Today, I realized something. I am scared of my maid.
Let’s call her V.
She comes around twice a week to jolt me out of my let-it-be existence and sends me scurrying on the days previous to her arrival.
So, from sometime yesterday morning I am thinking that I should go buy vegetables. The crisper in the fridge is empty. I will also have to buy atta. Yesterday morning I think I will sneak out of work in the evening and do a bit of buying at the local market – well, it’s a stretch of pavement really, where the vendors sit one after the other. But yesterday evening, I forget. Or rather, I think I will do it this morning.
This morning I wake up at 11.45. I am thinking of going to the market. Then a lunch plan happens in a jiffy and I am off. So, the vegetable-buying gets pushed to the evening, again. Evening comes. I am working. Then, at 8, I see the clock on the computer. Panic.
V will walk in tomorrow at 9. I will open the door feeling like a kid who has been oversleeping. She will look at me with that these-people-today look.
(Last week she had pointed to a two-month-old pile in a corner and said, “Yeh khazana kab hatayenge?” I had withered. Then, the day before she was supposed to come again, I skipped coffee with a friend to clean up the corner.)
Tomorrow, V will open the fridge. Sigh. Turn to me, wanting to say, “Bhaji kyun nahin laya?”, but will turn away again, knowing it’s pointless. Then she will jiggle the container for atta and say…
Shit. I forgot about the atta.
I am running out of the office with a plastic bag in hand, stuffing money into my pocket, making some excuse to my colleagues.
Half an hour later, I return, panting, sweating, but relieved.
The issue of the atta remains though. Am hoping the Shop Downstairs will come to my rescue tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
So, I was gearing up to change one part of my life when some other part turned on its head when I was not quite watching.
That happens sometimes, I guess: That you are preparing – girding – for a change that you see coming or are actively working towards and then, right behind you, the fundamentals of some other bit of your world shifts.
For instance, I, for the first time in my working life, now find myself with evenings. I had always known they existed outside my office walls, in the lives of other people. But never in mine. Quite like a car, perhaps. Or a younger sibling.
It’s not that I missed them. But now that I have suddenly been handed over half-a-dozen of them every week, I am quite at a loss about what to do with them.
I have also reaffirmed my belief that mornings can be languid. The rest of the day has enough shit in it, so must we begin the day with our hearts thumping and the arteries swelling up?
(On a related note, I think early mornings are highly overrated. Waking up early does have its advantages, but its virtues have been glorified for no justifiable reason.)
But it’s good, this jolting of the bolts. Reminds me they are not ready to get rusty, just yet.
That happens sometimes, I guess: That you are preparing – girding – for a change that you see coming or are actively working towards and then, right behind you, the fundamentals of some other bit of your world shifts.
For instance, I, for the first time in my working life, now find myself with evenings. I had always known they existed outside my office walls, in the lives of other people. But never in mine. Quite like a car, perhaps. Or a younger sibling.
It’s not that I missed them. But now that I have suddenly been handed over half-a-dozen of them every week, I am quite at a loss about what to do with them.
I have also reaffirmed my belief that mornings can be languid. The rest of the day has enough shit in it, so must we begin the day with our hearts thumping and the arteries swelling up?
(On a related note, I think early mornings are highly overrated. Waking up early does have its advantages, but its virtues have been glorified for no justifiable reason.)
But it’s good, this jolting of the bolts. Reminds me they are not ready to get rusty, just yet.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
There are people whom you think you know, and then they get married.
Nothing wrong in them doing that. Just that sometimes you are left baffled at the way in which they go about it.
I have concluded that the way in which people get married shows what they really are: It is the one time they will be their true selves.
So, a girl who you have known to wake up semi-sozzled in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, for more times than you care to remember, decides she wants to be coy and hide behind a paan when she marries her boyfriend from school after knowing him for a decade.
Those who rebelled against everything they could think of play the perfect sons and daughters and abide by their parents’ every whim and fancy.
Friends who announced feminist leanings forever promptly replace their surnames with their husband’s.
Women who never touched a brush to their face don the pancake (and usually look hideous).
Those who have always denounced the existence of anything remotely divine sit and sweat around a fire and mouth chants they can barely pronounce, let alone understand.
So, what is it that happens?
Do they give in to parents and family? But if they rarely have done so in the past (or rarely will in the future), why do it now?
Were they never that rebellious any way? And are sticklers for the safe, beaten, anachronistic path when push comes to shove?
Do they simply want to keep the peace at home even if they are making fools of themselves on perhaps the most important day of their lives?
Guess the reasons are different in different cases but the adherence to them is what always surprises me.
Nothing wrong in them doing that. Just that sometimes you are left baffled at the way in which they go about it.
I have concluded that the way in which people get married shows what they really are: It is the one time they will be their true selves.
So, a girl who you have known to wake up semi-sozzled in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, for more times than you care to remember, decides she wants to be coy and hide behind a paan when she marries her boyfriend from school after knowing him for a decade.
Those who rebelled against everything they could think of play the perfect sons and daughters and abide by their parents’ every whim and fancy.
Friends who announced feminist leanings forever promptly replace their surnames with their husband’s.
Women who never touched a brush to their face don the pancake (and usually look hideous).
Those who have always denounced the existence of anything remotely divine sit and sweat around a fire and mouth chants they can barely pronounce, let alone understand.
So, what is it that happens?
Do they give in to parents and family? But if they rarely have done so in the past (or rarely will in the future), why do it now?
Were they never that rebellious any way? And are sticklers for the safe, beaten, anachronistic path when push comes to shove?
Do they simply want to keep the peace at home even if they are making fools of themselves on perhaps the most important day of their lives?
Guess the reasons are different in different cases but the adherence to them is what always surprises me.
Sunday, 12 September 2010
A white bird - don't know what it is called - was flying across the wide expanse of the green lake. The lake was rimmed by mountains on which wisps of clouds lingered long after sunrise.
How did the bird have the confidence to fly the entire width of the lake? How did it know that its wings were strong enough to take it to the other side, without having to rest? How did it know the first time that it could safely sail through?
Are birds made that way? Do they simply know? Or do they set out on that first long flight and rely on the wind if their wings seem to fail?
Can we be like birds?
How did the bird have the confidence to fly the entire width of the lake? How did it know that its wings were strong enough to take it to the other side, without having to rest? How did it know the first time that it could safely sail through?
Are birds made that way? Do they simply know? Or do they set out on that first long flight and rely on the wind if their wings seem to fail?
Can we be like birds?
Monday, 16 August 2010
Till yesterday afternoon I had wanted my next blog post to be about my haircut and the profound significance it has in my life.
Then, after a couple of hours or so, I found myself in what passes off for a café in Bombay, sipping bad coffee, under an asbestos roof, sitting on a cane sofa that would, in time, give me a back ache and waiting for an expensive bagel sandwich (yet another example of the city’s overhyped and, hence, overpriced mediocrity).
I was reading the Sunday sections of the day’s newspapers. They were about India winning her freedom, or rather, Indians winning freedom for their country.
I had read quite a bit when – while trying to ensure that the salt-less cream cheese did not squeeze itself out of the crusty semi-circles of bread – I looked up and around me. The place was full of young people: Men and women, boys and girls, laughing and joking, kissing and sniggering, vigorously thumbing the keypads of their candy-coloured cellphones. I realised how irrelevant this whole independence thing must be for them.
The awful manner in which history is taught in schools cannot alone be held responsible for the lack on interest the generation shows in what happened before it was born. How are these 20-somethings supposed to know what it means to wear only cotton not just out of a sense of patriotism but simply because there was no option; how are they to know what satyagraha must have meant; how are they to know what the Dandi March was about?
The generation has been born into a country where, as an urban youngster, the only restraint they might face in achieving their goal is financial.
Just when I was all worked up about the irrelevance of the past in the present, I also realised that I too was born after more than 30 years of independence, brought up under no limitations except financial ones. So, how am I any different?
Well, I thought defiantly, I have spent a childhood with 10 to 12 hours of daily power cuts; studied in the light of kerosene lamps for many years; run to neighbours and local shops to make emergency phone calls as the only phone at home would be dead for weeks at a stretch; neither me, nor my friends, knew what pocket money was; satellite television came to our home in my late teens; I sent my first email when I was in college and went to a Barista for the first time when I was 21. Hence, I can claim to have known and lived through a childhood and adolescence that was more difficult than what came after, soon after.
And, I am sorely tempted to wear this knowledge and experience – of a life and time more difficult than now – as a badge of honour.
Fact is, reading about all the heroic and self-less acts of the decades before independence never fails to make me feel like useless scum. I have heard of so many tales of bravado from my grandparents’ generation that I sometimes feel deprived of a cause as noble as theirs. After all, it is not my fault that I was born into a free country and there was nothing of the same caliber left for me to do.
It’s this hopeless feeling of itching to be a rebel but being at a loss for a cause good enough.
Then, after a couple of hours or so, I found myself in what passes off for a café in Bombay, sipping bad coffee, under an asbestos roof, sitting on a cane sofa that would, in time, give me a back ache and waiting for an expensive bagel sandwich (yet another example of the city’s overhyped and, hence, overpriced mediocrity).
I was reading the Sunday sections of the day’s newspapers. They were about India winning her freedom, or rather, Indians winning freedom for their country.
I had read quite a bit when – while trying to ensure that the salt-less cream cheese did not squeeze itself out of the crusty semi-circles of bread – I looked up and around me. The place was full of young people: Men and women, boys and girls, laughing and joking, kissing and sniggering, vigorously thumbing the keypads of their candy-coloured cellphones. I realised how irrelevant this whole independence thing must be for them.
The awful manner in which history is taught in schools cannot alone be held responsible for the lack on interest the generation shows in what happened before it was born. How are these 20-somethings supposed to know what it means to wear only cotton not just out of a sense of patriotism but simply because there was no option; how are they to know what satyagraha must have meant; how are they to know what the Dandi March was about?
The generation has been born into a country where, as an urban youngster, the only restraint they might face in achieving their goal is financial.
Just when I was all worked up about the irrelevance of the past in the present, I also realised that I too was born after more than 30 years of independence, brought up under no limitations except financial ones. So, how am I any different?
Well, I thought defiantly, I have spent a childhood with 10 to 12 hours of daily power cuts; studied in the light of kerosene lamps for many years; run to neighbours and local shops to make emergency phone calls as the only phone at home would be dead for weeks at a stretch; neither me, nor my friends, knew what pocket money was; satellite television came to our home in my late teens; I sent my first email when I was in college and went to a Barista for the first time when I was 21. Hence, I can claim to have known and lived through a childhood and adolescence that was more difficult than what came after, soon after.
And, I am sorely tempted to wear this knowledge and experience – of a life and time more difficult than now – as a badge of honour.
Fact is, reading about all the heroic and self-less acts of the decades before independence never fails to make me feel like useless scum. I have heard of so many tales of bravado from my grandparents’ generation that I sometimes feel deprived of a cause as noble as theirs. After all, it is not my fault that I was born into a free country and there was nothing of the same caliber left for me to do.
It’s this hopeless feeling of itching to be a rebel but being at a loss for a cause good enough.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
How should we treat the job that we do to earn a living?
* Should it be something that we like doing and make it into a living?
* Should it be something quite different from what we really like doing, because making a hobby into a job may not be a bright idea?
* Is it simply the means to a lifestyle we aspire to, regardless of what we think or feel about it? Therefore we grin and bear the drudgery?
* Do we let it take over our lives and lifestyle?
Sometimes I wonder if it is good, at all, to have the option of looking upon earning a living as anything except just that. The possibility that it can be something more can be the cause of immense confusion and anguish.
And yet, aren't we the generation that looked at our fathers with adolescent sneer on learning that they spent 27 years in the same office?
* Should it be something that we like doing and make it into a living?
* Should it be something quite different from what we really like doing, because making a hobby into a job may not be a bright idea?
* Is it simply the means to a lifestyle we aspire to, regardless of what we think or feel about it? Therefore we grin and bear the drudgery?
* Do we let it take over our lives and lifestyle?
Sometimes I wonder if it is good, at all, to have the option of looking upon earning a living as anything except just that. The possibility that it can be something more can be the cause of immense confusion and anguish.
And yet, aren't we the generation that looked at our fathers with adolescent sneer on learning that they spent 27 years in the same office?
Friday, 9 July 2010
Sometimes, it so happens that I am agonising over what I would tell a particular person. The circumstances are different, but the anxiety and trouble I go through - over what I would say, how I would say it and what effect it would have - are comparable. I phrase and re-phrase sentences in my mind, think of all the possible ways in which I could meet the person, run imagined conversations in my mind and work myself up.
And then, when I have said what I have wanted to say - and sometimes even before I have said anything at all - there is an abrupt response from the other side; a response that may not be particularly rude, but one that completely rips apart my efforts in one short, swift, apparently thoughtless stroke.
It can perhaps be compared to a page-long letter, written in my best hand, on the most carefully selected paper, with the right colour of ink getting a one word reply on SMS.
So, was all that anxiety and agony not required or was it not worth it?
And then, when I have said what I have wanted to say - and sometimes even before I have said anything at all - there is an abrupt response from the other side; a response that may not be particularly rude, but one that completely rips apart my efforts in one short, swift, apparently thoughtless stroke.
It can perhaps be compared to a page-long letter, written in my best hand, on the most carefully selected paper, with the right colour of ink getting a one word reply on SMS.
So, was all that anxiety and agony not required or was it not worth it?
Friday, 18 June 2010
This is about Bombay and Calcutta.
I have had an overdose of reading and discussing the banes and boons of living in the two cities. And it has left me with some surprising insights, which have actually managed to make a dent in my own steadfast beliefs.
There were four conversations with four people.
* One is a 45-year-old man who moved with home and hearth from Bangalore to Bombay (for two-and-half-years) and then to Calcutta.
He hates almost everything about Calcutta: The non-existent service at shops; horrendous traffic; the fact that his sons' classmates talk in Bengali outside class and don't listen to as much rock; the weather; the fact that drivers, carpenters, plumbers all have running stomachs at the same time...
* The second is a late-30s (maybe) man who has set up home and hearth in Bombay for the last few years after having lived in cities around the world.
He hates Bombay because people here are insular, largely uneducated (at least in things that really matter), can think of nothing apart from money (they watch the BSE ticker as though it was a World Cup match); that there is no park for his kid to play in; that travelling anywhere takes an hour-and-half each way...
* The third is a 33-year-old man who has set up home in Bombay, having lived in Calcutta and Madras.
He hates Bombay because it makes people less human in their thoughts and feelings; that 24-hour shops mean there are poor buggers returning home from unearthly hours at night; that Calcutta still has a soul no matter how dimly it still glows...
* The fourth is a 29-year-old woman looking to move to Bombay after having lived in Calcutta and London.
She loves Bombay as it lets people be; offers an amazing variety of food to eat, brands to buy, a career to follow, friends to hang out with; and problems that people face in Bombay are problems of every big city.
They all have different wants and look for them in the city they live in.
I am not sure which I swing at the moment. I guess I am yet to figure out what exactly my wants are. But yes, I am getting a little more objective about them, and a little less sentimental.
I have had an overdose of reading and discussing the banes and boons of living in the two cities. And it has left me with some surprising insights, which have actually managed to make a dent in my own steadfast beliefs.
There were four conversations with four people.
* One is a 45-year-old man who moved with home and hearth from Bangalore to Bombay (for two-and-half-years) and then to Calcutta.
He hates almost everything about Calcutta: The non-existent service at shops; horrendous traffic; the fact that his sons' classmates talk in Bengali outside class and don't listen to as much rock; the weather; the fact that drivers, carpenters, plumbers all have running stomachs at the same time...
* The second is a late-30s (maybe) man who has set up home and hearth in Bombay for the last few years after having lived in cities around the world.
He hates Bombay because people here are insular, largely uneducated (at least in things that really matter), can think of nothing apart from money (they watch the BSE ticker as though it was a World Cup match); that there is no park for his kid to play in; that travelling anywhere takes an hour-and-half each way...
* The third is a 33-year-old man who has set up home in Bombay, having lived in Calcutta and Madras.
He hates Bombay because it makes people less human in their thoughts and feelings; that 24-hour shops mean there are poor buggers returning home from unearthly hours at night; that Calcutta still has a soul no matter how dimly it still glows...
* The fourth is a 29-year-old woman looking to move to Bombay after having lived in Calcutta and London.
She loves Bombay as it lets people be; offers an amazing variety of food to eat, brands to buy, a career to follow, friends to hang out with; and problems that people face in Bombay are problems of every big city.
They all have different wants and look for them in the city they live in.
I am not sure which I swing at the moment. I guess I am yet to figure out what exactly my wants are. But yes, I am getting a little more objective about them, and a little less sentimental.
Thursday, 25 March 2010
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Wednesday, 3 March 2010
So, I have these exchanges about tweeting and status messages on Facebook. Two exchanges. Both mildly acrid. Not surprising.
It all began with my opinion that increasingly we - those who are on every form of 'networking' site available - seem to be 'connecting' with the whole wide world while, usually, blissfully ignoring the fellow right next to us. So, we know what our lost friends from school are drinking at a Saturday night party in Dusseldorf, but we can't remember the office peon's name.
There is also the issue of experiencing the moment. If I have taken the trouble to go on holiday - away from the crowd and all that - and am enjoying a quiet evening alone on the beach, WHY would I be letting the world in on the moment? Are we so busy 'sharing' that we are missing out on the experience? I believe we are.
After the second mildly acrid exchange, however, I realised a fundamental trait. There are those who talk because they have something to say, those who talk because they like talking and those who talk because they like the sound of their voice.
Only now, we talk less and type more.
It all began with my opinion that increasingly we - those who are on every form of 'networking' site available - seem to be 'connecting' with the whole wide world while, usually, blissfully ignoring the fellow right next to us. So, we know what our lost friends from school are drinking at a Saturday night party in Dusseldorf, but we can't remember the office peon's name.
There is also the issue of experiencing the moment. If I have taken the trouble to go on holiday - away from the crowd and all that - and am enjoying a quiet evening alone on the beach, WHY would I be letting the world in on the moment? Are we so busy 'sharing' that we are missing out on the experience? I believe we are.
After the second mildly acrid exchange, however, I realised a fundamental trait. There are those who talk because they have something to say, those who talk because they like talking and those who talk because they like the sound of their voice.
Only now, we talk less and type more.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Friday, 1 January 2010
Getting used to something is probably the best way of killing a bit of ourselves.
There is a difference between accepting something and getting used to something.
Accepting it is acknowledging its presence and maybe even permanence, even if it may be something we don't like or want. It may be a circumstance or a decision. It keeps pricking and prodding at us, but we live with it.
Getting used to something is like closing our eyes and making ourselves believe it's not there or will not continue to be there for long or, worse, we cannot do anything about it. And gradually the bit of us that would have gotten pricked and prodded does not feel the pricks and prods anymore. That bit of us goes numb and dies.
I don't have year-end regrets or new year plans. Largely because year-ends and new years mean nothing really, just a new calendar. But if there was one thought with which I chucked out the last calendar, it's with the realisation that I am bad at getting used to things.
And I like it that way.
There is a difference between accepting something and getting used to something.
Accepting it is acknowledging its presence and maybe even permanence, even if it may be something we don't like or want. It may be a circumstance or a decision. It keeps pricking and prodding at us, but we live with it.
Getting used to something is like closing our eyes and making ourselves believe it's not there or will not continue to be there for long or, worse, we cannot do anything about it. And gradually the bit of us that would have gotten pricked and prodded does not feel the pricks and prods anymore. That bit of us goes numb and dies.
I don't have year-end regrets or new year plans. Largely because year-ends and new years mean nothing really, just a new calendar. But if there was one thought with which I chucked out the last calendar, it's with the realisation that I am bad at getting used to things.
And I like it that way.
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