Looking Before and After

We’ve all been the age when present actions and long and short-term consequences do not seem to have a direct correlation. Try convincing a six-year old that because she’s going to bed without brushing her teeth tonight, in a few years her tooth will break off and she’ll pay a fortune to have it fixed in an emergency. Life doesn’t work that way when you’re a kid.

We’ll all, well many of us, will be the age when our mental playlist is an endless loop of things that should have been, decisions we ought to have made differently, and choices we would have made had we known better… If I had a penny for every time I hear people say “I didn’t know better then,” I’d have paid off that dentist’s bill without feeling a pinch!

And then there’s the difficult bit. The being 30 (ok 30+) and making decisions… the really big ones… knowing that there will be consequences, and knowing that when you’re blaming you past self for your bungled up life tomorrow, you’re very likely to remember that you knew full well what you’re getting into. You could not have seen into the future, but you could have made some very good guesses.

Dear past self: I’m glad you had some fun, and it wouldn’t have hurt to have had a little less of it. But it’s ok, you didn’t know better.

Dear future self: YOU knew better all along. Stop that whining.

Ciao Venezia!

About 50 tourists crowded around the bus door, trying to get a seat on the bus for the ride from the airport into town. The driver told them the ticket-punching machine on the bus was broken, so they needed to use the one at the bus stop. After punching two tickets, the other machine also sputtered and died. Like lost pigeons, they turned their heads back to the driver with blank expressions. He shrugged, walked up to the machine on the bus stop, gave it five tight slaps and a good shaking, dislodged about a gazillion bits of paper from it, and then took one passenger’s ticket and punched it successfully.

Italy. India. Same difference.

Deewar pe tangi hai gali kaafiron ke sheher ki

2012: A Love Story

They sat side by the side on the couch near the window, reading their books under the warm, fake sunlight of the powerful halogen bulb they had bought along with a lamp Ikea decided to call “Not” (usage: The Sun is shining…Not!)
Her toes tucked under his leg, his foot resting on the ugliest coffee table in the universe, and only the intermittent sound of flipping pages breaking the silence of their comfortable companionship…
Suddenly, his heart racing, he put down his book, turned to her, put her book down as well, and removed her spectacles. Unaccustomed to romantic outbursts, she waited with bated breath for his next move.
“Multiply 17 by 24” he said, a manic excitement in his voice. “Do it in your head!”
Now THIS was the kind of romance she had come to expect after five years of marriage. She started crunching the numbers in her head. He gazed into her eyes with the passion of either a psychopath or a scientist, or perhaps both.
“It’s TRUE! Your pupils! They’re dilating when you’re straining your brain!” he shrieked, pointing at the book.
She had to see it for herself, of course. So off came his spectacles, 15 was multiplied by 27 in his head, and his pupils dilated to her satisfaction.
With their spectacles back on, they resumed their reading, and lived in considerable happiness for a fair number of days in the future.

Please collect your belongings from Belt Number 13

The big black bag
has my husband’s name
on a blue tag

The small blue case
has his parents’ address
on its face

The brown one unlocks
with the address
where I grew up in frocks

Every now then we do this little dance
Going home to home, and back home
For the benefit of KLM and Air France

The carousel goes round and round
Till my luggage, and I, are found

Alvida 2011

2011, you’ve been very mean to a whole lot of people, but you’ve been a darling to me, and I’m sending you off with a smile! You took me to Paris and Rome, London and Prague, and dozens of other new and wonderful places, you swept me into an amazing new life in the cutest little house by the river, you put a bicycle under my bum and wore out my shoes with all the walking you let me do!

More than anything, you sat me down and taught me all the things I am not, and forced me to confront the facts and deal with them. You gave me hours and hours to come to terms with myself, and though I used many of them to watch TV series and movies and read books, I think we made some major progress!

Oy yaar 2011! You made the husband start eating eggs, and have got me living off the poor guy’s salary while he feels a wee bit sad about the discomfort I feel in doing so! Tu pehle kyun nahin aaya 2011? Anyway, now please do proper knowledge transfer to 2012 about how to treat me. Thanks. Have fun wherever past years go to rest, and don't believe anything 2004 says about me.

Take Two

Here’s a thought experiment:
If you could be ANY TWO of three things: healthy, wealthy and wise, which would you choose and why? The one you choose not to have will not become available to you via the presence of the other two: for instance, as a wise, healthy person you will not find a smart way to make money. Also, the one you don’t choose cannot take away the ones you HAVE. If you choose to be a rich but unhealthy person, your medical bills won’t ruin you financially.
So think about it and choose two and tell me why you chose them.
My choices would be to be healthy and wealthy. My simple reason: If I ignore health, as a wise and wealthy person, I’ll wish I had the ability to do something with my assets, and I’d always have a nagging sadness at the back of my mind. As a healthy and wise person, the sorrow would be a little less, but whenever I’d see a financial roadblock on my path to further wisdom and health, I’d be irritated. As a rich and healthy fool, I wouldn’t have the wisdom to miss wisdom, and if I saw a wise person who was either sick or poor, I’d toss my fabulous hair, pull my Burberry coat a little closer and say: “Poor geek!”
P.S: You’d think there would be a great deal of stigma attached to NOT choosing wisdom. You’d be right. However, I won’t judge you, I promise. I already traded my sound judgment for hotness and an apartment in London.

Out Of The Blue(s)

I’ve been missing from the blog for a very long time, and with good reason too. Since this is a navel-gazing forum for the most part, I shall now explain why. You are free to escape at any time. Just look for the fluorescent strips along the floor and they will guide you to the nearest exit (which may be behind you.)

So the reason I’ve been away is that I’ve had a considerably tough time adapting to my new life. It’s not homesickness, it’s mostly the horrifying Dutch job market, and the realization that there is very likely no place for a person of my ethnicity and professional background here in the current economic scenario. It has been very difficult to accept that I shall not be conventionally employed for the foreseeable future, that I will have to choose between travelling on a whim and taking expensive Dutch lessons, and that even if I learn Dutch, it will be time to leave before I can reach a level of proficiency that enables me to put it to use gainfully. All this left me quite sad, my self-confidence shattered to bits (and not only because my neighbors used to ask me in the lift if I was a cleaning lady when we first moved in,) and it did not help that my only friend was a cat who liked to rub her face on my leather shoes.

I did not know I was such a people person. My mother thinks I permanently have a cold, because I clear my throat each time I start speaking to her on chat. That’s because my voice kind of goes away because of not having been used for the last six hours, and I have to cough it back into existence! Those who know me will vouch for my constant jabbering and I kind of miss my nightly jaw pain from spewing nonstop nonsense. This silence is a huge change, and has taken some getting used to.

However, as fog envelops my new home, the internal fog has lifted. I have made peace with my new life, and now I have a routine that fills my day with purpose and fun. And on this difficult journey, I have had loads of help from people who I must thank for being there. So here goes:

1. The husband: Poor guy, for months he has come home battered from the pressures of a new job to a high-strung, agitated woman who is all set to unleash her frustration and verbal diarrhea on him. His patience has ensured that we shall be celebrating another wedding anniversary soon.
2. My office: I was surprised that the boyfriend/fiancé/husband had been at the same job for six-seven years when we met, and since then have been constantly messing with his head to make him keep changing jobs and evolving. At the same time, this September I complete 5 years of association with MY workplace, which continues to indulge me and my insanity. A big thanks to my boss and colleagues who fill my days with work and fun and gossip, and bank account with pocket money even though I am thousands of kilometres away.
3. My family: They all have lifestyles that make me exhausted at their very thought, but they still take time out to sit before my stupid face for an hour on Google video chat to make me feel that they are right there (and also glad that they are not actually right there. Evil smirk.)
4. The Internet: I have a noisy office environment all day in my soundproof house. Marathon sitcom streaming allows me to work among some of the wittiest fake people in the world. It feels like “I Am Legend” when I reach the end of a series, but then I just get reassigned to another team.
5. Ramkali: My tiny foldable second-hand cycle with one handbrake has gone from being a pain the arse (literally) to my almost-daily companion on long and pretty rides around the suburbs. She makes me feel I have wings, she gives me the exercise that really does improve one’s mood as the experts claim, and she does not care where I’m from and what language I speak. For all that, I love her, and thank her.

P.S.: I am not alone in my misery. Wise Ishani has more info here.

Home is where the dhaniya patta is

Train of thought green-flagged by this:

Can’t blame Fate, really. It’s almost always been my bright idea to hop off the straight path and move bag and baggage to new places and new experiences. I remember how, on my first stint away from home (which was already the fifth bricks-and-mortar-thing I called home), I used to lie in bed, close my eyes, and try to recall each and every minor detail of the house. Once it took me a minute to remember our car’s registration number, and that shocked me! This oh-so-long adventure was just for three months, but created in my mind a (very possibly misguided) Home-Life dichotomy, and when the time came to make decisions, I regularly started choosing Life over Home. Many comic attempts were made to move to other cities, and a few of them actually succeeded. This meant a new home every few months, with not much motivation (and frankly never too many resources) to convert bare flats and rooms into tastefully decorated residences. With marriage came further confusion, and the hometown itself has now split into two, and perhaps it is my eternal pessimism that my spirit grates and perishes on the long road between my two homes instead of finding solace and belonging in the two sets of loving arms at each end…
I would be homesick if I knew which home to be sick about. I wistfully remember the entire floor I had to myself for a while in my childhood home, the (scandalous!) unisex hostel in Ahmedabad, the balcony in Pune that opened onto an endless stretch of treetops, the riverside hostel in London, and the sunsets through the palm fronds in my Bangalore home, but leaving each one of them has enriched my life, so I don’t really wish myself back there. (People-sickness is another matter altogether! I can’t do without my gang but I don’t really feel I have to do without them thanks to my superfast Internet connection!)
If I really look deep into my obviously-not-red-enough heart, I now carry my home with me. Right now, home is a little flat by the fake river in the tiny town that loves dope, and as long as the Turkish dry fruit seller brings me coriander leaves every Wednesday, and the darling husband flashes his million dollar smile over the sorry can-of-beans rajma chawal I garnish with the coriander, I am home, and not sick at all.

/Hiatus

After dragging my lard across 9 kilometres on a tiny bicycle, I had reached breaking point by the time we got home this evening. As I parked the cycle, I realized the tyres were low on air: no wonder the ride had felt twice as long. With heads swimming, knees threatening to give way and shirts sticking to our backs, we decided to fetch groceries before we went home, because there was no way we’d ever make it back out of the house tonight. The road swayed a bit in front of my eyes as I walked, and when the husband decided to stop and take a picture of the sunset, I told him I’d continue “dragging my corpse” further down the road slowly, and he could catch up easily when he was done.

“Excuse me?” a voice rang out cheerfully behind me about a minute later. I turned to see a boy of about 20 in a manual wheelchair. “Can you please help me over the bridge?” he asked. The bridge is our a tiny but steep connection to mainland Amsterdam, and I often play the “cross the bridge in under 50 steps” game, making big leaps to meet my target. “Sure,” I said, and began pushing his chair. We discussed India, Morocco and our lovely neighborhood, and within moments this cheerful boy had dragged my corpse halfway across the bridge, and all my tiredness and self-pity out of my system. He thanked me and carried on alone, and I caught the rest of the sunset from the top of the bridge, waiting for my sweetheart photographer to catch up…

Stereotypically Yours

When we tell people in the Netherlands what brings us to their country, the standard reaction is a smirk, and the statement (sometimes preceded with an apology for the generalization) that they should have guessed! Indians in the West means IT and computer programming!

This used to rile me up but I had nowhere to take my impotent rage. Just as I imagine Dutch babies being born on bicycles, they probably imagine bespectacled Indian babies being born tapping away furiously on keyboards. While I hope both images are making you smile like they’re making me, it’s all wrong, wrong, wrong!

I’ve been thinking about it, and from a purely sociological perspective, one can imagine why the average Indian the West encounters is an IT person. Remember our lives 15-20 years ago? Between our family backgrounds, our religions and communities, our role model relatives, peer pressure, our still limited options, and the absence of an international perspective in our daily lives, life for us was going pretty much in directions determined by external forces. Then the computer (even without the Internet) came in and changed the rules of the game. Costing more than they do today, they probably never made it to most homes, but at reasonable prices, they became accessible to most urban teenagers in “training centres”. Here was a new thing that parents who wanted kids to be 100% studious could not say no to. No caste or community could lay claim to or criticize this machine. Rudimentary English skills could get you into this hobby/profession. “Accomplished” Uncles and Aunties could not say whether this was better or worse than being the doctors, engineers and architects that they were.

One machine came and lifted an entire generation out of a spider’s web of tradition and expectation, and did not discriminate based on Daddy’s salary, Mummy’s hopes, your academic grades (based on irrelevant-to-life syllabi) or your geographical location. For anyone who wanted to be an individual, West-style, the computer was a passport. And many used it. And aren’t we glad they did?

It’s these escapees you see programming computers and creating apps in your country, O cycle junkies. The funny thing, though, is that the spider’s web has now comfortably woven itself around the computer. All the relatives now want you to be a “computer engineer” and “status families” are willing to pay huge dowries for geeks. However, it’s still something anyone can work towards, and that’s why the next Indian you will meet at Schiphol, coming in with his suitcase full of Indian spices and a pressure cooker (C’mon! THAT isn’t about to change anytime soon!), is going to be a computer programmer.

P.S.: I am not a computer programmer, and you won’t give me a job. That is another reason why you don’t see more people like me, and I have a feeling you’re happy about that. Now sell me your bike at half price a.u.b. Dank u wel.

11 Benefits of Unemployment

After going on a not-so-joyous joyride up and down the sinusoidal curve of dealing with unemployment (rejection, reapplication, stern rejection, depression, ah chuck it!), I am pleased to report that I have figured out a bunch of advantages that my situation allows me, and am making the most of it. If you are huffing and puffing on the job hunt treadmill, this post will give you reassurance. If you are approaching a coronary in your hamster-wheel of a job, this post will make you insanely jealous. So, without further ado, the bright side of joblessness:

1. Look at your sofa. Look how the sun’s rays caress it gently. Now lie down upon it. See how you can stretch you entire Indian height on it easily. Now hug the cushion and take a nap. When you wake up 20 minutes or 2 hours later, life will still be the same, except it will look nicer!

2. Remember your workday morning routine. Do you ever remember the back of your knees ever being dry? Whether it is the hasty dressing after a morning shower or the running about, or just the sitting in a chair all day, this crucial part of your body suffers! Now each time you bathe, pat dry the underside of the knees and sun-dry completely before puling on sweatpants!

3. Take your cycle out of the garage. At 2:30pm, your only enemy on the road is UPS trucks. Get fake confidence in your cycling abilities. Fake confidence begets real confidence. You could never get that in rush hour!

4. Watch 10 episodes of a sitcom in a row. Ok, that just makes you a loser. But you know it’s fun, and it’s the one item on this list that you might end up doing, so I’ll leave it in…

5. Earn some good karma. Go to the railway station, where hapless tourists from across the world are seconds away from missing trains, or are walking confidently in the wrong direction. Startle them by offering them help. You’ll get more smiles in a day than your colleagues give you in a month!

6. Throw the clothes iron away. Pack away your stupid shirts and their collars that are limp enough to not be presentable, but not too limp to bend into grotesque shapes! Buy some nice wash and wear clothes, and wash and wear them all the time.

7. Experiment in the kitchen. Do not have goat cheese with sundried tomato bread, or put red cabbage on nachos to make them healthy. There’s creative and there’s stupid. Remember the difference.

8. Did I mention naps already? Oh yes, the ones on the sofa. Smile to yourself as you make your bed in the morning. Soon enough, you’ll be back for a nap, or to watch sitcoms and eat cabbage nachos propped up by pillows. Try doing that at work, you employed smugmugs!

9. Go for walks! We all know that every branch of every chain store has the same stuff at the same price, but the thrill of discovering it for yourself is something else.

10. Plan holidays! Did you know that well-planned trips thought out thoroughly in advance are about 3-4 bucks cheaper than impromptu ones? And the stress of planning them makes them all the more welcome!

11. And finally, get your lazy ass to send out job applications daily, and do all the freelance work you get! This blasted honeymoon is not going to last forever! Do something! How come everyone else can find a job but not you! Shove that fancy degree where the sun don’t shine! Why did you not become a computer programmer? What’s this wishywashy thing you call a resume? Maybe showing up at some office with a WILL WORK FOR TRAIN TICKET placard will get you somewhere?? Ok breathe…breathe…

Wheee!

Everyone learns cycling as a little kid. If you grow to be a chronological adult before you can ride, you still transform into a wide-eyed kiddo the moment you can balance and pedal at the same time, for the very first time! This past month, I've stood on the pavement of the lane near our house and bent from side to side in automatic imitation of my wobbly darling on his first ever bike as he tumbled down the slope going this way and that. After about a dozen such sessions, something clicked yesterday, and as he turned back to beam at me after his first successful 10-metre stretch, he looked like a 7-year-old boy.

Here's his account of the adventure.

Wednesday Night Stream of Semi-Consciousness

Uh oh where am I? Whose house is this? Well it is the landlord’s of course but now it is quite ours in the small and bare way that houses seem to become ours. And out the window is more water than a girl from the DDA flats has ever seen before. Remember when the tank was on the third floor and mom had to climb up a bamboo ladder to see that monkeys had not made off with the lid?

Sofas are nice. Never really had one ever before this. The coffee table continues to be ugly but it’s one of the few things made of real wood, unlike the Ikea activity that’s just collapsing like a punctured balloon if struck hard! The oven is big and is tempting me to start baking, but if I make a cake or a batch of cookies, then we’ll just have to eat it all ourselves won’t we? That girl in the student residence in London gave us such nice brownies… but I can’t imagine sharing a kitchen with anyone ever again! Except with the husband, who’s gone from not eating eggs to serving them sunny side up with a flourish that would impress Gordon Ramsay, even though that dude is usually just being an ass on TV on the rare days when we watch the TV because when you’re on the sofa in front of the TV, it’s much nicer to turn your head just a little bit and see all the water outside the window…the water I wish I had for long baths when I was a kid. It’s nice, this house. The first time that a house is OURS, even though funny mail comes into the letterbox, and someone else’s name shows up when you punch the number in the keypad at the entrance.

Yes. I think I will bake something nice in this nice house.

Three Evenings in Paris!

Just back from a three-day trip to Paris, and it’s quite pointless to say “Paris is lovely” or “Paris is beautiful,” because Paris is Paris, and that is that. It is quite pointless for me to try and write a post about it.

Somewhere between climbing up the steps of the Eiffel Tower, blowing kisses to Mona Lisa at the Louvre and Sarkozy Dada at the Bastille Day Parade, the city and its friendly (yes!) people made me vow to myself to visit as often as I can.

If you’re a virtual tourist reading this post, I’ll put you in the best hands I know. If you want to fall in love with Paris, just click here.

Trainwrecked!

Yesterday, we went on 6 train rides and spent the day in Brugge, sleeping on some lovely grass, eating some pointless nougat, clicking some beautiful buildings, and lamenting the presence of the bazillion or so tourists (oh the hypocrisy!)

But this post is about train ride number 6, between Antwerp and Amsterdam, between 9 and 11 at night. At one of the stops on the way, two girls got on, took their seats, switched on music on their phone loudspeakers, pulled out packs of food, popped open cans of aerated beverages, and started talking, singing and burping(!) quite loudly. Everyone on the train seemed exhausted, at their wits’ end, and just wanting to go home and crash. Some people tried to politely remind the girls that there were other people on the train, but the girls yelled “Sorry? Sorry” loudly with one hand cockily placed behind the ear, pleading deafness. The protestors sat back in their seats murmuring and shooting stern glances in impotent rage. The girls laughed it off and went back to singing and burping.

The husband, who had aged about 10 years since the morning, what with chattering banking interns from Mumbai discussing inter-caste marriages, British schoolgirls playing tippy-tippy-tap and other such high-pitched noises that had shaken his inner peace, was at breaking point with these girls, who were sitting right next to him (God, I like your sense of humor dude!). I am almost always completely psyched about being on a train here, so I was having a ball observing them, and the discomfort they were causing. Sure they were a nuisance and someone should have thrown them out of the (moving) train, but they were two young girls, travelling alone at night on a train, having the time of their (probably sad) lives, and they were pulling it off in style! Could this have happened in a country like India? No chance! What’s the probability two dudes could be and would be pulling this off on a train ride on Saturday night? Very high!

As they got off the train, the girls smiled at all the people who had stared and complained. From the platform, they knocked loudly at a window, and waved goodbye with idiotic grins on their faces. The guy next to the window angrily flipped the bird, but that just made them (and me) laugh even more! Sure their food packets, abandoned on the seat, gave off whiffs from hell for a good hour after they were gone, but as I left the train, I found myself humming the corny song that played on their phones.

Psyche ill

Everybody has a cycle in Amsterdam. Some people even have a tiny cycle that carries their big cycle. Many people who have not yet learnt how to walk or talk have a cycle. I am almost certain most babies emerge from their mothers’ wombs pedaling away on a bicycle. “Push Mevrow Push!” “Head! 2 arms! 2 legs! 2 wheels! It’s a perfect baby!”

There are dedicated lanes, bike shops, bike rentals, bike repair, bike everything except bike classes everywhere you look. So how long can you resist getting onto a bike? Just because you never got beyond balancing yourself on two wheels is not a good enough excuse to walk about everywhere or use public transport, is it?

And that’s why I went bike hunting last week. Almost fell off about 10 bikes in various shops in various cities, and realized that there were probably 2 or 3 bikes in this whole country that I could successfully ride: low seat (at five feet four, I can barely see the top of the heads of Dutch bicycle-riding toddlers), hand brakes (with biking, like with speaking, I cannot stop once I start), and pedals that freely move backwards so that I can take the Vastu-approved stance (right leg up) for propelling my bulk into forward motion without STEC (Skull-To-Earth-Contact).

One of these 2 or 3 bikes awaited me at a second-hand bike store this Saturday! It stood alone alone in a corner, and the token cobweb to denote age and neglect, the hasty and clumsy coat of silver paint to denote its potential stolen status, and the smile on its face as soon as it saw me (or so I’d like to think) sealed the deal. All that was left was to take it for a test ride, and as soon as I dragged it to a quiet lane, sat down and started pedaling, the seat began to sink down (just like office chairs do, when you’re yelling angrily in a meeting). How many of you cousins of Lance Armstrong can claim to have ridden a bicycle with a rapidly sinking seat? I did not fall, and if a cycle can be evil and still safe, that cycle was made for me! Or more likely, it was stolen from someone, painted crudely, and decorated with a cobweb for me.

I paid an unreasonably high amount to the shopkeeper and went cycling in a park. Then on a semi-busy road. And since then, I’ve been practicing in an open space near my house. I’m getting so good at it that today I accidentally rode it with the front wheel turned 180 degrees and the brakes facing me! And I still did not fall! Is this cycle great or what?

It would be childish and immature to name the cycle, so I thought a lot about it, and I cannot decide between Masakkali (mah-cycle-y) and Dogmatix (because the tiny cycle and I look like Dogmatix and Obelix going for a walk).

Wish us luck! And remind me to buy liability insurance. Using the brakes is not on my list of things to learn till next week!