A numbness in the heart

Tears unshed, gritty eyes

The death of a dream and a wish

The death of a part that hung on to naivete tight

Tomorrow will, of course, be a new day

And reveal strength, or weakness

Another gauzy curtain pulled back

Waiting to see what lies on the other side

What beginning succeeds this end  

Lin'ing' Indian ishtyle

So, R and I went out for a cuppa coffee yesterday. The mater called and as usual, remembered a list of groceries we'd run out of which needed urgent replenishment. How we manage to find these black holes when thr is a bunch of groceries delivered to the house every other day is beyond me.

So ours not to question why, and R and I trooped dutifully to the Needs store downstairs. Picked up our stuff, and stood behind a couple of others in the queue for billing.

Just as I was about to step forward, this 20 something girl cuts through and dumps a bunch of doodh packets on the counter. Not by a flicker of the eye or a half smile of apology or the slightest tell tale color does she indicate any awareness of the fact that she's out of turn.

Of course R took it up, asked her what's her urgency- no response. I was feeling particularly mellow after a glass of iced tea and told her to let it go. We waited our turn, and the girl went on her way. Again, not a look or a nod or a blush.

Well, just another day in the life of a queue respecting Indian.

Its funny how we don't mind waiting for things (policy changes, better governance, delayed flights), its just that we prefer to do our waiting at the head of the line (let's face it, how many of us say 'queue' :)).

And nowhere is our line mentality more evident than at airport security checks. Since of course, boarding card in hand and 40 minutes to flight departure notwithstanding, the airline and its fathers r out to get us, and wuld love nothing more than to take off without us.
A recent sojourn at the airport was very early morning (6am flight) and consequently, the place was packed to the rafters. While standing in the queue to put our handbags for scanning, came across some interestingly inventive reasons for 'line jumping'.

Sample this- a young girl managed to smile pleadingly at the uncles in the line and dumped her bag, and then went and stood in the line for men! When someone pointed this out, she wrung her hands (very filmy!) And said, 'par ladies ki line kitni lambi hai!'. Er, yes my dear, clearly ur chosen superpower will be 'gender transformation'.

Another was a middle aged, balding guy who tried to go to the head of the class. And of course the well of kindness towards our own gender has never been dug, so the line summarily protested. At this point he turns arnd and says, 'Arre, iske baad main agle counter wali line se personal check karwa lunga, aapke aage nahi khada rahunga'. How very democratic of u- jump one queue to dump ur handbag and another to get urself through, we need more such impartial distributors of personal largesse in the country!

Not to mention the ruthlessness with which ppl try to get onto the airline coach. Since airlines are known to take off (just to show they can, of course) empty while busloads of passengers watch on.

But my personal 'take the cake' award goes to this mother daughter duo who ensured they were the first ones on the flight (boarded from the front for seats in the 23rd or so row) and then nudged all of us boarding from the rear out of their ways. Sigh. So what if seat numbers r printed on the boarding pass. Jiski gathri usiki seat!

JLT

Its been so long since I put pen to paper, or, literally, fingers to keyboard, and just put down what I felt like….not mindful of what it would read like, not caring where it would go….for once, in a busy, topsy turvy, always on a stage life, not mindful of what will others think….

Thank you S, for sending me this link http://themadmomma.wordpress.com….i have been reading stories put up by this very talented wordsmith all day at work, and there is an odd glow of happiness that just surprised me…..

Feeling the peace and quiet, the simple self absorption, that a good story honestly told gives….S had us read Maya Angelou’s autobiography last fortnight, and that was another sublime experience….i found myself grasped firmly by my imagination, and gently taken along for a stroll through her memory lane….

And I am beginning to realize why I’ve been struggling with putting pen to paper….that words which earlier, wouldn’t sit still like butterflies and would insist on being immortalized on paper, have now dried up….why the soul that was always quiet, confident and sure, has now turned its back on me….

Any form of self expression needs honesty, the ability to be true at least to oneself if not to others…..and somewhere along the line, I stopped talking to myself….honestly or otherwise….

Somewhere in the whole plethora of personas we put on to get through the days, do we start to let these various other people become us, instead of putting a bit of ourselves in them? Is it so important to win….so important to present ourselves the way others want to see us….so important to speak the language the world trades in, even if its alien…..

So important to ask a question I always knew the answer to….yet lost the key to where I locked it up….

aaarrrggggghhhhhhh!

so so sooooooo need to vent!!

so, you know how any Indian girl of a certain age is not left alone and has to go through the 'great arranged marriage circus', right?

well, so has been the case with me for a while now....and of late, I decided to take a more serious interest in the whole business, and see if I can find someone I liked enough....

now, the mother decided that this 2nd generation firang Indian, apparently born and brought up in UK, was the right match, and that I should talk to him.....

being the dutiful daughter that I am, I obliged!

he seemed to earn well, look good, and the assumption was that an Indian male, born and brought up abroad, would be more liberal minded and less controlling etc than the average indian male

well, hence proven tht u can take the Indian out of India, but you cant take India out of the Indian.....

So after a couple of weeks of trying hard to decipher his very un-British and in fact, very South European accent (and getting a clear of course not! and no further explanation when I ask him about it!), getting random calls at the workplace in the middle of the day (after having specified that I am not available before 8 in the evenings), getting no response to my mails and calls, and getting directed to his matrimonial profile when asking him even a slightly specific question (what is ur engineering specialty- your profile says non-IT only; check my profile), getting vague, there-there answers to important questions (why do you want an Indian wife, you've never even been to India; my parents are Indian) and generally getting a frustrating roundabout with a seems-like-a-schizophrenic....I decide to end things, very politely and properly....

and i get a whole backlash of the 'hell hath no venom....' variety!!

sheesh!!

his ego beats the hell out of that of the average Indian male.

I get labelled 'career minded' and having the 'wrong priorities' and doing 'time pass' and a whole lot of crap about not using matrimonial sites blah blah blah.....

i would have smashed his brains out with my career minded laptop if he had been around.....no wonder he has to look to India for a bride....with such retro thinking, he must feel that only the Indian women of lore would be the right match!.....

 

Gng back to Pune after Diwali. And in the midst of all the missing-home angst, the anticipatory Monday morning blues and the worry abt the potential killer traffic build up en route from Mumbai to Pune, the passing scenery happens to catch my eye.

Not tht thrz anythng photogenic abt Mumbai at the best of times. Even a confirmed Mumbai bhakt like me can't self deceive to that extent.

But passing by the chawls facing the express highway nr Kalanagar, I see row after row of doors with identical lanterns blinking outside their doors. Cross some 5-6 such complexes bfore I hit the red lights, and the shape, size, color of the lantern changes. That's it.

All different chawl complexes have the lanterns placed across, in nr perfect symmetry. A sight so unexpected, and welcome, tht it brings a smile to my face. I imagine their manager/residents society head/bunch of enthu kids gng door to door collecting money, opinions and manpower for the task. And I wonder whether the spirit of a festival isn't more than just celebrating it with family and friends.

Somehow, neighbors have ceased to be the support group they've been always to my mind. Or is it tht affluence and a busy life comes at the cost of simple everyday non transactional human contact. Pata nahi.

All I know is tht it triggered a bout of admiration and maybe a touch of envy.

On to more frivolous thoughts, and a tiresome journey :)

Woke up to the angry pelts on the windows and AC at 5…..and for a minute thought it was an earthquake, or something bad enough! Then the sleep receded and I realized it was a summer shower…..get soooo many of those in Delhi…..
Whenever the temperature gets a few degrees above bearable, a mini storm, locally known as “aneri” (think it’s the Punju pronunciation of “andheri”) arrives…..coats everything in a couple of centimeters of dirt and lowers the temperature to a much more bearable level!.....today it was followed by a good 30-45 minutes of rain…..gorgeous gorgeous!!!
Not just me, it woke up the entire house….papa was up 15 minutes after me…..then him being him, he decided to go and wake mummy to join in the free nature show…..and with a piping hot cup of tea, it was as close to heaven as one can get on earth :)……so, great start to the day
Not piling up too many expectations though…..the cat is on the warpath….and as anyone who’s ever dealt with an animal knows, wildcats on warpaths are to be avoided ;))….since I cant avoid….will cross my fingers and wait for this storm to pass as well…..!

So, let me do a quick chat up about my trip to Hrishikesh couple of weeks back……bunch of people from work decided to try out the famed water rafting do at Hrishikesh…..and I, in keeping with my resolve of trying to find all possible good in Delhi, joined in…..plus any kind of water activity is always fun…..so was keen to try it out….
So, three female colleagues and one male colleague set out on a Friday afty arnd 4…..the decision being to drive down the 250 odd kms to Haridwar and from there onwards another 40 to Hrishikesh…..one wuld have thought a comfy 5-6 hours should do it……but thanks to all the “work” put in by the govt on the roads in this part, took us close to 8-9 hours each way…..painful!!....
So travelling with North Indians has its own adventures…..one of them being their aversion to any kind of slow, soulful music…..very bhangra, dha-dha-dha taste in music this…..all the never-heard-before-but-stored-for-party-sharty songs on my ipod came to the rescue…..good fun singing along…..:)
Reached Hrishikesh tired, exhausted and at 11-ish…..after having made frantic phone calls to the hotel (stayed at the ISKCON hotel, clean, reasonable and good food, more on tht later) to ensure tht the restaurant didn’t close before we landed up…..had dinner…..and then trooped straight up to bed for our forty winks…..literally forty, when a good night’s sleep for me is eighty odd winks :)…..after much democratic debate, we’d decided to leave the hotel at 7 am sharp…..so of course it was more like 8 by the time we finally set forth…..
River rafting adventures in next part…..adieus :)

An eventful fortnight’s fag end…..life in marketing sometimes feels like a whirlwind between one planning cycle and the next…..so, in spite of the loads of backlog on my plate, am goofing off a bit today….and mulling over random stuff

For example, how the English language has changed in my lifetime…..admittedly I am older today than I would’ve ever imagined, still am not THAT old……!
Distinctly remember a time when odor was spelt with a “u”; bling was a recognized word, and omg and lol weren’t even invented yet!! Playing a harmless game of wordtwist is like playing a game of memory instead now….have to constantly remember that some words are over and done with…..phew…..

The next point of mulling is the question of buying a kindle…..true to my Indian heritage and Gujju upbringing, am making a value-for-money case in my head for a product that every cell in my body knows is only an excuse for indulgence :)…..so have got to the point where I am doing a price comparison between the items on my wishlist on flipkart and their ebook versions on kindle store on amazon…..so far, let me tell u, there aint no case for the kindle…..most sub Rs 300/- price point books are between $ 8 to 15 on amazon…..have to dig harder and think more creatively and resourcefully now :)….

Next, have got diverted to “weight”-ier issues…..a bunch of women at the workplace have gotten together…..and as is the case when a bunch of women get together anywhere, the conversation veers sooner rather than later to “motapa”…...think it’s a bit more rampant as a concern here in Delhi……(no, am not gonna start on my eternal rant of this city’s obsession with appearances)…..so anyway, apparently a group deal works when it comes to losing weight…..so the broad idea is tht we all set weight loss targets for ourselves, and deposit money in a pool…..so the one with the max loss gets something….on paper it’s a good incentive scheme…..but I think it doesn’t account for the inherent female disposition…..and a lot of angst has already started to set in…..with one person losing weight and the other not…..lets see whether this “fund” lasts till the end of the month ;))

Too many shallow concerns on my mind today :)…..no time, energy or inclination for deep thought and feeling…..would rather dream about a whole night’s sleep (er, my definition of whole night is 9pm to 6am :))…..or finding the perfect ear rings for a dream saree…...or my upcoming weekend trip to dharamsala……or a plate of piping hot kala jamuns with deliciously cold rabri…..(yes, am in the weight group in spite of the cynic in me :D)……