Transition

I am packing my bags and cleaning out my room and answering phone calls from friends and ironing my clothes and selling my art history books and gifting the other books away and hugging roommates goodbye and signing my lease and paying electricity bills and dragging my luggage into a taxi one afternoon. We set off for the airport and I wave goodbye to my friends of four years until they become dots. No, not dots, but tiny specks because we take a turn about ten seconds after leaving them. The road to JFK is bumpy and the friend beside me is quiet. To be honest, I’m in no mood to talk either.

It really is like a hindi film. With an hour left for the plane to depart, a hug isn’t just for the person, it’s for everything they take with them. Heads spin with intense emotions and the world becomes a grainy movie seen through half closed eyes. Someday you’ll forget what their nose looks like or how they slouched, and someday, more poignantly, you’ll try to remember their phone number. What will you think then? Will you feel sad about how much time has passed? Or will you laugh at a development you could not imagine? Maybe you will smile or maybe you will be moved very little. But that is then. What does one say now?

Finally the plane lands at Bombay but it doesn’t feel like a full stop as I thought it would. It is reinvigorating to be among brown faces, speaking a language that was an exception yesterday and the norm today. Somewhere outside, family awaits. They have moved here recently, so we are all strangers here. This city, we realize later, does not accept or reject strangers, it merely throws up obstacles; the acceptance and rejection is left to us. Along the way home we pass by several places that have no meaning to me then, but will play important roles later. It is an unnerving thought and, if you are accepting, a delightful one; that the roads and places we take for granted might gain significance for us one day. I’d imagine it’s closely connected to that line, “Where have you been all my life?”

A week goes by and nothing happens. With passing mornings jet lag fades away and I think that the reach of that country fades along with it. Pancakes, waffles and mashed potatoes are gone, and there are Sindhi breakfasts instead. The domestic help is half horrified and half pleased when I wash my plates, but insists I leave it to him next time. Ditto for laundry. Suddenly I have too much time on my hands. What do you do then but reach out to the last thing you left? At the end of the third week, the phone rings. It’s for you, someone tells me.

Two days later I’m done with the interview. It wasn’t really an interview. Just a chat; a flip through a portfolio and a smile. Come in from the second of January. I walk out in a daze. It’s this easy to rule the world at 21? Hectic phone calls are made. Aunts ask questions later and squeal in delight when they calculate that the first day of work is an auspicious day. For the optimist, India must be heaven because divine signs are everywhere. With all blessings added up, no task will fail.

I arrive at work earlier than anyone else, reading posters and humorous notes I cannot understand and put it down to a change in culture. While I sit and wait for people to appear, homesickness strikes. Not for a place but for people who would know what to say then, and who would feel what I felt. Not for a home abandoned, but caused by that sinking feeling when you ask yourself, “what am I doing here?”

It takes ten days to cure that. An instant friend shows me Bombay by bus. Now that you’re here, the friend seems to say, let me show you what your new home looks like. And it happens, just like that. Where there was nothing one morning, there is now hope. And you figure that forgetting phone numbers isn't the worst thing. What's worse is having no one to call in the first place.

That new car smell

There's nothing like a visit to a car showroom to inspire thoughts of making money.

Mr and Mrs Smith

Terrible film.

The others at the blog meet

A monthly ritual was followed yesterday when twelve of Bombay's bloggers encroached on tables and chairs at a Barista outlet adjoined to Regal Cinema. The participants and their points of conversation have been described here, here, and here already, so here's an account of what else happened during that time.

At a far corner of the coffee shop, three women took turns combing their hair. It was fascinating to watch them groom themselves unmindful of anyone else. One looked like Sameera Reddy. The others looked like her sisters. Not Sameera Reddy's sisters, but her own. Very attractive. They sat by a large window overlooking the shiny street. It was a late Sunday afternoon. What do Sundays remind you of? Suns, grass and hammocks, I would think, but the monsoons are here, so it was grey and wet and seemingly only a finger snap away from heavy rain. But it leaves Bombay clean and smelling fresh. Clothes glistened from recent showers as their wearers walked by. When they entered, the distinctive scent of recent rain came with them. As an ex-ex-pat, I can tell you that it is a smell we imagine with longing when the India in our lives comes only from television and bottled achaars. And then, upon arrival, the welcome scent is accompanied by an ankle high water level.

The three sisters smiled when a strapping man who carried himself with confidence pulled a chair to their table. They immediately commenced a jabbering so excited, it floated to our table some distance away. Elsewhere, a lady with a British accent repeatedly asked for a certain type of coffee. Forced to repeat herself, her voice grew more agitated with each repetition, and her accent more pronounced. This did not help matters. Closer by, our numbers steadily grew and, remarkably, the conversations fell by number until there was only one, not because there was nothing to say, but because Arundhati Roy is a subject that holds you even if you've never met her, or read a word of anything she has ever written.

Coffee shops have always loosely been conversation shops. A place to talk, of course, but also a place to listen to others at other tables talking about things. Sometimes it can seem creepily familiar. Of telephone bills and work hours and things you would talk about. At one table children were discussed by women who seemed a few years away from motherhood. At another, satisfied graduates spoke of college like war veterans. Beside them two lovers looked at each other and said nothing, their fingers touching, heads tilted and resting on an orange wall. Filling in the blanks in this case was easy. In some matters, we come from the same place.

As it grew darker, our thoughts slipped to food. A rooftop restaurant was suggested. A nearby bakery. The restaurant where Shantaram met his friends. A demolished joint reopened for business. The rooftop won, but it more to do with the view. Some went up, some went away. A month will pass before most of us meet. Come if you can. There's plenty to talk about. And plenty to listen to and watch, not all of it at your own table.

And do compliment Amit on his long silky locks. He loves it.

Update: I did go to Meerut, dammit! Does this look like something cut and paste from a Lonely Planet guide?

Once upon a time

Let me tell you a story, he said.

No, she interrupted. I want more than one. I want lots of stories, and none by you. I want Murakami, Yann Martell, Kunzru, and stories by a whole lot of others. And could you throw in an essay on lies, written by DBC Pierre?

I have just the thing, he said silently. Just click here.

The verbal juggernaut

A few nights ago a colleague, Anand Vasu, was on an NDTV debate over cricket rivalries, and one of the participants was Navjot Singh Sidhu. Now if you've ever heard Sidhu, you'll find it hard to forget his dialogue delivery. He tends to throw himself into his beliefs with disconcerting conviction, even when the basic point he's making is actually rubbish. So most of the program passed by with Sidhu's monologue about how the India-Pakistan rivalry was greater than the Ashes. When the others got a word in, they differed, and rightly called the Ashes the more prominent battle, reasoning that the subcontinental rivalry owes much of its reputation to jingoism. This incensed Sidhu, and he somehow became even more animated. And when Sidhu becomes animated-angry, it stops being funny and starts getting scary. The eyes spread across his face, his eyebrows touch the pagdi, and his mouth contorts in the visually violent manner that an Arabic speaker's does. And then he wags a bony index finger at opponents.

His persona becomes bigger than the subject, which is long dead by now. The monster that is Sidhu's reputation grows bigger and hungrier. He is, in a way, the opposite of Harsha Bhogle, who reduces his presence considerably to give the subject its due. But my thinking is, the reason why Sidhu is such a phenomenon is because he often displays the side of us that we're too polite to admit exists, even to ourselves. The one that desperately wants to get up someone's nose but is restrained by etiquette. I know I'd love to wag my finger at someone and chastise "you reap what you sow" but can't because people will think I'm being silly. But the part I love the most; the one I suspect many admire him for? It's where he's on a verbal roll, and neither moderator nor angry participant nor commercial break can stop him. He's a verbal juggernaut, winning arguments only because he won't let anyone else speak, tiring people with his relentless barrage of anger and opinions while his opponents raise their fingers and say 'err' and 'umm' and 'excuse me'. Forget the point he's making. In many cases it'll be nonsense. But watch the man defend his territory. He's simply amazing.

Ps. Here's a man who delightfully connected Sidhu and atheism. Okay, his name's Jai. You know, Jabberwock.

The forgotten generation

Yesterday night, and the previous night, and the night before and so on, I turned on the radio to listen to fresh sounds. Perhaps something in a different language or a new soulful melody. A song that I would look up on the internet, even. However, songs with a different beat and a sound we can't quite place don't have a home on Bombay's radio networks. It is important to know what you're getting into when you turn on the radio.

This is what you won't hear: western classical, world music (broadly), Dave Matthews Band.

This is what you will hear: Meri beri ke ped mat todo (DJ Sami mix), Harry Anand's remixes, remixes with Rakhi (Rakhii? Rakkhee?) Sawant busting out of her school uniform in videos, and remixes of every old song T-Series has the rights to. And then, after they miraculously run out of remixes, you are thrown the original versions of the remixes.

So the teenyboppers have their Casio tunes, and our parents have Mohammad Rafi. Nothing for us. I think I belong to Bombay radio's forgotten generation.

Mental notes for 25 years later

During a phase in my teenage years, I believed that my age was the perfect age to be, for I stood at the precipice of adulthood and the end of adolescence. It was the perfect place to be because it was a vantage point in time, and a look behind confirmed immaturity and a look beyond revealed responsibility. I imagined giving good advice was a big part of being an adult then. Sometimes I thought that was all there was to being grown-up. And so I saw it with the interactions between my mother and younger sister. Advice was given and sometimes accepted. I would make mental notes that would help me years later in dealing with my own children when they became broody teenagers. How would I tell my kids to be home in time without offending their sensibilities? How would I advise them to study without seeming too forceful? There were answers for everything; answers I had up here (I'm tapping my head). These were mental notes to be kept up there safely, ready to be unleashed during those perilous teenage years when every day would be a powder keg, and every word a potential lit match.

Six years later old notes have been replaced by new ones, even when experience reveals that to make notes is futile, for every year the textbook is changed, and what's French now will soon be Greek. I've watched myself and others hold on to notions of how things should be, ignoring how things are. It's an idealism of sorts. (So are even the most orthodox among us idealists?) A stubborn idealism, because we end up fighting reality, for nothing remains the same. Not our notions of happiness, not our notions of a golden age, not our notions of the value of money. I guess that's the biggest note I'm making to myself mentally. Hopefully I won't forget.

Relentless rain

I stay two minutes away from work. On some days I think it robs me a drive. But on days like this, when office lines buzz with news of immobile traffic and flooded drains sweeping roads, and I watch open umbrellas pass below the window quickly, I'm happy that I live only two minutes away. It's not that the magic of the rains has evaporated. Far from it. It's just that sitting back sometimes and watching it fall is rather nice.

Red light, red light, what do you say?

This morning the traffic signals outed. What usually ensues in these instances is utter chaos, with cars traveling in four directions gridlocked in a perverse jigsaw. But today a traffic policeman stood in the middle, cajoling and guiding and halting cars with a look and a brief flourish of his hands. Drivers obeyed - except BEST bus drivers, who would edge god off a road if he rode a scooter - and stayed behind the white line. It would have been different had the signals worked. Rickshaw drivers would have hesitantly edged forward, looking left and right before breaking across in a blast of noise and exhaust, and they would be trailed by other drivers who would be emboldened by this, and also the fact that there were no cops around. Then drivers in other lanes would be miffed by this disregard for red, yellow and green, and would set off in similar fashion after a reconnaissance mission to look for hidden traffic policemen. It would be a cheery affair, for all were bound by an understanding that they really shouldn't be doing this, but hey, it's only a signal.

Sometimes, and only sometimes, when this happens, I stay still while the cars beside me rush past the red light, and I grin at the rear view mirror at the driver behind honking furiously, urging me to follow everybody else. The more he honks, the bigger the smile. I love it, I really do, because here, in this country, you can irritate a lot of people by obeying rules. Heh.

A perfect goodbye

A dear friend left for Canada. It was her first trip out of the country, and as we drove to the airport late at night, she hummed to songs playing on the radio. It was, as you know, late; at a time when people are fast asleep. But some were awake, calling up the radio station, chatting for long with a polite jockey who did not know how to stop them. We turned the volume down and kept silent, the weight of the length of her trip away seemingly everywhere, on our heads, in our hearts. What can one say? Come back soon? Take care? Our friends and family carry our unsaid prayers and greetings with them.

Later, standing by luggage outside terminal 2A, I remembered how heart-breaking goodbyes were when I left for college, carrying prayers, greetings, and lots of laddoos. Every goodbye that meant something came back and reminded me that there is an art in saying goodbye; not too long, or it may seem overly sentimental; not too short, or it will seem incomplete. In the end, after her trolley was loaded and we stood in that weird limbo between here and departure, the words came by themselves. It was the most perfect goodbye of all: a look, a brief bye, and a touch that said 'I'll see you soon.'

Chalo chalo, Mumbai ki sair

I've been thinking. There's so much to see in this city, so much to do, and there are layers, I imagine, which exist like a world alongside this one. It's this I'm going to try and find out more about during this monsoon. For myself, and to write.

Bombay has a lot to offer; it has a limitless supply of stories and things happening everyday. Much like the rest of India. But I can't do an all-India trip now, so an all-Bombay will have to suffice. I can't say it'll be all new to you, but most of it will be new to me. I'll begin in a few days. It'll be like a Mumbai ki sair, but in alleys and bylanes instead of around monuments and on famous roads.

Waiting for Ashraful

Here's the hero of yesterday's Bangladesh v Australia game, Mohammad Ashraful:

"I was not getting runs and it was very frustrating for me. Whenever looked at my statistics I wondered if I'm that bad. I rang my mother last night and was seeking some solace. But I laughed a lot when she said you are very small compared to the people you are playing against. So, it's not possible for you to do well."

Well, he may be short, but his game's pretty big when he gets going. Ashraful scored a fine hundred to help Bangladesh beat the meanest, biggest, baddest collection of marauders in international cricket. If you've followed his career, and watched him play, you'll know how frustrating it is to watch this 20-year-old - bursting with talent - throw it away again and again. Late last year, he played one of the finest innings you will ever see, and I mean finest - the kind of innings that makes you giggle in nervousness years later. I was bulletining that game, luckily, and walked on air for a few days after. But then he just tapered away, losing it more in the mind after gorgeous strokeplay, much like VVS Laxman has done for much of his career. It's unlikely that he'll play this way for a while, considering the pattern of his career. But keep watching, because when he does, and there's no doubt he will, it'll be unforgettable.

Here the bulletin of that Test innings.

Update: And here's my end-of-year write-up on it, in our selection of the best and worst of the year. I'm the third writer from the top. Thank you, Srivaths.

Tap dancing

And then the sun was blot out, leaving a delightful grey upon us, and then like a tap-dancing routine that picks up as it progresses, tap tap tappity-tap, the rain finally came. Now the band, thunder, has started its routine.

I should really get back to work, but this rain is distracting. More later.

That time of the month again

Magazine closing.

Umm, pavements please?

The Times of India has a news report on a recently-married woman being run over by a private bus. Her husband refuses to talk. But the local residents "blame the police for the accidents. They claim the traffic cops posted on Paltan Road do not take any action against illegal parking and private buses, which create most of the traffic problems."

People have no business being on roads. Unless proper pavements and subways are provided, there will always be more deaths. Where does one walk if there's no sidewalk?

Update: Never accuse the Times of India of sentimentality. Or sense. Here's their Times City Quiz question, only three columns away from the report of the accident:

Where did Tuesday's accident occur?

A: Gorai
B: Sanpada
C: Palton Road

To participate SMS TCQ to 8888...Participate and win great prizes. Three correct lucky winners get Provogue gift vouchers worth Rs 500.

Perhaps they'll hire an editor someday. Perhaps we'll have pavements someday.

Endangered culture, etc

The help went off to feed a cow something from the puja. An hour later he calls up to say he can't find a single cow, and is calling from seven kilometers away near a shed which contains buffaloes. Still no cow.

Two hours now and he hasn't yet returned. No cows on roads? This goes against everything I know of Indian culture.

One's tongue is firmly in cheek. See? See?

Symbolism

During a puja today, I was asked to hold a bundle of straw to my heart while pouring oil into a contained fire. The reasoning behind this was that a long time ago, rakshasa would interrupt the prayer, called a havan. So warriors kept watch with swords clutched close to their chest. Now, since swords were a strict no-no, the clutch of straw was held on as symbolism. In the same way god was a stone I poured rice on for food offerings, and he was fed water poured from a spoon. Later the same procedure was used to bathe him.

During these ceremonies, I'm always somewhere else. Today I wondered if this is one reason why symbolism seems to be prevalent in India - because it is in religion. A few months ago, a friend in Tamil Nadu very gently asked if I had enjoyed the food at a stopover to a village. We were at a table, our banana leaves folded after a filling meal, and her interest seemed more than casual.

"Yes, I did."

"Then you need to fold the banana leaf the other way. Towards you." By folding it away, you tell the proprieter that you did not like his service, and chances are you would not return. But folding it towards you meant acceptance. Sometimes, she said, the same method is used when a boy visits a prospective girl for marriage. One could make a career of studying these nuances.

But what does one feel towards tradition or religion when everything is done by rote? Passion? Unlikely. A following? Perhaps. But perhaps people question why and find answers in things that might not really be there. But symbolism can be interesting; seeing how a mammoth task has been abbreviated to something manageable; to something that can be completed in 90 minutes. Instead of having one brahmin who chants 120,000 times, we can have six who chant 20,000 times each. How convenient it can be. All the benfits of religion, with a fraction of the trappings.

The more I watch religion, the less I wonder about god, and more about the people who wrote these books.

Red, round, and shiny

Two months ago I was in Meerut to do a story on how cricket balls are made. The process was fascinating to watch for the care involved as well as history at work - the process had not changed for hundreds of years. Equally interesting was watching the men at work, because theirs was a repetetive task and, even then, by the end of the day, they had created an object of beauty.

The piece on balls is now up on Cricinfo.

Super Sunday

Cold coffee, 97 unread books to choose from, windows wide open, a monsoon wind, and an entire day with nothing to do. Yay.