate change problem. Some people went on to criticize the event as another meaningless fad of pseudo-intellectuals pretending to care about the world and its problems.

In India, people thought the whole idea was pointless given the number of power-cuts in the country anyway. They didn't need an Earth Hour when they are already suffering an Earth Life. Still, some places are turning off power on May 3rd. I wonder why India chose a different date from the rest of the world.

Today morning I received an email from my brother with a link to an article on Time. He said:

Happened to run into this article on TIME... makes me wonder how real change can happen. Are we saving pennies while someone loots our bank?

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1725947,00.html?cnn=yes

To sum up the article in a few words it says:

Given that the entire world emits around 27 billion tons of CO2 each year through transportation, electricity use, deforestation., there's very little that any of us can do on an individual level to stop climate change. What is one hour of saving electricity going to achieve when even by living like monks for the rest of our lives, we'll barely scratch the surface.

Still, Earth Hour is important as a symbolic gesture, to collectively make a statement about our commitment to solving the problem of climate change.

The only way to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to take the pressure off global warming, is an international regime that puts a cap and a price on climate pollution. And the only way that will happen is if politicians around the world become convinced that climate change is an issue that matters to people, one that will make them change the way they live, buy — and vote.

The environmental movement is reaching a delicate moment. We're well past the point where just doing your bit to save the Earth deserves endless praise. But this is the moment when we need to keep pushing in every way we can. The technologies that will help us decarbonize energy are developing, but they need a push — and that will only happen if we keep climate change near the top of our political agenda. Earth Hour, Earth Day, Earth Year — we'll need it all.

The article sums up how I feel about the event. I don't see Earth Hour as a solution, but as a symbol of concern, of hope. I see people coming together from all over the world, wanting to do something about the environment... anything that makes sense, that puts the issue on the political agenda. I see Earth Hour as a gesture that symbolizes people's commitment to energy conservation. It is a first step of many steps, a reminder of what is important and a celebration of humanity and unity as people come together with one concern that affects all of them, irrespective of where they live on the globe. Perhaps switching off the lights, using public transport, recycling products is not enough. There is more to be done. But by starting here and showing how much it means to us, we hope to make this a priority and eventually find a solution.

As far as not finding a need to celebrate Earth Hour in India goes, somehow the power cuts don't seem to help with our country's ecological footprint. With a .8 gha, we may be lower than the world average but it is still higher than the nation's bio-capacity. This is after the compulsory load shedding being thrust on us. According to WWF’s Living Planet Report ranked India 3rd on the list of ‘ecological deficit’ countries with 802 million gha.

India hosts about 1% of the world’s forests and 2.2% of land mass but is home for 16% (1.3 billion) of the world population. The recorded forests in the country are about 77.5 million ha or 23.6% of land area. Although forest cover in India in 2003 was higher than previous estimates, the dense forests (canopy density above 40%) continue to be lost at a higher rate (1.3 million ha/year). Conversion of forests for non-forest purposes is one of the key factors in these changes. Globally, the forest loss is about 16 million ha per year and the conversion of forests in the world’s critical eco-regions can lead to irreversible changes in ecosystems and loss of biodiversity. Source Panda.org

You may call this irony but I see this as as all the more reason for us to participate in Earth Hour. Moreover, as global citizens, we should see energy conservation as a world problem not as a problem of one nation. After all, with every other problem in our country related to poverty, we look to other countries for support and hope that they will empathize with our situation and help us in whatever way they can. And then, switching off the lights for an hour is a symbolic gesture of concern, its not an act to conserve energy within that one hour, so I don't see how regular power-cuts can come in the way of demonstrating that you care (if you care).

In fact I would urge countries doing well energy-wise to participate too and lead by example!