Rollercoaster Rides

My bus trips to Mumbai are usually quite eventful: either I end up getting lost, or I get into the wrong bus or I meet interesting people. Somehow, when you are always looking for stories, you usually get them, or may be you are more aware of your surroundings, you are more watchful so that you don’t miss out on any new experience.

Like this time, first I got thrown out of the bus for bargaining for 50 bucks and I am so totally shameful that I quite enjoyed the humiliation. At times you can sacrifice self-respect for the sake of money, and right now, 50 bucks is a lot of money…

Then while returning I had the opportunity to share my seat with a firang from Israel, who looked straight out of the Ten Commandments movie, except that he wore floaters and shorts. He was relieved that I spoke English and the conversation began with basic queries like how long it will take us to reach Pune, where should he get down to go to KP, whether the bus will stop in between and so on and so forth. I learnt that he lived alone in Tel Aviv, that he made a career out of spirituality and stress management, that he had traveled all over the world- USA, Britain, Greece, South-East Asia and this was his third trip to India in the last 10 years and that India fascinated him (but of course). He was in Pune for spiritual reasons- he spoke of Oshe, Sri Sri Ravishankar, different meditation techniques, Art of Living and all that jazz. I was way out of depth: I mean the 5 day Art of Living workshop which was compulsory in the 1st semester was all I knew about spirituality, so obviously, I listened to him with rapturous attention. It amused me that while he didn’t even bother to ask my name, it did not stop him from asking extremely personal questions- how old I was (I don’t know why I deducted one year from my actual age; I think it’s just a woman thing…), which religion I followed, whether I was married, what I did for a living, where I came from. I realized that he was trying to learn about the Indian culture more than about me per se, so I gave him measured answers. I wasn’t exactly the best representative of Indian culture! When he asked me if I had boyfriends, if I was allowed to date outside my religion or caste, if I had the luxury to choose my own life partner, I replied that while for me religion or caste wasn’t an important parameter, it may be quite a significant issue for others, that it was essentially a personal choice. He was pleasantly surprised that in college we studied together with boys, that we hung around all the time, that even though I was a Hindu, I had Muslim friends. He admitted that he had assumed Indians were far more conservative than the West and I was quick to assure him that India was too big a country to fit into any sweeping generalization. We talked about the security concerns, the recent blasts in Delhi, the constant squabble between Israel and Palestine and at the end of the two hours, I realized that while we came from completely different backgrounds, at some level we were all similar: innocent citizens tired of being victims!

Unbearable Lightness of Being...

So there is this thing with human beings: they want to conform, they want to be accepted, to be looked up to, to be admired, to be somebody! Yeah, even I want to be somebody, but then again, who?

When I was growing up, I wanted to be like Portia: beautiful, smart, courageous…
In my teen years, I wanted to be like Barkha Dutt: talented, articulate, courageous…
In school, I wanted to be like our Literature professor: beautiful, articulate, imaginative…
Then I wanted to be like our head girl: tall, slim, with straight hair, always chased by guys…
Then when I became the head girl, I still wanted to be tall, slim and popular…
Then I wanted to be like Arundhati Ray: intellectual, activist, global citizen…
In college, I wanted to be like the hip Bombay girls: body piercings, tattoos, anklets, hoops, frayed jeans, complete with that whole “cool” look…
While working I wanted to be like this senior manager: young, classy, Ivy-league educated, aggressive, fiercely independent…
Here, in my 1st year I wanted to be like one of our professors- let’s call her PK…

And of course, on TV, I didn’t have any dearth of role models- Rachael Green, Ally Mcbeal, Carrie Bradshaw, Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das or Konkona Sensharma…

Then I noticed a pattern in all these women: they had to be tall, slim, cool, smart and independent, i.e. all the things I am not! I had spent all these years wanting to be somebody, somebody other than me, but hey, now I realize that I make a pretty decent job of being ME…yes, I can’t imagine a little girl who looks up to me and says, “Some day I want to be like Shimonti”, but then again I will live with it because I would rather be comfortable in my own skin, than struggle in somebody else’s…

Wait for it...

Ok, so three of the top five firms of The Wall Street have collapsed, my brother is struggling in one of the remaining two, stranded in Hong Kong, wondering if he will be next, my dad is worried sick about the impact of the global financial meltdown on the Indian markets and how it will affect his company’s rights issue, and all the economists of all the papers are crying themselves hoarse and deriving a perverse pleasure in this turmoil, as the job market is suddenly flooded by CVs of hotshot ex-Investment bankers. While all of us take refuge in discussing this gloomy state of affairs, we find safety in numbers, in the comfort of knowing that all of us are in it together. With the placement season knocking on the doors, it’s a nerve-wracking situation, not knowing what’s in store for us, and suddenly the focus has shifted from negotiating for better profiles and higher salaries to just getting placed. It’s kind of depressing and I have found a new way to deal with it: the answer to my prayers is, wait for it,… “How I met your mother”!

For the uninitiated, it’s the new obsession that’s doing the rounds in our campus, the FRIENDS of this decade which revolves around the lives of five very different people- Lily and Marshall, the eternal couple, eternally joined at the hip; the romantic Ted who is every girl’s hero and the Canadian beauty, Robin, who, in spite of her chemistry with Ted can’t seem to make it work; and of course there is the legendary Barney, the charming womanizer whom you would just love to hate… Neil Patrick Harris in the role is simply AWESOME!! I loved him as the teenaged Doogie Howser, and I still love him in his new avatar. I have always been a hardcore FRIENDS loyalist, no loyalist is a mild term, I mean I am obsessed with FRIENDS (and the obsession reaches its peak with Ross), but suddenly this new series finds me lying around in my bed, glued to the laptop through the day, skipping meals, classes and human beings. Anything for a little light-hearted laugh; trust me, these days it’s hard to come by!

Most Mortifying Moments...

Most Mortifying Moments…

1. Guy walking ahead with his back to me. Thinking it’s my dad on his way back from the office, I run up to him and give him a surprise hug. Surprised, he turns back, and yeah, it’s not my dad…
2. Me scoring 9 out of 100 in my Physics paper in Class XI…
3. Me sending an extremely inappropriate text message to somebody when it was meant for somebody else…
4. Me saying something uncharitable about my boss to my friend on messenger; only I type at the wrong chat window (yeah, my boss’ window)…
5. Me in FSA class…. (EVERY BLOODY FRIDAY)

Please note that the above list is only indicative and not exhaustive… I have not mentioned any of the numerous incidents of me falling down, me chasing buses, me putting my foot in my mouth…

Kolkata Kaleidoscope

I know Bombay is the city that enamors me- six years in the city that never sleeps, and am already seduced into making a lifelong commitment to it: it is the city where I want to live, where I want to work, where I want to settle down, where I want to bring up my kids and where I want to die! But today as I sit alone by the window, staring into the gloomy dark night to the sound of the drizzle outside, I can’t help going back in time, the 18 long years which charted out my happy childhood, my rebellious teen years and my struggle for an identity. It’s been over a year since I went to Kolkata, but today, suddenly I miss it…

I miss our small two roomed apartment overlooking the slum in Chetla, I miss our rowdy games of kit-kit, pittu, kabaddi, kumir-danga, lukochudi…
I miss running for dance classes twice a week, cursing my mom for enrolling me such a sad course (really who learns classical dance these days?) which makes me miss my above mentioned games with my friends…
I miss getting up at 5 in the morning for swimming lessons, praying that they won’t force me to the deep end today…
I miss my school (infamous for being in the guiness book of world records for being the most overpopulated school in Asia), the cramped classrooms, and the recurrent feedback of my exasperated teachers regarding my communication skills (my report card was permanently inked with the statement: “should learn to converse more fluently in English”)…
I miss the street food: the puchka, the shingara, the potato roll on my way back from dance class (because my mom said we cannot afford the chicken roll twice a week)…
I miss Chetla Park where my parents would take me in the evening, they would sit on the grass with badam and chat while I would show off my running skills…
I miss the predictable unpredictability of Kolkata: the sudden bandhs leading to surprise holidays, the “rainy days”, the addas, the loadsheddings…
I miss waiting for my dad at 1:30 in the morning, me and my mom staring out of the window in the dark…
I miss our short trips during vacations, my dad’s enthusiastic plans and my mom’s insistence on “getting some rest”…
I miss watching cricket and tennis matches and Chitrahaar and Tehkikaat at my friend’s place and the excitement when we finally bought a TV…
I miss the festivals that make Kolkata what it is: the 5 days of Durga Puja (when my dad will panic if I don’t have 10 new dresses), the bhai-phota, the saraswati puja…
I miss my obsession with Satyajit Ray and Enid Blyton and the annual boimela (book fair) where I was allowed unbridled indulgence…
I miss my family: the motorcycle riding young handsome uncle who was so great with kids, my 10 cousin brothers who grudgingly conceded that “I wasn’t like other girls” and let me play cricket with them, my aunts making fun of me, and my thamma who never approved of my ways…
Yeah, I even miss my mom and dad, the way they were then: my mom still studying for her PhD and juggling two part- time jobs, her obsession with electricity bills, hair (both mine and hers) and extra-curricular activities; my dad working 12 hours a day, coming home late and then waking me up much to my mom’s annoyance, reading me bedtime stories, taking random snaps of me and my mom, writing long letters to his boss when he was angry, shouting “I will quit my job” while in the bathroom while I banged on the door because I was getting late for school…

When the blind leadeth the blind...

Today I was kind of pissed, for whatever reasons… and I kind of looked scary as well with a generous dose of kohl smudged in my eyes. So I was walking furiously towards the station (when I am mad, I walk really fast)… then I noticed a guy in a red Tshirt walking in front of me: he kept bumping into people, he kept slipping off the footpath. Then I noticed that he had a stick in his hand, but can’t say he was making much progress with it. I caught up with him easily: he was a young chinky guy (I am ashamed of myself, but I really didn’t know whether he was from our very own north east or from a different country: Nepal, China or Japan or whatever). Now I didn’t know what to do: yes I was in a hurry, but more importantly I didn’t want to show unnecessary pity on him like he was some kind of invalid or anything, I didn’t want to hurt his pride but then again I didn’t want him to get hurt either… so I just discreetly followed him, alert and ready just in case he tripped or bumped into something/ somebody. As usual, the typical Mumbai pedestrians were just too busy to take notice of a blind chinky guy stumbling along with a stick. Then as he brushed past yet another car, I had had enough. I grabbed his arm roughly, and dragged him on the footpath like he was my kid and led him furiously (I forgot that I was walking really fast), my iron grip still holding on to him. At first it was awkward, but then I think he resigned to my determination. Everybody was rushing towards the station, I was walking towards the station and I assumed that he also wanted to go the station. So when we reached the station, I asked him (by now, I was a little less pissed, so I was not quite as rude) which train he wanted to catch. Then he politely informed me that he wanted to go the bus stop and catch bus no. 165. I stared at him in disbelief, and then kicked myself. He didn’t seem too upset though, so I again walked him back to the bus stop and waited till the bus arrived. I asked him whether he will be able to manage, but by now he was advising other passengers about different bus routes, and seemed extremely confident (misplaced as it was). He replied “yes madam, thank you madam” and I made my way back to the station, by now a little humbled by the young man, who seemed to have taken his misfortune in his stride (literally). Here I was, complaining about little things, getting caught up in trivial “problems”, taking things for granted which that poor guy would have killed for….as I made my way back to the station, I sobered down considerably and decided I was the blind one:
Blind about how lucky I was
Blind about my privileges
Blind about my plethora of choices
Blind about things that matter…

Genie in a Bottle

So for a change let’s assume we are in utopia, and you had everything you ever wanted… of course you will be horrified with the choices you make, and be thankful that your wishes aren’t granted always… but that’s a different story. For a change, let’s just assume that you know what you want and in the ideal world, you will have it too… no miserly genie in the bottle, no racking your brains about picking ONLY THREE wishes, here it’s just unbridled self-indulgence!

Obviously I am the socially conscious kinds (we have compulsory CSR projects- kind of a contradiction: compulsory and CSR, but then again, I am digressing), so I really want world peace, and poverty eradication and AIDS awareness, and no global warming (or at least no global whining).

Now that we are done with being deep and responsible and all that jazz, let’s get back to reality: what I REALLY want!

Money… but not the kind that gets in the way of my little pleasures

A successful career… but not the kind of success that’s defined by my neighbours or my family or my friends or my B-school

Friends… but only when we get to choose one another, not because we are from the same profession, same background, same city, same college, but because we want to be friends

A lifestyle… but not the kind defined by lifestyle magazines- plush apartment, big cars, state-of-art technology, multiplex movies, branded clothes, (okk may be branded clothes are a necessity), expensive wines but which allows me to be free, to eat street food and yet wear provocative clothes and travel in local trains without feeling unsafe

Love and sex… but not necessarily with the same person, not with the “perfect guy” but with the “perfect guy for me”, not because it’s a social obligation, not because “now is the right time” but because it feels right

And last but not the least… shopping! I don’t want money, just give me monthly vouchers for buying clothes and books

And yeah, may be on Teacher’s Day, instead of crying out loud, may be I can do something to send that little girl (Laxmi she said her name is) at Aundh who earns money by balancing herself in the air on a tightrope to school