Cyborg's Contemplative Corner

Remember the Rajanigandha

2008-11-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

Last week, I was walking through the bustling Santa Monica Farmer's Market, picking up a few fruits here, a strawberry confit there, and generally enchanted by the happy buzz of freshly scrubbed people amidst fresh produce. I was walking towards a stall selling butternut squash when I suddenly stopped. I sniffed. And sniffed again. Yes, it was unmistakable.

At that very instant, I was transported back to a night in a Bengali village many, many years ago. To a house bustling with people, all running around. Some ordering the cook to hurry up and finish cooking the last batch of sweets, some arranging garlands of marigolds and mango leaves around the house, and some painstakingly decorating the nicest room in the house with a profusion of tuberoses, rajanigandha in Bengali.

In the confusion, a little girl had slided in unnoticed into the room, and the heady smell of tuberoses made her dizzy and enchanted at the same time. In the middle of the room stood her aunt, looking strangely distant and yet so exquisitely beautiful as a bride, with four other aunts fussing over every detail of her dress, her saree pleated perfectly, her make-up expertly applied. That day the image of the bride and the smell of the rajanigandha fused together in the little girl's mind, and to this day she cannot smell the flower's fragrance without it invoking the most wonderful memories of family weddings.

I retreaded my steps back, to a flower seller who was selling a large variety of blooms, carnations, orchids, lilies and so on. I was puzzled - where were the rajanigandha? Certainly they were there - I had smelled them, and no other flower could smell the same. And then I saw them, hidden from view, just a few stems bunched together, ignored by the patrons who seemed more keen on the dramatic orchids. I leaned towards them and took a deep breath. And was slightly disappointed. These were Mexican rajanigandha, and their fragrance is not nearly as mesmerizing as the Indian rajanigandha. But the Indian varietal is delicate and fragile, and cannot survive the journey across seven seas. So, I had to be content with not the same, but close.

I'm always amazed by the ability of some smells and tastes to immediately conjure up the most vivid memories. What surprises me even more is how sharp and intense these memories are for the most mundane things. Things that I seem to have prioritized over more precious memories that have become faded and threadbare over time.

When I was in school, I had once been invited over to the house of a friend of mine. It was the very first time I had been invited to spend an entire day at the house of school classmates and it was as exciting as any adventure. We spent the day gossiping about boys (13 yr olds have an endless reserve of boy gossip), watched videos and then were served lunch by my friend's mother.

She had made chholey-chawal (chickpea soup and rice) which is a classic North Indian comfort food. Now chholey that is sold in restaurants is usually heavily spiced, but this version was `
very delicately spiced, almost bland in comparison. We ate our meal and then went back to more boy gossip. After finishing school, I lost touch with this friend of mine and never saw her family again.

Years later, when I moved to the US, I was suddenly struck with the desire to recreate the chholey I had eaten that day in my friend's home. Now usually, I am a pretty good reverse engineer cook and can recreate a lot of dishes that I might have had somewhere and liked. But this one proved elusive. Try as I might, I just could not get the spicing and texture right. And the oddest thing was that even though it had been more than 15 years since I ate chholey-chawal at my friend's home, I could remember the taste like it was yesterday. And nothing ever seemed to measure up. I still keep trying, hoping I'd have my eureka moment and hit the magic formula one day.

In a similar vein, let me tell you about the time that I was invited to the house of my friend ME for dinner. He had invited a whole bunch of us from the department and had cooked a fantastic salmon. The conversation at some point turned to the rice we ate and he said that he only bought Basmati rice. He had cooked some of this rice and wanted to show it to me and get my opinion on it. I took a whiff of the aroma of the cooked rice and then said

TM: "M, I'm really sorry, but this isn't Basmati rice"

ME: "What are you talking about? Here, see - says right on the label - it's Basmati rice from India"

TM: "Yes, I know. But this isn't Basmati"

ME: "Why do you say that?"

TM: "Because I've had Basmati only once in my life, and I'll never forget that aroma."

If you think this is an odd statement coming from someone who grew up in India, then hear me out. It is true that as a Bengali family, our standard everyday rice was parboiled rice, with the Gobindobhog varietal used for making things like kheer (rice pudding). For making pulaos, my mother would use the long-grain rice that is widely sold labeled as Basmati both in India and in other countries. So why am I saying I've only had Basmati rice once in my life?

Many many years ago, when I was a little girl, one of my aunts and her husband visited us in Delhi and wished to travel to Mussourie, which is a lovely little town up in the Himalayas. My father and I agreed to go with them and we set off on our journey to Mussourie. Now the town of Mussourie lies above the town of Dehradun which is nestled in a valley and is the birthplace of the Basmati rice varietal. We decided to stop for a night in Dehradun before continuing our journey on to Mussourie.

In the evening, for dinner, my aunt and uncle decided to eat at the small restaurant attached to our hotel. We ordered a simple meal of vegetables, chicken and rice. The waiter told us that the rice they served was real Dehradun Basmati rice and then brought two plates of the rice to the table. It was one of the most ethereal smelling dishes.

I did something that I had never done before and haven't done since. I picked up my spoon and proceed to polish off the rice on its own, without any of the accompanying vegetables and curry. My father, uncle and aunt were extremely amused at my performance, but they knew that the rice was very special and launched into a discussion of how it was becoming more and more difficult to find real Basmati outside Dehradun.

I think I was about 8 0r 9 at the time. Ever since nothing had come even close to that memory of Basmati rice. I would get very puzzled when I would buy bags labeled Basmati sold in US markets and then on cooking, the rice would smell nothing like the Basmati I had many years ago. I even thought my memory was playing tricks with me. Surely all this is traditional Basmati rice, and I'm just being over picky and delusional.

And then on one of my trips home I met an old friend who was then working for one of India's biggest Basmati rice exporting companies. This friend had grown up in a town near Dehradun and had access to Dehradun Basmati growing up. I discussed with him how I just couldn't seem to find any Basmati that matched up to my memory of the rice I ate a long time ago and I was wondering if my memory was playing tricks with me.

He laughed and said

"You know TM, your instincts are spot on. Just think about it - the Dehradun valley is a tiny strip of land that can barely grow enough rice to support local demand. And there are huge quantities of so called Basmati rice consumed in India and internationally every year. Something doesn't add up, right?"

And then he told me of how the Basmati rice sold by his company was grown from a hybrid variety of Basmati developed by agricultural scientists in India that was different from the traditional Basmati varietal grown in Dehradun. Of course if you've never had real Basmati in your life, you'd never know the difference. Legally, the rice is still Basmati, but the hybrid just does not match up to the delicate yet intense aroma of the traditional varietal. I have since tried to find rice wholesalers who source directly from the Dehradun valley but have been unsuccessful so far. And given the rate at which urban sprawl is gobbling up agricultural land in Dehradun, that rice may remain a memory forever.

How to Lose Money and Piss Off Lots of People

2008-10-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that on my last blog post, someone has left a comment wondering why I haven't posted any opinions on the cataclysmic events in the stock market in the past few days (weeks? months? oh what the heck - it doesn't matter any more). I'm flattered and amused in turn.

That anyone would care about my opinion on the matter, when there are plenty of excellent minds who can offer far better insight into the complex issues involved. Gosh, you guys are sweet (...wait a minute, are you trying to pull a fast one on me?). Anyway, here's a nice bulleted and chronological list of my own progression through this matter, mercifully brief and laconic.

Early 2006: I was amazed when an acquaintance of mine told me that their house in Irvine, Orange County (OC) purchased in 2004 had nearly doubled in value when they sold it last week. I was convinced we were in the midst of a crazy housing boom, but I had no idea if we had peaked yet.

Late 2006: I was in the Silver Lake neighbourhood of LA and had to while away an hour waiting for a friend. I started walking around, saw a house for sale sign and decided to check it out just out of curiosity. The house was nice, but a bit old and insanely overpriced. The owner was a young man in his 20s who was very sweet and friendly, and when he asked me if I was interested, I excused myself by saying that it was a bit more than what I would pay ("bit more" ha ha ha).

Anyway, so we got talking and I found out that he owned a total of three houses, two of which were rental properties. Incredibly, he told me that he had acquired these properties with zero down payment. My jaw dropped.

TM: "So, by the way, what do you do"

Owner: "Oh, I'm a musician"

Take a minute to appreciate this. Most struggling musicians barely make minimum wages waiting tables - this one owned three homes with zero down payment - whose mortgage payments he was paying with rent from the other two properties.

I knew the peak had been reached, it was just a matter of a couple of months before the downward slide would begin.

Early 2007: I had signed up for a tour of downtown LA once, by virtue of which I would keep getting emails from a lot of residential property sellers. I noticed that week after week, I would keep getting emails from the same sellers promising exciting offers (discounts, upgrades) for apartments that would have been pre-sold just a year ago. Also, every time I would drive around, the house for sale signs were everywhere.

The decline had begun.

October 2007: The first rumblings of the sub-prime mess were being felt in the stock markets. The foreclosure rate was climbing, some of the mortgage backed securities were declining in value, affecting the stock prices of the companies holding these assets in their balance sheets.

However, the denial PR mechanism of the financial industry was in full force. The losses were inconsequential and the financial system was robust enough to deal with these shocks was reassuring line we were being fed.

In the meanwhile, this rather innocuous looking paragraph from the Financial Accounting and Standards Board Statement 157 was causing some discomfort to investment banks and sparking lively debate on investment forums:

"Fair value is the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a
liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date."

Ok, sod accountant-speak, what this basically means is that you cannot pull a price out of your ass and stick it on your asset and claim all's well even if your asset is stinky rubbish that no one would pay two nickels for. And this applies to all types of assets, Level 1, 2, and 3.

Now Level 3 assets are of especial interest, since they are valued using significant unobservable inputs, which basically mean the company's own assumptions regarding risk and how the market would price it (refer "pull a price out of your ass"). There is no verification of these assumptions and valuation models (Hallelujah!).

Guess what is the most significant kind of these Level 3 assets? (hint: starts with an M, ends with an S and has a B in the middle. Yep, Mortgage Backed Securities).

These rules went into effect in November 2007, and the investment boards were buzzing with discussion about the huge amounts of such Level 3 MBS assets on the balance sheets of investment banks. Then, it was like a domino effect - suddenly people also started talking about the ridiculous levels of leverage taken on by investment banks - debt that was 20-30 times the equity invested.

Between 2004-2007, this leverage had given the banks fantastic profits and generated huge bonuses for the employees. Now, it was feared that leverage would brutally enhance every small loss suffered on the way down.

Everyone was convinced that the imminent demise of an investment bank was coming, and bets were being taken on who would be first. A lot of people guessed Lehman, simply because out of all the investment banks, it had the largest proportion of exposure to MBS. However, when Lehman declared their 2007 results, they maintained that they had suffered minimal damage from sub-prime exposure.

January 2008: Surprisingly, despite all the doom and gloom predicted by the bears, the market sort of wobbled along, dipping only slightly, giving a false sense of security. In hindsight, what basically happened was that there was there were a few shining new toys in town - energy, basic materials and commodities.

At first, the pat explanation was that oil prices were rising because of growing demand in emerging markets, but that could not account for the dizzying heights scaled by oil prices in a few months. It soon became obvious that the energy market had attracted a large speculator crowd who were not the usual players in the field. Between August. 2007-May.2007, the Energy sector on NYSE grew 26 per cent, Basic Materials went up 45 per cent. In the same period Financials declined 10 per cent and the S&P 500 declined 3 per cent.

March 2008: Everything changed on March 17th when news came that JP Morgan Chase was buying Bear Stearns for $2 a share. Of course investors knew Bear was in trouble - it's credit default swaps had shot up, its shares had been dropping considerably, and there was a huge volume of puts (a kind of insurance against price decline) on Bear shares in recent days. But seriously - $2 a share?

There was much talk of how the Bear headquarters alone was worth a substantial chunk of the price JP Morgan Chase was paying. Any reasonable person would soon put 2 and 2 together and wonder - was the price so low because the liabilities were so onerous and the assets had precipitously declined in value? But then, the CEO of Bear Stearns had famously assured the markets that his company was in good shape. If Bear was pretending all was fine, while it was being hollowed out inside, what were the others (and investment banks are kind of clones of each other - same business model everywhere) hiding on their balance sheets?

(The Bear share price was later upped to $10 per share, but that was still small change compared to its book value).

This is a table that someone had uploaded on an investment forum around that time (don't know where he got it from, but if anyone knows, please let me know and I'll quote the source).

Note where Lehman Brothers is on this table - right at the bottom. At a time when Merrill went ahead and wrote down some of their MBS to 22 cents on the dollar, Lehman stubbornly refused to mark its investments down.

And the rumour mills just won't stop churning.

Right after Bear got bought out, Lehman credit default swaps shot up and its share price suffered its first significant decline. Of course the Lehman CEO famously blamed short sellers. In fact, the man continues to blame short sellers for his firm's fall. A lot of people were convinced that Lehman was next. But Lehman continued to insist that its fundamentals were strong and it had adequate capitals to support asset write-downs.

September 2008: After months of speculation and denials, the inevitable came to pass. An initial trickle of clients deserting it to go to other investment banks had turned into a steady stream. The stock price was declining steadily, assets were losing value, and its creditworthiness was getting shot. Whatever Lehman did at this point was too little, too late.

This is where the story starts to get murky. Was Lehman the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back? Or was the systemic rot spreading so fast at this point that it was but the first act in the grand spectacle of chaos that was to unfold? I honestly don't know. I'm sure Lehman's failure added to the woes, but AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's problems predate Lehman. In fact, if Bank of America hadn't bought it, perhaps Merrill would have met the same fate sooner or later.

October 2008: Let's do a slight digression at this point and check up on the pesky little thing that started it all - declining home prices. The Case Shiller Index for US residential properties went from 185 in 2007 quarter 1 to 155 in 2008 quarter 2. Obviously as the economy gets worse, this index would decline further.

The crisis of confidence in the financial markets though is several times worse than that in the housing market. Let's see what we've got on our plate so far:

1. Of the major banks - every one of them have suffered major write-downs of assets. One has gone bankrupt (Lehman), four bought out (Bear, Merrill, Wamu, Wachovia), and one tottering on the brink (Morgan, plagued by rumours that Mitsubishi no longer wants to buy a stake). A number of smaller banks are on the edge as well, about to keel over at the first major knock to their share price.

2. Yesterday they settled credit default swaps on the debt of Lehman brothers. Which means that if A sold a credit default swap to B guaranteeing Lehman's debt, then A has to pay B based on whatever Lehman's debt was valued at. Based on this valuation, A has to pay B nearly $270 billion, which is a neat pile of cash in these troubled times. And that's not all - there's Wamu and Icelandic banks to come (poor Iceland just cannot get a break - first it's currency gets assaulted by hedge fund short sellers, now its banks are kaput).

3. The difference between the Treasury rate and the LIBOR rate (the so called TED spread) has widened dramatically. What this basically means is that banks perceive a lot more risk and are charging a lot more to lend to each other.

4. Commercial paper, short term loans used by companies for ongoing expenses has been in crisis in the past few weeks. The panic is so great that no one wants to lend money for fear of it getting entangled in bankruptcy claims if the company suddenly goes under.

5. When you need money on home turf, global ambition is the first thing to be scuttled off. And hence, large sell-off by American hedge funds and investment banks had started in the so called BRIC markets - Brazil, Russia, India and China. Noticed how Indian, Chinese and Brazilian stocks listed on NYSE have been losing tremendously over the last month? (speaking of which, I saw that a big loser was Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited ADR. Who the hell was buying MTNL in the first place?)

October 12, 2008, 12:35 a.m.: Where do we go from here? Well, I heard a talk on the credit crisis a few days ago that really appealed to the optimistic side in me (my other side is cynical and would make "Irrational Exuberance" by Robert Shiller required reading for everyone). So this person, who's a hedge fund manager said (and I paraphrase)

Right now, we have a climate of pervasive fear and a heightened sense of risk. No one wants to either invest their money or lend it because no one can accurately assess the inherent risk in these activities. However, there's plenty of global capital that will need to be invested at some point. Bonds will mature and then would have to be re-invested.

Someone, somewhere, would stick his neck out, decide that the return is worth the risk and put his money out there to work for him. Slowly others will follow suit, and we'll have a functioning financial industry again. How long will this process take? No one can tell. It could be 6 months, 2 years or even 6 years. But recover we will, no matter how many doomsday scenarios you hear about.

In the meanwhile, chin up a la the Brits, shore up your savings, and keep those spirits flying.

Get Out of Your Cars and Go Underground!

2008-08-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

The extension of the Los Angeles Metro system has me all giddy and excited. It's a dream to be able to take a Metro all the way to the Westside and hopefully I'll be able to do that while I'm still living in LA. But reading up on the Metro expansion also gave me the idea to rank up cities I've been to on the basis of their public transport systems.

So now that we have begun, let's get the very best out of the way at the outset.

Madrid: Best underground transport system ever. May the bastards who blew up a part of it die a thousand deaths - thankfully the system is back to what it was and functioning as wonderfully as ever.

I was in Madrid in 2001 and staying with a friend in the still kind of working class but rapidly gentrifying suburb of Valdeacederas .

Every morning after my friend would leave for work, I'd walk to the nearby metro station, passing tiny neighbourhood bars open at 9:00 a.m for customers who might want a morning glass of beer to refresh them in the heat.

This is what I loved about Spain - it has an incredibly civilized beer drinking culture.

You walk into a bar, ask for a beer and are given a small glass of beer (only 1 Euro at the time) with some pickled gherkins and cocktail onions. You munch on the pickles, drink your beer and are on your way. In the 10 days I was there, I didn't see a single person get piss drunk and wasted.

So from Valdeacederas, I'd take the metro to go to the heart of the city (Quatros Caminos, or Atocha I think) and the ticket was only 25 cents. And, and, here's the best part. You could use that ticket unlimited times as long as you were inside the station. The metro network was amazing - you could reach practically any part of Madrid using the subway.

And once I saw an adorable scruffy boy sitting across from me reading Umberto Eco. That should be enough to love any metro system, no?

I've been told that the metro system to rival that of Madrid in its breadth is the one in Moscow. I mean, damn it, just look at that map! I'd love to visit Moscow and find out.

Now, honourable mentions -

Rome: Rome is perhaps my favourite city to visit in the whole world. It's such a mesmerizing, enchanting place, with layers and layers of splendid architecture, vibrant street culture, so throbbing with life and you get to hear the musical Italian language everywhere.

So this means that in all probability I'm biased. But my friend Beck and I took the metro all the time, during the night as well and it was safe, reliable and got you to the suburbs and the Vatican easily.

One of the highlights of our Rome stay was when, on an impulse, we just boarded the metro and got off at one of the stations close to the Vatican and just walked in the neighourhood and found a fantastic shopping street. The best part of the street were all the shoe and clothing vendors sprawled on the pavements. And you could haggle away to glory.

So me and Beck (who's American from the Midwest but totally got into the haggling game) went crazy shopping and gave the tenacious Italian grandmas a run for their haggling skills. And then, wandering around, we smelt the most amazing aroma of food coming from one of the side streets. We were intrigued and also hungry, so decided to investigate.

We followed the smell to a small neighbourhood place bustling and packed to the gills with customers (in fact, reminded me of some of the busiest sweet shops like Bikanerwala in Delhi). It was a place that served Lazio style pizza, which is basically a long rectangular pizza sold by the slice with a gazillion different kinds of toppings. They also sold typical Sicilian snacks like arancini. We tried a few different slices and loved the food so much that we were back in this neighbourhood the very next day for more.

(Ok, I'm officially stunned. I tried to google and find this pizza place and turns out that it's Pizzarium Bonci at via della Meloria, which serves the best Lazio style pizza in town and is a huge favourite with Romans (go do a google search for it and check out the effusive praise). And to think we found it by just following our noses!)

Here's a video of the place (only the first part of the video is about Pizzarium, and an interview with its owner Gabriele Bonci) - aww, now I miss Rome.

Singapore: It's tiny and rich, so it would be a surprise if it didn't have a decent public transport system (oh well, I guess it doesn't work for Dubai). Extra points for announcements in four languages - English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil.

London: The London tube has the most recognizable symbol for any public transport system in the world. And you can get all the way from Heathrow to the heart of city using light rail and then get into the underground at the same station so that's great. Not so great are the fares. A lot more expensive than comparable systems in other cities. But then London in general is daylight robbery.

Moving on to "good work guys, now hurry on and catch up with the rest"

Athens: Poor Athens - it gets a bad rep. I'm yet to meet a Greek, or for that matter an Athenian Greek who unequivocally loves the city. Greeks lavish affection and wax poetic on their mountain villages and island paradises, but mention Athens and they'd tell you how every summer they cannot wait to get out of the city.

Overcrowded (half of Greece lives in Athens), polluted and with nightmare traffic (sounds oh so familiar if you're Indian). I actually like Athens, I find it interesting and charming and soulful, but so far I've not been able to convince a Greek of the city's charms.

But things are getting better, what with all the public infrastructure improvements put in place for the Athens Olympics. Including a brand new gleaming metro.

Athens has the newest metro in Europe, which means it looks the swankiest. But that's not the only attraction. Basically, given that Athens has been inhabited continually since antiquity, when they started digging for the metro, they found layers and layers of urban settlements. So they put a lot of the artefacts excavated during the metro digging on display in the stations. In fact, in the Syntagma station, you can see an entire cross-section of the layers of settlements.

My only complaint is that the line is rather limited if you are travelling to the suburbs. But if you live fairly close to the centre of the city, the metro is great. In fact, a friend told me of how everyone takes the metro to go clubbing on weekends, parties all night and then takes the first metro the next morning to go back home.

Delhi: For the last two decades, Delhi has been the pits as far as public transportation is concerned. When I was a little kid, and the city was still a small, charmingly provincial and yet surprisingly cosmopolitan, compact, green urban centre, the Delhi Transportation Corporation (DTC) ran a tight ship.

The buses were never overcrowded, they were on time and anyway, the distances between destinations were hardly more than 20 minutes each way (I know I sound like a fossil saying this, but I'm talking early 1980s here, not generations back in time).

The immigration explosion of the 1980s changed all that. Suddenly, neighbourhoods started sprouting up in all directions overnight, the buses became frighteningly overcrowded and getting from point A to B became a nightmare. The government solution to this was to privatize public transport, which brought the horrific Redline service to the city (since renamed Blueline) with badly trained, reckless drivers and a tremendous rise in road accidents.

And then, something happened in the last 5 years to dramatically lift the public transportation scene in the city and relieve some of its worst traffic bottlenecks. The Delhi metro has been a life-saver for Delhi residents, and is as clean, punctual and well-run as any metro in any city I've been to.

Hopefully, we keep our long exemplary record of wrecking civic infrastructure at bay and the metro continues to function as well as it has in the last few years (being Indian and knowing my countrymen, I'm not so optimistic). The line is being extended to other parts of the city, and the existing lines have drastically cut down travel times to older parts of the city - which means that I have great access to the perfume shops, jewelery makers and kebab sellers of Chandni Chowk.

Chicago: Well, you can take a light rail from the University of Chicago to the Art Institute and the downtown which is great. In fact the best thing about Chicago was that every single major attraction of the city was so accessible if you were staying anywhere near the University. I love how the University is seamlessly integrated into the best parts of urban life there.

Which is all I really know about their transport system. Others tell me it could be better so I believe them.

Bucharest: I loved my time in Bucharest. Yes, there are plenty of hideous Soviet style concrete buildings. I guess they don't bother me as much because I saw plenty of crappy apartment blocks growing up in Delhi. What a lot of people seem to willfully ignore is that Bucharest has a lot of fantastic turn of the century French-influenced architecture that has been surprisingly well-preserved. And it has a breathtakingly beautiful lake in the middle of the city. And lots of public parks.

However, throughout my stay in the city, I never took the metro. Yep, not once. I'm puzzled why this was the case. Perhaps it was because my dollars went a long way and taxis were very reasonable (I've never felt so rich in my entire life as I felt in Bucharest. Taxis everywhere, dining in the finest restaurants in town, buying flowers and the finest glassware for myself just 'cause). But I think I vaguely remember my friend telling me that the metro is fairly complicated to use if you're a tourist and cannot speak Romanian.

In fact, not one person in our large 30+ group ever took the metro even when they wandered off to explore the city by themselves. That really says something, no?

San Francisco: The funny thing is, I've been to SF so many times and I've never taken the BART to get into the city. Hopefully, sometime soon in the future. I've taken buses within the city and they are great. The Bay Area in general though is as bad a public transport nightmare as Southern California is (and don't you snooty NorCal folks tell me otherwise).

And now for the "I have no idea how you grew so huge when no one can get from point A to B"

Los Angeles: Bad rep. Well deserved. The boyfriend was desperate to take the metro to work when he worked in Chatsworth, an hour away by car from downtown LA (two hours in peak traffic). He was in for a rude shock when he checked the fare. The daily fare worked out to be some $10 and the monthly pass was a ridiculous $300. The worst part was - the last train left Chatsworth at around 6:30 pm. So basically if you are even a little bit late at work, you're royally screwed. No thanks.

Same story for the other lines. The evening service is sparse and at times erratic, the trains are no faster than cars because, get this, they stop at traffic signals because there's no grade separation (I've never seen something so nonsensical anywhere else in the world).

I think people are slowly coming to their senses as the I-10 and I-405 freeways are virtual parking lots all through the work day. The weird thing is, I distinctly remember that when I first came to LA, there was very sparse weekend traffic on the freeways. Now even on the weekends the freeways are jam packed. Yeah, sometimes, all this laissez faire business gets to its logical conclusion and bites folks in the ass. Hopefully the Westside line is completed before things get so dire that it becomes faster to walk from downtown LA to Santa Monica than to drive.

Class Anxiety

2008-07-28T17:14:00.000-07:00

My family's what you would call solidly middle-class (lower middle-class, if you ask my father, but then, he has a self-deprecation thing going on. He's a mechanical engineer who gets a kick out of referring to himself as a mechanic).

My father spent an entire lifetime working in research labs, a respectable but not exactly well-remunerated profession. Till my early 20s we lived in a succession of rental apartments that were neat and cozy, but cramped and not exactly sophisticated.

My mother's idea of livening up the walls was hanging up the paper calendars we received every year from our local grocery shop, that featured the very definition of Indian calendar art - Raja Ravi Varma inspired paintings of gods and goddesses.

Scene I:

Delhi, India
Time: A few years ago

I am at the the house of a colleague for lunch. I know her as someone who had spent years working for non-profit organizations, extremely down-to-earth and charming, with an air of subtle sophistication about her.

The house is a large impressive bungalow, laid out with impeccable taste decorated with chic furniture, luscious carpets and huge expanses of impressive paintings.

This was a mini-museum of artwork by contemporary and early 20th century Indian artists. Canvases by Raza, paintings and high backed chairs by Ara, a massive canvas by Hussain with his signature horses, and on one wall a gorgeous and unmistakable Jamini Roy. My boss sees my awed expression and whispers to me - "It's all original artwork - that's a real Jamini Roy".

I walked around the house in a haze, never had I been in a house where wealth and taste had been so exquisitely combined.
....................................................................................................

When I came back home that evening and entered our apartment, a pall of gloom came over me. And when I saw the glossy fading Jamini Roy print in our living room, hot tears rolled down my cheeks.

My parents had to scrimp and save to buy our sofa, our dining table, the show case and everything else that had been lovingly assembled bit by bit in that apartment. And yet despite imbuing it with all the affection and regard of a beloved home, that day it fell woefully short and looked impossibly tacky in comparison to what I had just experience. I think I may have just ruined my contentment in middle-class comfort and conformity at that very moment.

Despite this, the very solid middle-class values of thrift and valuing a solid intellectual education imparted by my parents have stayed on. To this day I cannot bring myself to buy something full price at a store. And I have a nagging, compulsive need to read something, anything on a daily basis.

Yet often, I reflect on my life as a process of becoming, of constant self-evolution. And over the years I've narrowed down to a fairly stable image of what I'd like to evolve into.

I can see that woman clearly - she has an advantage of stellar academic education, but has also improved herself through reading and a strong intellectual curiosity.

She is elegant, well-groomed and always impeccably dressed. Her taste in clothes is understated, refined and yet cool and chic. She has a sophisticated palate, she understands wine and fine tea, tries different cuisines and is incredibly well-travelled.

She has a quirkiness to her, she memorizes botanical names of flowers for fun (that crosses over from quirky to batty I guess), and she humours her bohemian side from time to time by running off to work in the kitchen of a little island tavern in Greece.

This almost sounds like a caricature. Actually, it's more like a pastiche, a collection of every interesting quality that I've collected from books that I've read, films I've watched, women I've observed.

And sometimes I think that there are others who receive an impressive head start to becoming this idealized person, given their peculiar combination of wealth, not excessive but sufficient and savoir vivre or a cosmopolitan upbringing.

In one of his columns for The Hindustan Times Sunday supplement, the journalist Vir Sanghvi spoke of going for vacations as a child to Geneva with his parents. There, they would always go to this one restaurant and he would order steak frites every time.

It still sounds such an incredibly remote and cosmopolitan experience to me, though by now I've travelled to Geneva, a charming city (Switzerland as a whole I could take or leave).

I also find it terribly exotic when my boyfriend tells me how he used to go skiing with his family in Austria as a child. For him it was just another family vacation and frankly he infinitely preferred going to some small seaside town in Greece, but to me it is the glimpse of a life I never had, and I sometimes wonder how it would have been to live such a life.

Perhaps I would have been less unsure of myself, less trying. more confident in my judgment, and be able to affect the blasé disdain of someone who has seen it all, and knows it all. Despite all the veneer of worldly sophistication that I've tried to assiduously create over the years, inside it all is a middle class girl who's very unsure of where she fits in.

For instance, when we go out to eat, I can never be the one who is presented with the uncorked wine bottle for approval. Even if I feel the wine smells like vinegar (a very remote possibility, but what if), I'd never be able to say it aloud. I'm very diffident about my choice in clothes. I can always identify chicness and elegance in others, but never seem sure of it applying to my own style.

I become acutely conscious and hypercritical of what I wear when I have to attend an exclusive or formal event. I feel gauche and silly, often unable to make decent conversation because I am constantly holding myself back from making a faux pas and exposing myself as coarse and unrefined.

And yet, there are times when I realize that sometimes, in the midst of this grand self-improvement project, I forget those things that make me what I am and to be comfortable in my own skin (as the French say - "bien dans sa peau").

Scene II:

Location: Los Angeles, CA
Time: Two years back

The residence of the Consul General of Finland is the venue of a reception on the opening day of conference on mobile technologies. Why the Finnish Consul? Well, because Nokia is Finnish and the Finnish government seems to be a very enthusiastic and strong promoter of Finnish business interests.

The event is perhaps one of the most high powered events I've ever attended, with several very senior executives from all the major players in the mobile industry including Deutsche Telekom, SKII, Sony, Nokia, Motorola, etc.

So apprehensive was I of not embarrassing myself that I went out and bought a brand new shirt the night before and got my hair cut and blow dried (usually I'm too cheap to pay extra for blow drying at the salon. No, strike that - usually I'm too cheap for a professional haircut and just let my hair grow like a flower child).

The Consul General's house was in what is perhaps the most exclusive neighbourhood in all of Los Angeles - a gorgeous cul de sac in Bel Air discretely gated off from the access road, set within a profusion of flower hedges and vines. Keeping the handsome house company on either side were the homes of consul generals from Sweden and Denmark, thus creating their own little Nordic corner in this part of LA.

Let me put in a caveat before I proceed further. Mere wealth never really impresses me. Last year I went for a party to the house of a multi-millionaire several times over who has an outlandish mansion in Pacific Palisades (neck and neck with Bel Air for being the most exclusive address in LA). The house is a monument to kitsch, with large classical Corinthian columns supporting ceilings achingly weighed down with enormous chandeliers.

Large Renaissance era paintings look down on a jumble of Qing dynasty artifacts from China, a huge Gothic style library is filled with books that look like they've never been read, and the floors are covered with carpets that are an insult to the fine art of Persian carpet weaving. Bear in mind that the house was not bought in this current state, but built to the taste and specification of its current owner.

If ever there was evidence that money cannot buy taste, this was it. Later, the boyfriend and I had a good laugh over the tackiness of it all. If you want to see the Indian equivalent of such kitschy and tasteless home decor, check out the pictures of Shahrukh Khan's home here (apart from the overdose of very trashy versions of Louis XV chairs in Shahrukh's home, the homes are surprisingly similar).

Anyway, enough digression. The Finnish Consul General's home was at the opposite end of the taste and refinement spectrum. There was plenty of dark wood, for the cupboards, the dining table and sofas. Lots of very interesting art work by contemporary Scandinavian artists and a cool collection of antique Swedish porcelain dolls. This was a distinguished house that made you tread with light steps and speak in hushed tones as you delicately nibble your canapé and sip your wine.

And in front of me, I saw people who looked so incredibly worldly and sophisticated, the global emissaries of a global industry, mingling and talking with ease. Suddenly I felt very, very unsure. I wanted to sidle up to a group that seemed to be engrossed in a very interesting and lively conversation on one side. But I just couldn't muster up the courage to do so.

Throughout most of the evening, I wandered aimlessly, once in a while striking a conversation with a friend of mine who was also present at the reception, sending him off after a few minutes to network with the impressive roster of guests there. But I myself just couldn't be that elegant, relaxed, charming and witty girl that I always long to be.

Towards the end of the evening, I had to call up my boyfriend to have him come and pick me up. It was then that I found out that I had no signal on my cellphone. I asked a guest standing next to me if I could borrow his cellphone. Surprise, surprise, no reception on his phone either. In fact the entire house had no mobile signal whatsoever. Imagine the irony of this happening at a reception for a mobile technologies conference.

One of the servers saw what my problem was and led me to a room with a land line phone I could use. I called my boyfriend and he promised to be there in an hour. When I hung up and looked around, I saw the room had about 4-5 really quirky, unique chairs lying about. These were chairs that were minimally elegant, but with a twist or an interesting shape. I ran my hands over the chairs feeling their strange undulations.

"Do you like them?"

I started and looked up and saw a lovely older woman standing there, someone I recognized as the Finnish Consul's wife who had greeted us earlier.

TM: "Yes, they are very cool and interesting. Who are they by?"

Consul's wife : "Oh, these here are by Alvar Aalto."

TM: "Alvar Aalto? That's incredible! I love his architectural work, though I've never seen any furniture by him"

Consul's wife: "Yes, he designed a lot of chairs, and glass objects as well."

TM: "By the way, is that porcelain doll collection downstairs your personal collection too? That is so cool!"

Consul's wife: "Yes, that's mine. Do you want to see some of the other artwork in the house?"

And so off we went, chatting animatedly, on a guided tour of all the art that the couple had collected over the years and used to decorate the house. Some were big name Scandinavian artists, but mostly they were works by obscure artists in Finland and the US whose works the couple had appreciated and acquired.

These were people whose house was a reflection of their personal good taste, who had used their comfortable means well to achieve this. And this is where I found her a kindred spirit. She was what I wanted to be. Elegant, well-read, well-travelled, with impeccable taste and with the warmth and generosity of putting her unsure little guest completely at ease. At that moment, I become quite oblivious of my dress, my hair, my very middle class commonness and was engrossed in this mutual appreciation of interesting art.

I often reflect on this very American desire of mine to re-invent myself. I am still chasing this elusive ideal of being the woman who in my imagination has it all. But there is also a gentle voice in my head that reminds me that perhaps it is not half so bad to be what I am, with all my imperfections, so very stubbornly middle class.

A few years back, I was visiting my family in Delhi and I was showing them pictures of my trips through Switzerland, Belgium and Germany. Also included in the set of photographs were a few photos I had taken of an emerald green pond in my father's village when I had visited the village earlier. After looking at the photographs of Brussels and Geneva, my father turned to me and with a disarming smile said

"TM, all this Geneva and Brussels is fine, but isn't that pond the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

And I smiled back and said:

"Yes Baba, it is the beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Train Adventures - Germany

2008-06-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

I really need to write this down. I realised I was forgetting details when I just couldn't remember the name of the protagonist any more. Sigh...is there anyway to unload useless trivia from our minds so we only remember the essential?

This adventure began in the Venizelos Airport in Athens, Greece. It was the summer of 2003 and I was about to fly to Frankfurt. I was attending a conference in a small town in Belgium named Leuven (Louvain in French) and because of some convoluted travel plans, I was flying to Frankfurt and then taking a train into Belgium.

At times I have an almost cavalier attitude to travel. This is especially true when I'm in countries where I tend to almost reflexively trust the transportation system. In my mind I was to disembark in Frankfurt airport and then immediately be whisked away by train to Leuven. Hard to believe, I know, but I didn't even check to see if there were indeed trains going from Frankfurt to Leuven.

A short, uneventful flight took me to Frankfurt and I landed at 7 pm Frankfurt time. I found out that the there was a train station right inside the airport where I could take long distance trains. Score one for German efficiency! My faith in German efficiency was a bit shaken when I was informed by a sullen looking ticket clerk that the next train to Brussels (with a stop in Leuven) would be next morning at 5 a.m. Umm...what do you mean there are no trains at all times of the night. You're supposed to be German and efficient, remember?

Anyway, I resigned to my fate of spending most of the night at Frankfurt airport, which is really not as exciting as it sounds (or maybe it doesn't even sound exciting). I slumped on a bench and spent several hours just listening to constant flight announcements. This was peak vacation travel season and there were budget flights leaving throughout the night. At some point, the announcements faded out and the terminal became almost quiet.

Apart from the fact that I was all alone and the sole keeper and defender of my luggage, I have a terribly hard time falling asleep in public places. I cannot sleep on a plane and can barely sleep on trains. So I spent all night wide awake, not a wink of sleep throughout this time. With an hour to go for my train departure, I trudged down to the train station below the terminal.

It was still dark and the train station was lit up with harsh neon lights. I realized that besides me the only one there was a skinny man in his early 20s, who looked like he could be Italian. He shot me a sheepish grin, but I was just uncomfortable about being alone on a deserted train station with him and just looked the other way.

After what seemed like eternity, the train rolled into the station. I walked towards it and with great effort started hoisting my suitcase into the compartment. But I had a suitcase that seemed to be filled with rocks (just my clothes and papers dammit) and I was struggling with it. Suddenly, I felt the suitcase being effortlessly lifted into the compartment. I turned around, and there was the man with the sheepish grin , grinning even more this time. In a second he was inside the compartment, and turned around and pulled me in.

I was a little stunned at his move, but glad to finally be inside my train. He motioned me to follow him, dragged my suitcase into the compartment vestibule and walked into the first empty coupe. He hoisted my suitcase up into the luggage hold and then with his happy grin intact, parked himself onto the berth, motioning me to the one opposite him. All this had been accomplished without a word exchanged between us.

I felt compelled to speak, so thanked him for his help with the suitcase. He was eager for the ice to be broken, so began a rapid-fire round of questions in broken English -

My name? Where to? Where from? What for?

I answered them and found out that my companion (let's call him Hasan, I'm so ashamed I forgot his real name) was originally from Algeria, but worked as a musician in Switzerland. He was traveling to Belgium to see his mother who lived there. All this was communicated with great difficulty as he spoke very little English. He really wanted to talk to me and asked me if I knew any of these languages

Arabic? No, not really.

Parlez vous francais? No, sorry.

Espanol? Nopes

He cursed in frustration. Here we were, with not a single language in common except an English vocabulary of maybe 100 odd words. But none the less, we tried. Bit by bit, with some effort, we created a pidgin vocabulary of English supplemented with Arabic, French and Spanish words that I might reasonably guess the meaning of.

I found out that he was frustrated by the attack of Islamic fundamentalists on musicians in Algeria.

Hasan: TM, Islam - good, fundamentalist - bad, very bad.

TM: You really love music, no?

Hasan (eyes lit up): Oui, oui - No I mean yes. I love music. Old Arabic music

TM: Like Umm Kulthum? Or Farid el Atrache?

This time his eyes were positively shining with joy.

He: You know! You know them! Wait, I give you something

With this he started fumbling into his backpack and then produced a cassette tape that was obviously a mixed tape he had made himself.

Hasan: Take.

TM: What's this?

Hasan Oh, all songs - Umm Kulthum, Farid el Atrache, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, all, all.

TM: I can't take this. It's your tape.

Hasan: No, no take, please take.

And with this he pushed the tape into my hands and refused to take it back. I put away the tape.

Hasan: Ok, how old?

TM: You mean, how old am I?

Hasan: No, no - me, how old?

TM: Oh - I don't know, you look like you could be 24.

Hasan: Ha ha, I'm 22. OK, so how old?

TM: Huh?

Hasan: You.

TM: I'm 27.

Hasan: Yallah!!

TM: What happened?

Suddenly he was clutching his forehead with his hand and blushing and laughing.

TM: O....K...You thought I was younger, right?

Hasan (still laughing): Yes

TM: How old did you think I was?

Hasan: 22. But ok. It's ok. 27 - no problem.

TM: You're funny. Why did you even want to know?

Hasan: Boyfriend?

TM: Yes

He kept grinning. And blushed a bit more. At this point my sleep deprivation started catching up. I could barely sit up, so I lay down on the berth. He did the same. And with his broken English started telling me how happy he was to visit his mother, how he missed her, how he wished he wasn't in Switzerland but with her in Belgium. And then suddenly, he said

Hasan: TM, I wish you all the happiness, all you want.

TM (surprised and a little affected): I wish the same for you.

At this point, my eyes closed involuntarily, but sleep would not come. I was shivering with cold. My scatter brained travel plans meant that I was dressed for a Mediterranean summer in Germany, and to add to my misery, the vestibule AC was on full blast. This problem could have been solved by closing the coupe door, but Hasan had kept the door open to make me feel comfortable.

I had shut my eyes and was shivering for a minute, when suddenly I felt something warm being placed on me. I looked up to see that Hasan was draping his jacket over me. When I looked at him, he patted my head and said

Hasan: Sh sh! Sleep, sleep.

TM: But you'll be cold

Hasan: No, no, no cold

TM: Hasan, please.

Hasan: No, no, sleep.

I had no energy to argue. And as soon as the warmth of the jacket hit me, I was transported to the sleep I had missed so intently in the last few hours. I must have slept for only about an hour or so when I woke up again. I felt refreshed and decided to sit up and look outside.

Hasan was sleeping on his berth, and we were passing through the gorgeous Rhineland. Out of my train window I could see the lovely Rhine river, gleaming with the morning light and at short distances, there were castles and forts on top of small hills in the distance. Very surreal and very German.

Hasan turned in his berth and opened his eyes.

TM: Hasan, look, isn't it gorgeous?

Hasan raised his head and craned his neck to look out. And then with a glum look put his back on his berth.

Hasan: Eh, still Germany.

TM: But so beautiful, no?

Hasan: Eh.

And then he turned away and went back to sleep.

How odd! He had absolutely no appreciation for the beauty of the landscape. He just didn't care.

I kept looking out and admiring silently. At some point, the train veered away from the Rhine and the landscape changed. The hills and castles were replaced by meadows and grazing cows. After a little while we pulled into a station and I missed catching the name. After a few minutes, a train superintendent with a jolly face walked in and said:

Bonjour mademoiselle et monsieur! Welcome to Belgium. Passports please.

Hasan woke up as soon as he heard French being spoken, and his electrifying smile returned.

Hasan: Bonjour, bonjour!

We both showed our passports and the superintendent left. After a long time, the train started rolling. Now it was Hasan's turn to get excited, he was glued to the window, his eyes wide, breathing in the landscape.

Hasan: TM, so nice, so nice, no? L'Belgique, it's l'Belgique!

TM: Err...yeah, lots of cows.

Hasan: Nice - very nice. I like l'Belgique. Don't like Switzerland.

It was then I realized that since he lived in the German speaking part of Switzerland, he had transfered his dislike of Switzerland to Germany as well. French was his second language, so Belgium was like a second home. Besides, his mother was here.

His station was fast approaching. Mine was to come 20 minutes after his.

Hasan: What number in Louvain, I call you.

TM: I don't know. I don't have a place yet.

Hasan: Ok...Ok...I give my mother's number. You call, ok?

TM: Hasan, I don't promise. I really don't know if I'll be able to call. Is that Ok?

Hasan: Ok, ok. But try.

TM: I will try.

Hasan: I never see you again, no?

TM: Maybe not.

Hasan: Good luck then, yeah?

TM: To you too Hasan. Take care. And I'm sure one day you'll be a famous musician.

He smiled and glowed. After nearly a year, he was visiting his mother. He couldn't wait to see her. I sat alone in my coupe, waving goodbye to Hasan who was on the platform now, wondering about the surreality of this life, of the kindness of strangers, and of those whom we shall never meet again.

It doesn't matter, no? There is magic in the ephemerality of it all, the harsh glare of quotidian life destroys it. I never called Hasan. I just didn't want to.

Marriage Season

2008-05-23T16:34:00.001-07:00

My Yahoo email account settings show me as still living in India. Not an inconvenience at all, especially since I get to see lovely ads such as this flash on my screen.

A banner ad for BharatMatrimony.com, showing the beaming face of an Indian woman, with the headline and tag -

1.2 Crore Partner Choices
Should you look elsewhere?
Your partner is waiting for you on BharatMatrimony"

Lovely - BharatMatrimony - now exclusively for bisexuals!

Financial Bloodbath

2008-03-16T22:52:00.001-07:00

Ok, I won't lie. I'm absolutely stunned at this news about the Bear Stearns buyout at $2 per share. Darn, wasn't Bear Stearns trading at $30 per share till even yesterday? Well granted that this was after a free fall from around $150 per share sometime in the middle of last year when sub-prime wasn't a term that had imprinted itself into public consciousness.

Which then begs the question - is Bear Stearns the only major investment bank out there to be in such serious trouble? Weren't the Bear executives, just like the executives of all major investment banks swearing up and down that the effects of the sub-prime loans, credit crunch, market downturn etc.,etc. were rather negligible? I mean, damn it, look at this statement from the Yahoo article

JPMorgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns represents roughly 1 percent of what the investment bank was worth just 16 days ago. It marked a 93.3 percent discount to Bear Stearns' market capitalization as of Friday, and roughly a 98.8 percent discount to its book value as of Feb. 29.

How is that even possible unless assets were ridiculously overvalued (I'm looking at you creative accountants)? Hmm...maybe I should have taken those Chartered Accountancy exams anyway (not too late to get a CPA though). Accountants shall inherit the earth.

You know what, much as I try, I just cannot squeeze out even a shred of schadenfreude about this. I mean sure, investment b(w)ankers have a reputation for arrogance and general assholic behaviour, and at least the top executives at Bear Stearns deserve to be skewered for their general incompetence and short-sighted focus on fat cat bonuses while running the company to the ground. One cannot talk enough about the moral hazards of playing professional investment banker with someone else's money.

However, Bear employs 14000 employees, and there is great uncertainty about the future of those jobs, given that no one has a clue as to what exactly JP Morgan wishes to do with the company. This is a distress sale, and Bear Stearns couldn't possible dictate any of its terms.

Tomorrow brings much palpitation and trepidation to the financial markets. The fallout of the Bear Stearns affair promises to be messy. This is where it helps to be the over-educated poor. One can watch with bemused disinterest and sigh over human folly. No money, no cry.

I Smell the Wildflowers

2008-02-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

Some semblance of a social life returns after the endless agonies of defending and revising a dissertation, job hunting (that agony persists), exams and just general mayhem of all sorts. My personal posts have been a bit infrequent lately, which is not by design, because those are the ones I love writing the most, as I imagine what it might be like to read them a decade later and reminisce on the way we were.

Had an incredible, amazing hiking trip in Palos Verdes last Saturday and cannot wait to go back hiking the coming weekend. This despite the fact that my shins were so sore that I could barely walk from one end of my room to the other. How odd that the pain hit me with the lag of one day - not on Saturday or even on Sunday, but on Monday morning when the walk to the kitchen became a drag. But my shins are spoilt - they haven't been used and abused so rigorously in a long time - despite my regular strength training workouts.

But enough with the pain and let's focus on the joy - a quiet, reflective, ruminating sort of joy - the sort that fills you up and makes you slump back on a grassy patch with wildflower and sunshine all around you and think, what if I gather these moments by the armfuls and carry them home and set them in a corner so they never leave.

Palos Verdes is an exceptionally pretty corner of Southern California. That's saying a lot, because Southern California has a lot of pretty corners, never mind the smog and bleak commercial and industrial edifices of its urban core. Once you start losing yourself in the mountains, beaches and forest trails of this region, there's a lot of unexpected beauty, tempered with the jagged edges of rocks, homogeneous highways and dusty trails.

We started off as a big group, but soon split up into two, because S, E-M and I wanted to hike all the way down to the beach, whereas the others weren't up for this unscripted adventure. We wound our way down and on our way found an older Korean woman bent over and foraging the abundant mountain greens, deftly cutting them up with an experienced hand. I have always wanted to go on a wild mushroom gathering expedition when they are in season, and mentally added identifying and plucking wild greens to that list as well.

When we finally managed to climb, scamper, and leap our way down to the beach, it wasn't as picture perfect as it had seemed from the top of the mountain. For one, the fine gleaming sand turned out to be small pebbles, fairly treacherous to walk on and I nearly twisted my ankle on them (prompting a mean response from the boyfriend that I'm more clumsy cow than mountain goat). And then jutting out from the cliffs surrounding the beach were these gnarly, almost prehistoric looking black rocks, fascinating to me, but definitely not in the mould of pretty-pretty beaches that are all sun and sand and deep blue ocean.

Now that we had climbed down, there was this matter of hauling ourselves back to the top where our car was parked, an impossible feat given how our joints were creaking in protest. We asked Em and Ferry, who had gone with the other party to come fetch us, and giving them directions was a challenge because we had no earthly idea where we truly were. This started a whole sequence of wrong turns, misguided detours, and Em and Ferry proceeding to get hopelessly lost, leaving us with the dim prospect of having to spend the night shivering on a roadside bench being lashed by the cold ocean winds.

S and I are generally very sanguine under these sort of circumstances - S more so because he's sailed under stormy conditions so does not get perturbed easily. He proceeded to sprawl on the bench and take a nap, while E-M went on to get more and more anxious and stressed and alternatively badgered Em on the phone and then S and I about what a terrible mess we were in. In the midst of all this chaos, I found my moment of calm because I noticed that the sun was setting in the sea and its last rays seemed to skim over the mountains, bathing them with a precious fleeting hue. It's a slim window of time that you see this phenomenon and then its all gone, as the sun sets and there's quiet darkness all around.

Finally, after what seemed like eternity, Em and Ferry managed to find us and we piled into the car and headed straight to a restaurant because we were famished and proceeded to gnaw off our lamb bones, wolf down our kebabs and polish off every bit of rice. Well, there go any calories we might have lost with all that hiking.

Gadha Haathi ek Samaan, Lekin Mera Amrika Mahaan

2008-02-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

Scarlett Johansson called yesterday. I wouldn't have recognized, but she did say her name right at the outset. And today Stevie Wonder called. His voice is unmistakable, and besides he started off with the cheesiest cliche of all - "I just called to say...........".

Celebrities love my boyfriend. He's the most precious political commodity of all - the independent voter. His phone's been bombarded with recorded messages, mostly from the Obama campaign. If their organization and zeal in LA is anything to go by, Hillary should be very, very afraid.

Speaking of voting, all these inane propositions that they manage to insert into the ballot is such a perversion of democracy. As the boyfriend says, if you want me to make all the public policy decisions, why the hell did I elect you jokers in the first place? We spent all morning poring into the proposition list, trying to make sense of them and decide what he should vote on each.

Apart from the celebrity flavour (which is also bland and generic, Hollywood style), I find American elections rather boring. By the time politicians get churned through the PR and media minder mill, polished, tweaked, hammered into shape, they all start resembling each other, all standardized units of so much blah. The same sound bites, the same careful balancing of issues, the same inoffensive spiel.

And in any case, elections remind me always remind me of this incredible scene from the Pakistani stage play "Bakra Qishton Pay"

Umer Sharif is a professor who's also a politician on the side. He's rehearsing a political speech to be delivered in a gathering with his servant Sharfu.

Umer: "Bhaiyyo main agar jeet gaya to jo sadkein bani hain unko tudwa ke phir se banwa doonga"

(Friends, if I win, I will demolish the existing roads and get them rebuilt)

Sharfu (looking shocked): "Yeh kyon?" (Why?)

Umer: "Bas unke thekedaar ne to kama liya, ab hamara thekedaar kaise kamayega?"

(Well, the previous political party's contractors made money off the road contracts, now our guys have to make some dough too)

So m0ve over Halliburton, there's a new game in town!

The video deserves to be seen in full, so here it is, the political speech section:

Less Culture, More Vulture and a Whole Lot of Bong

2008-01-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl, my Ma sat me down and said:

"TM, we Bengalis are very cultured people. Everyone looks up to us because of our culture"

TM nodded her head, and then thought:

Ma, if we are so cultured, how do you explain the metaphysical paradox that is Bappi Lahiri?

How do you explain the cultured boys in your village who aspire to the hairstyle of a Disco Dancer Mithun and the moves of a Street Dancer Govinda?

And so began a lifetime of contrarianism, starting with the resolve to take the piss out of Bong pomposity.

Of course Mithun-da is culture and so is Bappi-da (Kreeeeeshna euuu aaaaar thaaaa gretesst musiciaaaaaaan obh theeeeees bhaarld). But that's not what the average Bong middle class person thinks when they think culture. They think Tagore, Shantiniketan, and perhaps Uday and Ravi Shankar.

My Ma, when faced with Bappi-da's crooning away with unmitigated joy on TV with all his jiggly bits and a king's ransom worth of bling on his body would make a face and say - "Bangalir Bodnaam" (a disgrace to Bengalis). Since I take especial perverse pleasure in the discomfiture of prudish, self-righteous middle class Bengalis over anything that they perceive as an embarrassment to Bengali culture, I decided to assemble an entire rogues gallery of such characters.

So let's go forth and revel in the glory of these assorted Bangalir Bodnaam -

Exhibit A: Bappi-da

Image Courtesy: TheHindiMusic.com

Bappi-da is cool (shut up - any resemblance between "Karma Chameleon" and "Tera Mera Pehla Yaraana" is purely coincidental). The man's probably single-handedly responsible for the recent upswing in gold prices - Bappi-da is updating his wardrobe.

His chashma may be Versace, his gold may be haggled from the souks of Dubai, but you know Bappi-da is a true-blue Bong because his "roshogolla" accent has never changed one bit since the day he landed in "Bombaaai nogoria" (his lateshht song).

Exhibit B: Sahara-Shri

Image Courtesy: BombayBitch.com

Ah, how the mighty have fallen. Yukta Mookhey? O Tempora, O Mores. Sahara Shri, we did not expect this from you. Where are those days of glory when you were danced with our Ms. Plastic Fantastic at your son's wedding? When all of Bollywood was at your beck and call?

When you wouldn't have had to suffer the ignominy of being fed burfi by the most has been of all has beens. You sir, were a role model for countless Bong men - now do you think any of them would consider a career in wheeling-dealing knowing that there's a Yukta Mookhey waiting at the end of it all?

Exhibit C: Ponytail

Image Courtesy: arindamchaudhuri.com

What can I possibly say about Ponytail that has not been said already in hundreds of blog posts over the last couple of years?

Well, his suits are hideous (Arindam baby, you spend so much money on PR, perhaps a splurge on a couple of Savile Row suits may not be a bad idea).

He probably wasn't a very imaginative kid, otherwise he wouldn't have named his film "Rok Sako to Rok Lo" - Stop Me if You Dare (renamed instantly by the punters as "Thok Sako to Thok Lo" - Fuck if You Can)

Exhibit D: Koena Mitra

Image Courtesy: TheBollywoodZone.com

O my fucking goodness! She still denies she's had plastic surgery! (even after featuring on the Awful Plastic Surgery blog) When will she admit to it - when she morphs into Jocelyn Wildenstein? Look honey, my Ma probably still has a few old issues of Sananda lying about. Now do you really want me to pull out one of those magazines, do a side by side comparison and have you looking like a complete idiot denying the extensive modifications you've done to your nose? And no, this is not pre-plastic surgery Koena, not even close, because this is after she had the first of her many surgeries.

Sex and the City - How did I Dodge That Bullet?

2008-01-16T13:25:00.000-08:00

I lost my virginity yesterday - my Sex and the City virginity (I've even started talking like them, eww!). Yes, I who was in my early 20s in the late 1990s - prime age for indoctrination into the ideology of Cosmo-swilling, overpriced shoe and handbag shopping and talking way more about sex than actually doing it - I had never seen an entire episode of Sex and the City till yesterday.

Most of my Sex and the City knowledge had been entirely derivative until now. I had read page after page about how SATC was the definitive show on how the young urban live their lives - women who fuck like men (whatever that means), women bonding over being single, handbags and shoes as validation of self-worth, ladies who lunch ad infinitum in the middle of a working day etc., etc.

So after the umpteenth commentary on the SATC-fication of the lives of urban young women, I couldn't hold out any more and saw a few back-to-back episodes on Youtube.

To begin, let me go ahead and say what criticism of the show I find absurd:

1. It show women as uni-dimensional creatures who are obsessed with sex and little else: Umm...hello, the show is called Sex and the City. Obviously the idea is that it is the sex lives of the women that are the highlight, while everything else sort of recedes in the background. Now it's valid to say that it's impossible to isolate a woman's sex life in this way from her professional and social life, but surely this sort of creative license is par for course.

2. These are privileged, wealthy women whose lives are in no way representative of the lives of women everywhere, or even New York women: I think the show does tend to claim that it's presenting some sort of archetypal New York women, which is sheer nonsense. But the characters are clearly a slice of very affluent New York society and surely you're not deluded enough to think that a newspaper columnist can afford to frequently buy $400 shoes (1996 prices) without some kind of family money to shore her up? These are not typical New York woman, and that is transparent enough.

So there, I have no problems with the focus of the show (sex, men, sex, sex, men) or the protagonists (independently wealthy 30-something NY women). In fact, there are a few things I liked about the show:

1. The female bonding: This, I suspect was really the main attraction of the show for a lot of women. It is also the aspect of SATC that women "get" and men don't. In the same way that most women "get" Jane Austen and most men don't. The fact that more than what is being shared, it is the act of sharing - of lazy brunches with friends and chatting about our lives (one of my favourite things to do in the whole world).

2. The urban life: I love shows where cities are as important a character as the people in the show. Also, shows where a lot of the action takes place in urban spaces during day time, with people bustling about, or just sitting down for a bit for a cappuccino, or stopping for a bit on their way to work to admire a quirky window display. These are all things I love to do and love watching people do (another beloved pastime of mine being people watching on busy sidewalks).

Oh crap, enough with the love-fest, start with the bitching already!

1. On its own, sex, men, sex, men, men, sex, gets boring after a while: It does - and I'm not just saying this because I'll be a prime contender for the Bad Sex Writing award if I ever choose to write about a sexual episode. If I recall the times when I was single and dating, the only memorable bits are the very unexpected, epiphanic, strange or absurd moments and the "so bad they're fantastic stories to tell friends" dates. The sex per se wasn't the most memorable, even when it was very good, or was only memorable when it was atrociously bad.

Like the Indian neurosurgeon who after an all day museum date said: "Wow that was a productive museum visit! Let's see, we saw two Kandinskys, three Dalis, and three....no, maybe four Picassos. And oh that room with the Georgia O'Keefes, there must have been about 10 of those, no?" (Splendid - perhaps we should spreadsheet this and calculate a Museum Visit Productivity Index?)

Or when the Spanish director and I went to get some coffee at Starbucks and an 80-something looking American man, a total stranger, turns to us and says, loud enough for everyone to hear: "So, are you two fucking"? (Yes we are, and none of your business you asshole - I never said that to him, I just shook my head and smiled).

Or the economist (who read for his PPE at Balliol dah-ling) who thought he was being oh so seductive when he said "how about a Sex on the Beach", when we were walking on the beach at night and I just burst out laughing because it sounded so incredibly cheesy and silly.

Or when I was taken to a sushi restaurant on a date by an American actor, who when asked what we would like by waitress said with a grand flourish - "Surprise us"!
Waitress: "Sorry sir, we don't serve surprise"!

And that's just me with my relatively uneventful dating history. Most actual women have far more interesting stories of quirky, eccentric men, funny or disastrous dates. Yet, most dates and relationships on SATC are cringe-worthy and cheesy, with men who are caricatures of real men and drawn from a severely limited pool of about half a dozen professions, all incredibly successful at what they do. Episode after episode of nausea-inducingly one-dimensional men with little to recommend them, which brings me to my second point.

2. The level of misanthropy that permeates the show is shocking: Yes, the men are not the focus of this show, but why oh why should they fare so badly. If they are successful they are cold, calculating, emotionally unavailable, if they are of modest means, they are wimps, the opposite of alpha-males, and unable to take charge of their lives. If it is true that the show was scripted by a team of all gay men, then perhaps they went with what they think women perceive men to be.

Are women really so disappointed in men? I mean, sure I've said the usual "all men are bastards" after a bad date, and every time I read another story about violence against women I despair of the state of our civilization. Maybe I've been incredibly lucky in life, but a majority of the men I know are sensitive, have strongly internalized values of gender equality, are not threatened by strong women, and are not callous assholes in general. Which leads me to my third point:

3. What exactly does "fucking like a man" mean?: Is it having sex for the sake of having sex? And we had to wait for 1996 New York to invent this? Are you trying to tell me no women were having guilt-less emotionally unattached sex before? And what exactly is so masculine about it? What really annoyed me was the fact that the men on the show were being portrayed as cads for doing the exact same things that the women on the show aspired to.

So if you do it, you're a nasty toxic bachelor.

If I do it, then I'm living feminist ideals

Vive la difference indeed!

There's nothing exclusively male about having sex just because you want to and not because it's a means to some other emotional or social end like a relationship or marriage. Sometimes women want a relationship and sometimes a one-night stand and shock! horror! many don't feel any guilt over this. Unlike the SATC women, who obsessively analyze every move they make in their sex lives, seeking validation in the opinions of their friends, because they are too scared to trust their own.

4. Finally, no, designer shoes and handbags are not equal to self-affirmation: Let's cut women some slack because men are hardly targeted with the kind of consumerist onslaught that women are. A tiny fraction of the advertising budget of the apparel industry is spent on men, with the lion's share spent on attracting female consumers. Ditto for cosmetics, accessories, furnishings, and so on. The men have their razor and deodorant ads and that's about it.

And quite frankly, shopping is fun, buying shoes and handbags is great instant gratification and does give you a lot of pleasure (says the woman with the shoe and dress habit). I'm not particularly opposed to consumerism - I'd much rather the rampant consumerism of the West compared with the killjoy socialism and oppressive pessimism of pre-liberalization India (a lot of those who oppose the harmful effects of Western culture are either prudes or plain jealous).

However, I'd much rather this shopping and consuming be seen as fulfilling for its own sake rather than some broad statement about how a woman is magically transformed into an urban sophisticate with savoir-vivre wearing the right kind of shoe and drinking the right cocktail.

No and no.

For one, the Cosmo sucks. Take my word for it, and I'm an immensely trustworthy source because I basically hate all cocktails. Well, in any case I haven't seen a single woman in any LA bar order a Cosmo in the last 5 years, so perhaps it's fallen out of favour anyway and women dread ordering it for fear of being labeled SATC wannabes.

As for the shoes, of course you should buy as many designer shoes as you want if that's what you want. But the whole thing is quite a scam. These shoes are way, way overpriced. I have Louboutins and Pradas that were purchases marked down 90 per cent and I still felt I paid a little bit too much for them (one of the perks of being in LA is the Barney's Warehouse and other designer sales).

My absolute favourite higher end shoes are the ones made by the French ballet shoe company Repetto that also makes primarily ballet flats and other shoes. They cost a fraction of designer brands and are much prettier and more comfortable (and even then I buy them only when they are heavily discounted. I'm cheap that way). For everyday shoes I adore a lot of the stuff at Payless Shoes. $9.99 silver ballet flats baby!

But fuck, that's not even the point, no? The point is that a sophisticated mind cannot be purchased off the racks of Barneys and Bergdorfs. You can wear all the Chanel and all the Balenciaga you want, that still won't make you cool by association (and anyway, Chanel is for society matrons). This sounds positively old-fashioned but what happened to reading a book or learning an art goddamit? Who are we more likely to be impressed by: a woman who burns through her savings with a designer shopping spree or someone whose effortless charm and grace is the result of a lifelong devotion to intellect and aesthetics?

Quite frankly, in real life, I wouldn't want to be an acquaintance, much less friends with any of the four main SATC characters. They are all equally vacuous and boring (besides, Sarah Jessica Parker's little girl voice would grate on my nerves in 5 minutes flat).

And yet, somehow it is these SATC women who have become the definite urban women of our age. The quintessential modern single girl whose life revolves around fashion, parties, shopping, men, sex and work (not necessarily in that order, but work comes last any which way you line these up).

The Man Who Caused an International Incident

2008-01-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

Here's some news that had me and the boyfriend in splits just a few minutes ago:

From Yahoo News:

Gulf Prankster Possible Message Source

Relevant excerpts

A threatening radio message at the end of a video showing Iranian patrol boats swarming near U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf may have come from a prankster rather than from the Iranian vessels, the Navy Times newspaper has reported.

And the most interesting bit of all:

Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, said the Navy was still trying to determine the source of the transmission but believed it was related to the Iranian actions.

"The Iranian boats were coming close to the ships, making aggressive maneuvers and objects were being dropped into the water," she told The Associated Press.

However, the Navy Times, a weekly newspaper published by the Gannett company, quoted several veteran sailors as speculating the transmission could have come from a radio heckler, widely known among mariners by the ethnically insulting term "the Filipino Monkey."(emphasis mine)

Now why exactly is this hilarious to us? Well, therein lies a story. My boyfriend goes on weeklong (or even longer) sailing trips in Greece whenever he's on vacation there. I had the opportunity to be on three such trips, two short ones in 2002 and a longer one in 2003. Our longer trip involved a fantastic nine-day cruise through the Aegean sea from Athens to Santorini and back, stopping at a few islands on the way but mostly spending time at sea.

It's a fabulous experience, but very, very intense. It helps if you don't get seasick under some pretty trying conditions (a very choppy sea with no wind can knock all but the most hardy out), are not picky about having to pee in bathrooms built to Popeye and Olive Oyl specifications (think half the size of airplane bathrooms) and do not want to cry for your Mama when the wind blows so ferociously that you think there's no way your creaky wooden sailboat can survive the onslaught.

On the plus side - sleeping on the sailboat decks under the stars as the boat is lapped gently by waves on the harbour, access to gorgeous secluded beaches with no road or trail access, taking showers on the boat deck, the excitement and frenzy of scampering across the boat to pull ropes when tacking or jibing, and those incredible moments of solitude and silence when the wind stops blowing in the middle of an ink-black sea with no human presence in sight within miles.

So there's the poetic, and then there's the prosaic, and then there are the bizarre and bizarrely funny moments within the prosaic.

On our Santorini trip, we traversed the Aegean Sea, that seas a fair amount of cargo ship and tanker traffic, given that this the access route to Greece's biggest port Piraeus. My boyfriend S is as true blue a sailor as you can get, and there's no greater joy for him than to pour over nautical maps and write captain's logs. He would insist on keeping the radio on, tuned to the unencrypted frequency used by sailors to casually communicate with each other.

It was the first day of our voyage and on our radio channel we had picked up the conversation between two Pakistani sailors on different cargo ships who randomly contacted each other and then proceeding to chat. This was particularly interesting to me as I was the only one on our boat who understood Urdu so I listened intently as they spoke of their ships, where they were going, what food they got on the ships, what cargo they carried and so on.

And then suddenly, unexpectedly, it happened.

There was no mistaking what was being yelled -

"Filipino monkey! Filipino monkey!"

And so it went on five or six times more, before the sailors could recover from their conversation being so rudely interrupted.

And then one of the Pakistanis retorted

"You bastard, I'm not Filipino, I'm Pakistani"

But there was no stopping this fellow. On and on he went.

"Filipino monkey! Filipino monkey!"

The Pakistanis then resorted to the most gentlemanly course open to them and proceed to cuss the hell out of this fellow in the choicest Punjabi expletives. S had noticed the drone of this anonymous radio user (and how the conversation had switched from Urdu to English) and came down.

S: "What's going on? Who's screaming?

TM: "I have no idea. He just randomly barged into their conversation and started abusing"

S: "That's weird. I'm sure I've heard this same guy on this radio frequency say this before as well."

That incident kept repeating for the next two days that we were close enough to Piraeus. Invariably, at some point during the day, the two Pakistanis would use the radio to chat and the anonymous guy would barge in and constantly chant "Filipino monkey". The guy was not only batshit crazy, but he seemed to get no sleep at all. For no matter what time of the day the Pakistanis chose to chat, sure enough, within minutes our abuser would appear and start insulting them.

This would then blow out into a full scale insult war with the Pakistanis responding with choice words in Punjabi. As we sailed closer to Santorini, the exchanges became less frequent and then stopped altogether. However, as we approached Piraeus on our way back, sure enough, our sailor tormentor was back in action, this time harassing two Indian sailors. The modus operandi was the same - the sailors would start using the open channel to chat and then within minutes the man would begin his incessant drone of "Filipino monkey" in an extremely annoying sing-song voice. The sailors responded with swears, the man did the same, and then it just was a trade off of a volley of abuses.

I haven't been back in Greece after this trip, but every time S goes home and sails, he brings back stories of the "Filipino Monkey" man, still his up to his insane ways, polluting the pristine airwaves of the Aegean with his racist nonsense. However, S and I always thought the man was a local phenomenon, probably some Greek man with intense resentment for the fact that modern cargo ships predominantly draw their crew from the Philippines.

Turns out that this is hardly the case.

The Navy Times quoted Rick Hoffman, a retired captain, as saying a renegade talker repeatedly harassed ships in the Gulf in the late 1980s.

"For 25 years there's been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats," he said. "He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship," Hoffman said.

Wow, international man of mystery for 25 years? Who would have thunk. And apparently the man has targeted not only cargo ships, but US Navy ships as well. There is though, speculation that this may not be just one man but several of them involved in a copycat prank. But I could have sworn that the man we heard repeatedly on our Aegean sailing was just one man, popping up every other hour.

So there you go. If you ever find yourself traversing through the Strait of Hormuz, or the Aegean Sea and hear this absurd message repeated over and over, you'll know that you've been blessed with the rantings of the elusive, almost mythical "Filipino Monkey" man.

Update: Oh my goodness! Nearly 800 news items on the Google news search on "Filipino Monkey" already. And just check out some of the headlines -

Did ‘Filipino monkey’ nearly spark Gulf clash?

Filipino Monkey Started Naval Confrontation with Iran

'FILIPINO MONKEY' MAY BE BEHIND IRAN, US BOAT ENCOUNTER

And this satirical headline from Wonkette:

'Filipino Monkey' Nearly Tricks America Into World War III

Oh, "Filipino Monkey" man, you cheeky monkey you. Look what you've done now - you've made the real monkeys almost have a catfight.

My Very Own Brand of Yellow Journalism

2008-01-03T13:16:00.000-08:00

Darn, I wrote an entire post on gossip and speculation and didn't actually offer any juicy stories? Quelle horreur! Ok, here's something I picked up in the most unexpected manner and setting - and odd that I should be the recipient given that I'm usually rather disinterested in the subject.

A couple of months ago, I attended the birthday party of a friend of mine, where I met a former classmate of his and we hit it off instantly. She was an incredibly smart African girl K who had grown up in the US and then worked in England for a very large global conglomerate.

When I told her that I was from India, she told me all about her company's business interests in India that required her to live in Bombay for two months at the city's poshest hotel. There she lived in style, dining at the hotel's very fine restaurants and hanging out at the bar with fellow expats.

At some point, the discussion moved to the question of Indian attitudes to skin colour and she told me of how in a beauty parlour in Bombay, the beautician had promised to make her "whiter" with all their super elaborate and expensive facial treatments.

K: "But I'm black"

Beautician: "But dear, you don't have to be" (!!!!)

And so it went everywhere, where people explicitly tried to convince her how much better life would be if only she was "whiter". We spent the next ten minutes commiserating over how ridiculous and stupid Indian beauty ideals were (the kind of noses that would make an Iranian girl save up for plastic surgery are celebrated in India).

It was made worse, she said, when a blonde blue-eyed friend of hers landed in India to spend a week and then wherever they went, her friend was the centre of attention and she was completely ignored (despite the fact that she's a very attractive girl).

K: "Oh, and, and I have to tell you this!"

TM: "What?"

K: "My friend got propositioned by an Indian celebrity"

TM: "Who?"

K: "Some cricket player, some really big star"

TM: "Umm..what did he look like?"

K: "You know, can't remember - apparently he had received some award like Cricketer of the Millenium or something"

TM: "So how did this happen?"

Apparently, K and her friend had returned to the hotel from a night out when they saw some commotion in the lobby and some photographers chasing a guy. When they asked someone, he informed them that the centre of attraction was a famous cricketer. They being completely oblivious of cricket or the Indian celebrity scene headed straight for the elevator. After they had stepped in, suddenly the cricketer and his two bodyguards stepped into the same elevator.

And then, the cricketer turns to the blonde girl and tells her how attractive she is and how happy he would be if she visits him in his room. The girl refuses, saying she's leaving India early next morning but the man is persistent. After finding out that she's from England, he begs her for her number, saying he travels to England often and would look her up there. The girl ignores him some more. However, when the elevator stopped at her floor, the two bodyguards stood in their way to prevent K and the girl from getting off the elevator.

The girl gives the cricketer her number to get rid of him and he promises he'll meet up with her in England (well, the smart cookie gave him her ex-boyfriend's number!). And then they just laughed all the way to their room and never saw or heard from the man again.

TM: "So do you absolutely not remember how he looks like?"

K: "Honestly, it was a while ago, so not really"

TM: "Well, was he tall, or rather short" (TM has zeroed in on one suspect and waits for confirmation)

K: "Not very tall, but don't think he was very short either"

TM: "Well, did he have a rather feminine voice"

K: (her eyes light up) "Yes, yes! That's correct!"

TM: "Good lord, the man's married with kids!"

K: "Apparently that didn't stop him from hitting up my friend"

Edit to add: I just realized that I forgot to add that this actually took place in Delhi, where K had travelled to for a week with her friend. The hotel in Delhi where they stayed is part of the same group that ran their Bombay hotel.

Gossip, Conspiracies Tempered with a Sliver of Information

2007-12-29T10:22:00.000-08:00

As hard as it seems to believe, the discourses of Socrates took place not within the sombre confines of an academic institution, but within the bustling, chaotic spaces of the agora, at once the central public space and market space of ancient Athens (not surprisingly, the Greek verb for "to buy" is agorazo). There stood O Socrates, surrounded by eager, intellectually yearning, admiring young men - debating, theorizing, contradicting, arguing and resolving - all the while surrounded by people hurrying on with the business of buying and selling, dispute resolution, etc.

The Ancient Agora of Athens is all but gone now, but there have been significant excavations in recent years (the Athenian Roman Forum has quite a few pillars standing). The Roman version of the agora, the Roman Forum in Rome is still better preserved and you can still imagine what it might have been thousands of years ago as the prime civic space for political discourses, legal proceedings, intellectual debates, buying jewellery (I imagine), and so on.

There is something rather romantic about this notion of a free flowing, chaotic, intellectually charged public space as a space of the exchange of ideas. It fired my imagination to think of a poet like Mir Taqi Mir, surrounded by his fawning admirers, almost carelessly versifying poetic gems while a scribe scrambled to write them down faster than he could utter them. Or Ghalib, who wrote with such anguish about the destruction of Delhi's bazaars in the anarchy of 1857.

Perhaps this is stretching the concept of the marketplace a bit(well the ghats of Kashi do house many vendors), but the idea of the public debate remained a cornerstone of different schools of Hindu religious discourses as well. Within the orthodox tradition, in cities like Kashi (Banaras/Varanasi take your pick) public dialectics between different schools of Hindu metaphysical thought was a common feature.

But then we had spiritual figures who refused to be typecast within any and every typecasting straitjacket and declared:

Kabira khada bazaar mein, sab ki maange khair Na kahoo se dosti, na kahoo se bair

Kabir, standing in the marketplace, wishes all well
To them, I'm neither friend nor foe

(It is incredible that so many of Kabir's sayings have been handed down to us through what was essentially an oral tradition. But then so have all the Vedas over thousands of years. In this they have a striking similarity with the Homeric works Iliad and Odyssey which for a many hundred years were a purely oral tradition)

This is as far as the intellectual exchange of the marketplace goes. There is another, fascinating aspect of the marketplace - the underbelly of public space where rumours, political gossip and conspiracy theories fly thick and fast, the fasted method of viral communication in medieval times. There would be endless speculation about the health of the king or sultan, his favourites, coups plotted by his sons, all forming the substance of the political gossip that kept the bazaars abuzz.

I've heard many refer to Delhi political circles as basically like medieval courts and bazaars - with kings (or queens) and courtiers, powerful harems, and a bazaar where gossip and political speculation circulates seamlessly and yet surprisingly almost never finds its way into the mass media (I think the Indian media has figured out quite smartly that information is power only as long as it's sort of private). However, it is a circuit where if you get connected to even a minor node in the system, you can access a substantial amount of political information and gossip.

In fact, in Delhi you can practically breathe political gossip by just being at the right place at the right time (and no, don't bother getting on the IIC waitlist - you'd have better luck scouting random panwallahs outside political party offices).

The coming of the internet has of course altered this playing field somewhat - how much I have no idea. Suddenly you have this cyber bazaar that provides a great avenue for gossip, speculation and conspiracy theories, while affording relative anonymity that emboldens you and makes you a little less vary of consequences.

This is essentially what the War for News website sort of was with respect to the world of Indian media - except there was very little information and gossip of consequence being transacted and just mostly a lot of speculation about the sexual lives of journalists (you'd have to wade through hundreds of comments about who's sleeping with whom before you'd get one comment about who's making deals with whom).

I really like to follow some of the more interesting and complex conspiracy theories that have been floating around in this cyber bazaar of ours. Two of them, which were sort of the impetus for this post were the ones related to the death of Benazir Bhutto. It's been fascinating to read comments in Pakistani politics and intelligence forums because they are thick with arguments and counterarguments about who and why. In contrast to the Western media (which turns to its old standby al Qaeda), the clear favourite of the Pakistani conspiracy theorists is either ze General and the intelligence types, or ze fundos among the intelligence types acting on their own.

Another interesting conspiracy theory discussion that has all the features of bazaar intrigue is the role of bankers, the financial industry and Federal Reserve in manipulating the American economy and influencing political decisions - including the Iraq war. Regardless of where I stand with respect to the role of big finance in the government, the most enlightening aspect of the entire exchange has been learning about the characteristics of the US Federal Reserve and how it differs from other central banks around the world.

Another discussion that's pretty big among those paranoid about loss of sovereignty is the buzz around the Amero, the so called single currency modeled on the Euro that is supposed to herald a supra-national American Union uniting the countries of North America. The American government has repeatedly clarified that no such currency has ever been planned or is anticipated in the future. But the conspiracy theorists point out that the European politicians had gone blue in the face denying the Euro before the discussions had made some headway. All this is fascinating stuff - if anything I doubt the Canadians would want to trade their dollars for this mythical Amero given how strong their currency is right now.

Risky Business

2007-12-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

Ever done one of those neat little calculations of expected value of an event based on the probabilities and the payoffs associated with them? Let's take an example. Suppose you have invested in a project that has a 50 per cent chance of success and will pay you $200 if you succeed and nothing if you don't. Ignoring discounting of payoffs, we get an expected value of $100 for your investment. In real life though, you'd either make $200 if the investment succeeds, or nothing if it doesn't. Puts things into a whole different perspective, no?

Of course the explanation is that expectations are based on success and failure over very large number of trials. But in real life, there are only a small number of finite trials available to us, or scarier yet - only about 1-2 trials. In such a situation, your knowledge of probability has to be supplemented by a thorough understanding of the risks involved and your initiative to minimize risk, and an intuitive, perceptive understanding of decision-making.

Speaking of risk, it is interesting how people who would drastically overestimate risk in certain contexts would completely underestimate them in other areas of life. My mother for instance, thinks of all investing in stock as gambling with unacceptable risk and very uncertain payoffs. Given the institutional deficiencies of the Indian stock market, I don't blame her.

However, my mother thought it was the most natural course of things when a cousin of mine decided to agree to an arranged marriage with someone she had met just the day before.

TM: "Is that not a big risk to take? She doesn't have the slightest clue about him"

Ma: "What's there to know? He's from a well-established "good" family, went to the best universities, is now studying at a great university in the US. His academic record is brilliant. She'd be very happy"

TM: "So all it takes for a marriage to work is for the groom to have an impeccable academic record?"

Ma: "Uff!! Her parents know what they're doing."

The marriage imploded six months later because obviously neither the bride nor her parents knew what they were doing. You see, my mother's generation used to hedge their bets on a marriage's success on the fact that there are very steep penalties for the exit strategy, i.e., divorce. Turns out, they were working with historical information that has lost its relevance because the exit strategy costs have dramatically come down in the last decade or so.

My mother, smart cookie that she is, now no longer speaks of the chances of success of any marriage with such unqualified optimism.

Assumptions of risks associated with specific events should ideally evolve as new information is made available. However, usually there is a significant time lag between the appearance of new information and its incorporation into our world view model. Information is not cost-less, neither is adjustment to that information.

And herein lies the problem. Societies that evolved an extremely risk-averse model are often very slow to respond to the dramatic changes in risk estimates that new information and contemporary events have created.

Let's take Pakhtoon society as an example. The Pakhtoon tribal honour code and customs are examples of an extremely risk averse society(I didn't come up with this, I actually read this in an article whose reference I just cannot recall). You rigidly follow customs because they bring what you think is unfailing predictability in a climate of great uncertainty. However, what may have evolved as a response to political instability, change of rulers, frequent invasions, etc. has proved to be a not so successful strategy in dealing with 21st century realities.

I know I might get skewered for saying this, but I see an analogy to this in contemporary Bengali society as well. A combination of many factors (and those factors are another discussion altogether) have made us a very risk averse culture. We embrace the predictable, the anticipated, that which doesn't upset our world view that is at least a couple of decades out of sync with global realities.

This of course doesn't apply to a fairly substantial number of educated, cosmopolitan, globally mobile Bengalis who have excelled by being pioneers and risk-takers. However, make no mistake - these very visible Bengalis are essentially a visible minority. The vast majority of Bengali society is unable or unwilling to incorporate the updated information concerning India's changing economic and political paradigms into their world views.

I know that as individuals it is hard to seamlessly absorb information about an evolving world and update your perception of risk. Notice that I said hard, not impossible. In this case, I love to give the example of my great-grandfather. The man was quite a character - a very successful entrepreneur (unfortunately forgot to pass along his entrepreneurial genes), an Ayurved expert, an epicure (I think I can directly trace my love of food to him) and the most generous soul ever. However, like many men of his generation he believed that women had no business getting an education and should get married as soon as possible to ensure their financial security.

He stuck to these ideas in getting his daughter (my maternal grandmother) married off at a ridiculously young age, and marrying off my mother and my aunts very young as well. However, by the time my cousins and I came along, great-grandpa was taking notice of a very different world around him - a world he scarce recognized. I was 8 years old at the time, and we were visiting my great-grandparents on my summer vacation. My mother proudly announced to my great-grandpa that she had enrolled me in dance classes (don't ask).

Great-grandpa looked at her and suddenly his brow knitted into a look of irritation. In his booming voice he almost thundered:

"Well what's the point of teaching her how to dance. If you want to do something worthwhile make your daughter study to be a doctor"

(Err...a doctorate is good enough, no great-grandpa?)

I've seen the same sort of evolution of thought in the case of my grandparents as well. But it takes a long time in coming, and my fear is that the adjustment is not fast enough to thrive in this new global world.

Whatever happens at the individual level, societies as a whole absolutely cannot afford to ignore new realities or run on autopilot based on historical trends. If you try to do that on the trading floor you'd be wiped out in seconds. And face it the global economy and society is nothing less than a trading floor where if you don't seize the day, someone else definitely will.

This Rambling Life

2007-10-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

I wore the right suit (conservative blue, and yet a feminine cut with a barely discreet skirt hem at the knee)

I bullshitted plenty about my work, academic achievements and skills (first on the phone, and then with a battery of four interviewers for the greater part of an entire morning and afternoon)

I did a nimble tightrope between eager yet restrained, professional yet personal, razor sharp yet team player (and why don't these interview guides tackle the elephant in the room - the weird sexual dynamics between a female interviewee and male interviewers?)

As far as I'm concerned I gave it my best shot.

Just freakin' give me a job already!!

The last two months have been the vortex of a perfect storm for me - everything that could get complicated, malfunction, and generally annoy the hell out of me did.

Relationship troubles - check

Going from smug and cocky to nervous nelly on the job front - check

Moving to another apartment and the lifting and moving of my gazillion books that involves - check (I'm whining on this - I had about 50 odd books to move - my remaining books are in storage)

Dealing with a colleague at my temp job who's the poster child for personality issues - check

My Dr. Jekyll advisor showing his Mr. Hyde side and continuing to ignore the fact that I haven't yet been able to defend thesis I wrote and submitted at the begining of this year - check

Yesterday I just curled up in a fetal position under my faintly medicinal smelling new Ikea blanket and clung to the warmth, the surety of the bed, the solid four walls and wondered what it would take to do what needs to be done.

When my friend Suze collapses in a heap of angst, self-doubt and anguish at how her life swerved course from a dazzling research scientist to a career-switching MBA student languishing in a town she hates, I tell her that this too shall pass. That 10 years from now, when all shall be well (and of course, why wouldn't it be?), when she'll be happy, rich, successful and content in her life, she would remember her miseries and shake her head and smile. Or perhaps, not remember at all.

And I convince myself of this - repeat and repeat again. When you look back at your life a decade ago, it is not the sadness and the frustration and the heartbreaks that spring forth immediately. It's the happy moments of shared conversations over coffee, afternoons spent with the drizzling rain boucing off your face, rushing off to the pastry shop after work to get Ma's favourite pastries, the smell of roasted peanuts blended into roasted corn.

It's not easy. Because try as I might, I can't seem to convince those around me that it's perfectly all right to measure life in books read, teas sipped and tuberoses smelled. Or perhaps measure life in coffee spoons, but Prufock is a creature of The Wasteland and I'm not. I'm not disappointed and morose at my mediocrity. I rather like this life of mine - tempered with ambition, but perhaps not a whole lot.

But I disappoint those who make it their business to be concerned about my life. Some out of genuine affection and concern, some because I stick out like an un-hammered nail among rows and rows of those who bow timidly in their places. When will you have a job? When will you marry? When will you have a house? When will you be rich? In due time, I say. But the years are piling up - they say, raising their tone to give added urgency to the admonitions. I shrug my shoulders. This is the only life I can live - I know not how to live any other life.

After lying still for an hour, pressing my knees against my breasts and gripping my shoulders with my fingers, I feel the need to rise up. The ridiculousness of that wave of self-pity makes me recoil from my fetal self. There are things to be done - jobs to be applied to, muscles to be exercised, work to be accomplished, professional qualifications attained and a need to push the mind and body harder than it's been pushed before.

A friend of mine jokes that inside my Bengali heart resides a sliver of Germanic resolve. My most treasured moment of the day is the 30 minutes or so of silent contemplation in early morning as I sip tea and watch the sun rise from my kitchen window. It is a much beloved ritual of Bengalis, and its loveliest manifestation is at sea resorts in Eastern India, where before the break of dawn, the beaches are full of people sipping tea, waiting to see the sun rise above the receding ocean ripples.

Soon after though, when I'm at work, I'm consumed with it, fascinated by the idea of being part of this giant all-encompassing engine of global trade. This is why I could understand why the Germans would take old industrial buildings and create industrialkultur out of it - my Bengali side, on the other hand, shudders slightly at my fascination with industrial spaces, global business and corporate ambition. I am one person, and I am many. So it is for us all.

The Luxe Attack for India

2007-08-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

More on emerging trends in India (By the way, I read an interview with the Channel V CEO who stated that the Get Gorgeous show from my last post was an example of a blogumentary and user-generated content. Who knew!)

Anyway, so apparently there's some sort of Daily Candy clone e-newsletter in India called Trendy. For those who don't know Daily Candy, it's a daily e-newsletter that provides information on fashion, beauty, food and other stuff tailored to the specific city you live in. Over at the Jezebel website, the Daily Candy newsletter is regularly skewered for it's derivative Sex and the City inspired relentless consumerism and the message that all women have to do to be fabulous is buy a pair of expensive shoes or knock back overpriced martinis.

Our homegrown version is also adept at recommending mediocre restaurants that serve a smorgasbord of faux Thai-Chinese-Lebanese-whatnot food with cocktails that have astonishing mark-ups (how much do you think a shot of vodka and canned fruit juice cost?), spa treatments that will cost the equivalent of six months' rent and "beauty treatments" that are addressed more to your inner insecurities than anything on the outside.

It's the latter that prompted this post, as well as the fact that I've been reflecting on the magnitude and trend in India's economic growth and the discussion I had yesterday with Em about the consumerist surge in India and China that will grow exponentially the next few years.

Here's a post from the Trendy Bombay beauty section about the La Prairie Pure Gold serum, that is an emulsion of 24 karat gold particles that purportedly lifts, firms, resurfaces the skin, making it look younger. This one ounce bottle has a price tag of $525, or Rs. 27,000 in Indian rupees. It's available at La Prairie counters at the Shoppers Stop chain in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.

Let's discuss the absurdity of the product for a minute, and here's a perfectly succinct argument that comes from a comment on a post on the La Prairie serum on the Luxist website:

24K gold can do do nothing for you in this aplication. Gold is a nonreactive substance which provides no chemical or other benefit - the precise reason why it is used for jewelry. It is there merely for exclusivity and marketing for those who are cost indifferent enough to pay for it. This is like adding gold dust to champange[sic] to make it taste better. It might sparkle but it won't taste like much.

This would be blatantly obvious to anyone with even the most elementary knowledge of properties of metals and characteristics of skin. But the marketing departments at these skincare companies think nothing of trying to insult the intelligence of ordinary women with such ridiculous concoctions.

So who exactly are these cost indifferent enough people who are keeping La Prairie counters in India in business, a brand where almost every product is priced several times higher than any competing product in the market? And these counters are not located in exclusive beauty stores in 5 star hotel shopping arcades (the usual home of overpriced merchandise in India), but in Shoppers' Stop, a chain that aims roughly at the upper-middle class to fairly affluent people in India.

Let me guess. Well first are the usual suspects. The wives of top tier businessmen and Indian and expat wives for top management executives in Indian and multinational firms. Women who themselves are successful business-owners and professionals earning very high salaries and not averse to spending it. Mistresses and girlfriends of the rich and profligate. But then, it is possible that there is another category of spenders, the ones who have been responsible for revolutionizing the business of luxury goods and fashion in the US and Japan (don't know enough about the European scenario to comment).

These are middle-class women, single or married who may earn their own money or be supported by an allowance by their husbands. These women have aspirations to a life of luxury, and who have been sold an image of a fabulous city girl life Sex and the City style that they can acquire by proxy by wearing the right shoes, carrying the right bags, eating at the right restaurants (whatever ladies-who-lunch spot is trendy right now), drinking the right drink.

These are just the kind of women who are responsible for Japan becoming the number one luxury goods market in the world. As my Japanese-American physiotherapist told me, he was shocked that the women in a buying frenzy in the Louis Vuitton store in Ginza, Tokyo looked like young, middle-class women who clearly were sacrificing a large chunk of their income to own a piece of what to them was an exclusive luxury item.

Japan is an extreme case though, a country that accounts for nearly half of all Louis Vuitton products sold worldwide. But it is true that luxe products are increasingly marketed to middle-class audiences, and the big luxe conglomerates are hoping that even a fraction of the Japanese success story can be duplicated in India and China.

Now when I first started reading reports about the development of the luxury fashion and beauty market in India and investments made by the big players, I was quite dismissive. I had always believed and still believe to an extent that Indians are will always prioritize price over marketing hype. That is, if they are able to find an equivalent un-branded product at a lesser price than the branded product, they would always go for the unbranded one. This was true of sneakers (Nike's presence and advertising actually benefitted local manufacturers) and cornflakes (as Kelloggs advertised Mohan Meakins rejoiced). And this I thought would also be true of luxury goods.

But now I think I need to revise my thoughts on the matter. For one luxury products are unlike sneakers and cornflakes. They rely on selling an entire lifestyle package where the product is not merely a silly cream with useless gold particles, but a veritable fountain of youth that is also luxurious and opulent.

And second and more importantly, middle class women seem more and more willing to save up and lavish money on Holy Grail products that they feel would bring a slice of luxury into their lives. And if the second is true, and there are more and more such middle class women in India, then perhaps the outlook for luxury goods in India is way more optimistic than I thought. Because a multi-national luxury conglomerate cannot rely on the super-rich alone for revenues.

The Indian market does share one crucial similarity with the Japanese market. In Japan, the prohibitive cost of renting or ownership as well as people getting married later and later in life has created an entire generation of young men and women who live with their families well into their 20s and 30s. These people, rather derogatorily called "parasite singles" ("parasaito shinguru" in Japanese, seriously!) do not have to pay for rent and food and thus have a substantial chunk of disposable income for discretionary spending.

In India, apart from the expensive renting and homeowning situation, social norms also dictate that men and women stay with their families till they get married. There are though an increasing number of young men and women who move to other cities for work and live on their own - however the living with parents category is a fairly large proportion of the total employed youth.

I've already been reading a fair bit about the growing spendthrifty habits of the young with disposable income. I saw some of this on my recent visit to India - all anecdotal evidence. A cousin's friend operating several successful businesses in a small town in Bengal, but blowing away most of his income in restaurants, drinks at bars, and luxury purchases. A cousin who shops frequently at Shopper's Stop where two outfits can cost the equivalent of her month's salary (she has to rely on parents to cover the deficit between earning and spending). Another cousin who doesn't save even a single rupee of his income even though he stays at home and his meals are all provided for.

All this is good news for conglomerates that manufacture discretionary spending goods with lots of brand differentiation. If I was an investor, I'd be looking to develop a high-end clothing and accessories brand in India with Western collaboration right now (incredibly, that's what decidedly middle-range handbag manufacturer Hidesign managed to pursuade Louis Vuitton to do).

I'll See Your "Like, Like, Like" And Raise You A "Ruh-lly Na"

2007-08-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

I think I may have finally discovered the Indian equivalent of Valley Girl-speak. For those unfamiliar with this most delicious of American pop-culture phenomena, here's a veritable dissertation on the matter (is there anything Wiki won't think of!)

You see, Channel V India decided to go all Tyra on our asses and come up with "India's next hottest face" (ha ha, no shit dude - a most unfortunate use of "hottest"). The problems with the show are myriad - primarily the fact that it doesn't benefit from an Indian Janice Dickinson-like diva or a ghar-k-murghi version of Tyra to spice things up (speaking of Tyra, the woman is not at all photogenic, because she's actually stunningly beautiful in person).

What fascinates me though is the way the girls on the show speak. It is a highly affected sing-song accent, interjected with the occasional Hindi word like na and achchha and marked by an excessive use of really, pronounced "ruh-lly". I've heard a fairly watered down version of this by girls in some of the more snotty public schools and colleges in Delhi (mostly South Delhi), but this just takes the douchebaggery to another level.

There are a few incidents that immediately spring to mind when I hear this accent, and one of them has little to do with the matter of accents per se, but when has that stopped me from rambling away and telling you a good story.

Once upon a time, I was invited to the apartment of two Indian students for a party. One of the boys, a bona fide South Bombay type had a lot of his South Bombay friends who were based in LA turn up for the party. The other boy had invited me and many others, including one Jat boy from the deepest badlands of Haryana (a character if there ever is one).

So we all liquored up, danced and chatted away, and were generally having a good time (some were having an even better time, and a few couples who had hooked up at the party were using the two bedrooms for some heavy petting action). I was hanging out with my friend Gerry when suddenly I heard a loud commotion and saw Jat boy make a mad dash for the door, followed by South Bombay boy threatening to kill him and a couple of other boys as well. I went outside and saw that the chase was unsuccessful - Jat boy was way too fast for them and almost jumped out of the second floor stairwell on the road and then drove away.

When I went back in the apartment, I saw a girl sobbing away being consoled by her friends and a guy I presumed was her boyfriend. The host was livid and no one seemed to be in a mood to explain things. I was sleeping over (because my ride home was too drunk to drive) so later at night I asked the host what happened. He said that the Jat boy had molested the girl and hence everyone had been so outraged. I was disappointed to hear that as I knew Jat boy well, and wacky though he was, I couldn't imagine him molesting someone.

The next day I met Jat boy and demanded he explain his side of the story to me. This is what he told me and I believe him because the man's never lied about even the shittiest, craziest stuff he's done.

Apparently it all started when the designated DJ started playing the song "Lady Marmalade" and the refrain "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)" came up. Now Jat boy had a habit of singing along with songs and soon enough he kept repeating the line over and over. A girl was standing next to him while her boyfriend chatted with a friend a few feet away. This conversation ensued.

Jat boy: Do you know what this line means?

Girl: Will you sleep with me tonight. But I would never sleep with someone like you.

Jat boy: Why? It seems that you might.

At this point, girl got livid and slapped Jat boy hard across the face. Jat boy, reeling from the stinging blow planted a retaliatory slap on her cheek. This got her sobbing, caught her boyfriend's attention who promptly started issuing dire threats to Jat boy and the rest is history.

Now the only reason why this finds mention in a post about Indian accents is because I could clearly see that the South Bombay boys and girls were repulsed by Jat boy's thick Haryanvi drawl. It was almost as if the boy had confirmed their worst stereotypes about him and about those that spoke in that fashion through this incident. The host was furious and the matter of the Jat boy's background had come up repeatedly. The contempt was palpable.

Ironically, Jat boy grew up in an affluent Delhi neighbourhood and had all the right credentials to belong to the very classist Indian clique of the right school, right college and right residence. But for some reason (mostly stubborn pride I think) he had retained aspects of a rustic accent and could break out into full-on dialect when speaking with a fellow Haryanvi. He was eccentric but academically bright, however, this never seemed to register with the Indians who met him because they just couldn't get beyond his Jat-ness and that drawl. It's all very snotty and presumptious, but that's what the accent and class dynamics in India are.

So am I allowed to revel in my schadenfreude that when these Made in India Valley Girls (and Boys) arrive in Los Angeles, they discover to their horror that most non-South Asians cannot distinguish between an upper class posh Indian public school accent and an accent heavily tinged with the flavour of whatever regional language a person grew up speaking. Unless it's an anglophile Indian with a cultivated English accent in which case they'd be asked repeatedly if they grew up in England. But the class connotations of any specific accent vanish overnight, and everyone starts with a clean slate.

Which means that you - born in a fancy house in South Bombay or South Delhi, who went to an expensive public school that Daddy ponied up for, got into an uppity college and condescended all who spoke without your accent or in any language other than English - you, in the eyes of the average Joe are nothing but a brown FOB. And so am I (and I have none of the advantages of your upbringing). And unlike Euro-FOBs (including the Eurotrash among them), a brown FOB isn't very coveted. Apart from the odd yoga and Indian food junkie, I haven't seen too many people express a desire for Indian men and women, unlike say East Asian women or Italian men.

How very sad. Remind me to go Nelson Muntz on the next posher(poser) than thou girl I see in India who thinks she's the shit because she speaks with a public school accent and ruh-lly ruh-lly rolls her ruh-llys. Ha Ha!!

No "Life in Pink" for Indian Divas

2007-06-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

Many countries have a pre-eminent diva whose music powerfully resonates with most of the citizens and becomes sort of emblematic of that nation's cultural zeitgeist. Lebanon has Fairouz, Iran has Googoosh, Pakistan has Madame Noorjehan, India's Hindi speaking parts have Lata Mangeshkar and Germany has Herbert Gronemeyer (just kidding Alex, Gronemeyer's just one of the few German singers I know of). And then, France has Edith Piaf.

I had been vaguely familiar with Piaf's name growing up, but given that my French vocabulary is limited to "allez, allez!" and "excusez-moi", I hadn't had much access to her music. Actually my limited linguistic abilities have never stopped me from enjoying a stellar voice and music, so this was more about the relative non-availability of Piaf's recordings in India.

Last year, knowing the reverence and adoration of the French for Piaf, I decided to look up some of her songs on Youtube. I found a few of her later recordings with her last husband Theo Sarapo, and apart from marvelling at this apparently very happy marriage of the chronologically and vertically mismatched (Piaf was reportedly 4'8", a little bird next to the strapping Theo), the songs themselves didn't seem very extraordinary. Eh, perhaps the French get something that I do not.

Then, two days ago I went with a bunch of girls to see what I was told would be "a French movie". I was dying to get out of the house, so any movie would do (and I trusted 5 girls to pick something other than the latest action blockbluster). When the opening credits started rolling and when I heard that unmistakablely robust, powerful voice, I instantly recalled that this might be the Edith Piaf biopic that I had read about somewhere.

Two hours and twenty minutes later, when I staggered out of the dark theatre, I was emotionally overwhelmed. I would have bawled my eyes out were it not for the fact that I was with a few girls I had barely met. It was an extraordinary feeling, extraordinary because I rarely get so churned in watching a movie. Even with books - at age 11 I would sob through a Tolstoy novel - but I can't remember a book I've read lately that's been compelling enough to elicit an emotional rather than an intellectual response.

Part of it of course was the director's relentless focus on melodrama, on the tragedy of it all, of drawing the more vulnerable among us into deep empathy with a character who wasn't always so sympathetic, in fact quite detestable at times. But the greater part of it was simply the facts of Piaf's tortured, painful, episodes of joy nestled in expanse of sadness, larger than life, life. It was incredible to think that this elfin, almost fragile looking woman had experienced all of that, and somehow managed to distill all of the agony into the purest musical expression.

It was the closing song that really did it though. When Piaf stood ravaged by illness, the misery of losing people she loved, and yet defiant, strong, and singing "No, je ne regrette rien" (No, I regret nothing), nothing short of a standing ovation would do. Both for the spirit of Piaf, and for the great talent of Marion Cotillard, the actress who played her with such eerie, uncanny perfection. I had to come back and look up the original recording of Piaf singing "Non, je ne regrette rien" and it is just as I thought - very, very powerful (A translation of the lyrics here).

Can a similar film be made in India with one of our own icons? La Vie en Rose (or La Mome) is brutally honest - about the sordid circumstances of Edith's early life, her affairs, her addiction to morphine - everything is held up, warts and all. Of course the director also softens the edges considerably, and is clearly fond of Piaf and her legacy. However, this is as far from a hagiography as you can get - Edith is remarkable, but she is also obnoxious, a royal pain, a diva.

To someone who grew up in India, there is much novelty in this. Apparently, the French seem very un-distraught by such a public airing of an icon's troubled life. I cannot imagine the reaction to a similar no-holds barred biopic on the life of someone like Lata Mangeshkar. Or Nargis (I once saw a fawning documentary on her which very gently sidestepped the fact that her mother was a tawaif in Lucknow, aka "woman of ill repute"). Given the fact that taking offence to everything and anything and ranting about the disruption of our moral fabric has become something of a national pasttime in India. Aided and abetted by 24-hour news television.

You know what? I seriously believe that we have very deep-set issues in confronting truth. We'd rather work our way around truth, or pretend that the fantasies that we are fed in our public life are a simulcra of truth and not an elaborate charade. So our politicians are "humble farmers",
our filmstars are "humble sons of the soil" (who none the less attended expensive private schools and were childhood buddies with the son of the then prime minister), our singers are "pure and innocent souls who've devoted their lives to God and music" (and apparently large swigs of alcohol before every concert), and our female celebrities are all "pure, virginal women" who led crashingly boring lives, never swaying from the straight and the narrow.

In short, we are not the French. In the sense that we are not allowed to play out the most interesting, edgy, marginal aspects of our lives in the public eye for fear of giving offence. Especially the stories that our celebrated women tell must necessarily be stripped of all complexity, a morality play of pious living, overcoming hardship, and humble devotion to the arts. No insolent, proud assertions of being an "artiste" and hence excused from the constraints of a "normal" existence. No tempestuous affairs, no diva behaviour, no not giving a fuck for what the establishment expects. It is like post-Revolutionary Iran, where we symbolically paint our windows black to keep the prying public censure away from our much more interesting daring private selves. Do not expect a Hindi version of "Non, je ne regrette rien" anytime soon.

I So So Want One

2007-06-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

I am in total and absolute lust and lemming this gorgeous piece of technology:

(Image Source: http://www.3g.co.uk/)

Last week I attended a conference on mobile technologies (my own research is very, very incidentally related to this) and ever since my brain has been crammed with a zillion strange terms like 3G, W-CDMA, EDGE, Wi-Max, UMTS, etc. that I'm trying to familiarize myself with. It's exciting to even be a peripheral participant in a fast evolving field of technology because there is such a palpable excitement about new developments and innovations.

And besides I can definitely see myself showering gizmo-love on mobile phones and computers. Plasma TVs and Playstations - eh, not so much. In fact, taking up employment in the business and/or logistics side of a mobile technology company sounds like a really good idea at this point.

Initially, I was made aware of a world beyond the generic American mobile phone market (I know people who think Razr is cutting edge.....sigh) when I spied the beauty that is the Panasonic 702iD in a participant's hand. Alas, the phone is built to specs for NTT DoCoMo in Japan and I couldn't find a version for sale to the US anywhere (even a locked version is fine because I'd unlock it anyway). No point envying the Japanese, their mobile phone market is just leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world.

But then as I was reading up on 3G technology and phones I came across the one pictured above, the one that makes the iPhone pale in comparison. The Nokia N95 is sheer genius, but at nearly $800 at present, it's merely something to aspire to at this point. Perhaps if I wait this out a year or so, a drastic price cut may not be unlikely. But given the way technology moves, i might be lemming something else at that point. Well at least it's not something totally ridiculous like the Prada phone by LG, which is also priced at a bank-breaking $800.

Noodle Love

2007-06-07T13:35:00.001-07:00

You know what - I'll just go ahead and commit blasphemy right now - Indian Maggi noodles are godawful. No amount of childhood nostalgia, longing for Indian products and copious amounts of chilli sauce is going to change that. These are really bottom of the barrel as far as instant noodles go. What prompted this noodle rant was the fact that yet again I got swayed by a combination of nostalgia and novelty and purchase a pack of Maggi noodles from the neighbourhood Indian grocery store (a new Maggi flavour - surely an improvement - not!)

And yet when I was a kid, I was probably singlehandedly responsible for keeping an entire Maggi noodle factory going given the amount of Maggi I ate. I also used to wear a pastel pink and blue sweater with white pants and white pumps. There really is no accounting for childhood taste.

My noodle consumption reduced drastically as I grew older and by my late teens I probably ate instant noodles once in two months. Still even that sporadic consumption was limited to Maggi noodles. By this time Maggi had a formidable competitor - Nissin - the brand started by the man who invented instant noodles - Momofuku Ando. However, Nissin, instead of releasing products from their Japanese line , decided to "Indianize" their product and came up with the almost inedible Curry Smoodles, which were curly noodles flavoured with indeterminate glop.

So Maggi remained the best instant noodles choice I had. Yet. But then something happened to change all that. By this time I had started working, and one of my colleagues was a Nepali girl from Darjeeling. Many of her friends were Nepalis from Nepal and they had introduced her to an instant noodle brand that was sold in Nepal - Wai Wai noodles ( I later found out that Wai Wai is originally a Thai brand, but more of that to come).

Wai Wai had become a cult favourite with hostel/dorm residents in Delhi University and JNU, introduced by Nepali students who brought back suitcases stuffed with Wai Wai packets from trips back home (apparently Wai Wai is now produced in India as well). My colleague gave me a pack to take home - and once I cooked and tasted it, I was hooked. These were unlike any instant noodles I'd ever had before. For one, the noodles instead of being bland and white like Maggi, were toasty and brown and could be eaten raw if you so wished (I never tried). Unlike Maggi's one seasoning packet, these came with three - a seasoning pack, a chilli powder pack and a sache of onion flavoured oil.

But getting hooked on Wai Wai brought its own challenges, because the noodles were hardly sold in Delhi. Till I discovered that my neighbourhood bakery had a secret stash of Wai Wai behind mounds of Maggi and Nissin Top Ramen, a fact only known to the large Nepali immigrant population in the neighbourhood. Score! Wai Wai completely replaced Maggi as my instant noodle of choice, so much so that when I came to the US for graduate studies, I carried a few packs of Wai Wai in my suitcase.

The American generic grocery store opened a whole other world of instant noodles to me. College students live on ramen, and so do many single working men and women. In my nearest grocery store half of an entire aisle was dedicated to instant noodles. Though my consumption rarely went beyond one or two packets a month, I could sample the different flavours in rotation. Soon however I concluded that the ramen or instant noodles in generic American stores were just as bad as Maggi. There were primarily two brands that filled the stores - Nissin and Maruchan - both Japanese instant noodle giants. The flavours and noodle packets were all watered down for the generic American consumer.

I slowly gave up on instant noodles, and would rather drive myself to a restaurant if I got noodle hankerings. But once in a while I'd get the cravings for hot noodles at home on a cold wet winter day (it doesn't get very cold in LA, but it does get wet in winters). And then I discovered speciality Asian grocery stores. Stores that exclusively carry Japanese merchandise, or Korean merchandise, or Chinese merchandise, etc. This was a second revelation - a whole other world of instant noodles. My impressions for each:

Japanese noodles - Oh, happy, happy day! No one loves their instant noodles quite like the Japanese. And then there is the curious phenomenon of instant noodle packets that cost more than a bowl of fresh noodle soup in a restaurant would cost. Well, the Japanese have an entire museum dedicated to ramen so this shouldn't surprise anyone.

What's even better is that the Japanese have several kinds of instant noodles - including yakisoba which is essentially chowmein to us in India, miso ramen, shoyu ramen (with just a soya sauce broth), udon, soba noodles, etc. Some of the more elaborate instant noodles come with packs of dehydrated vegetables, dehydrated soup, seasoning, special noodles, the works.

My personal favourites - the yakisoba and the miso ramen noodles.

Korean noodles - The instant Japanese-style ramen market is dominated by the Nongshim brand which makes a basic soupy noodles with different flavourings - beef, seafood, kimchi (of course!), etc. the noodles are thicker udon style noodles, but completely overwhelmed by the soup flavoured with chilli paste (gochujang) and bean paste (dwaejang) flavours. Also, they can also only be consumed in soup form.

Frankly, not a personal favourite.

Also Koreans have traditional Korean noodles like nyaengmyun (arrowroot noodles), bibimnyaengmyun (spicy thin noodles), guksoo (knife cut thicker noodles), and jajangmyun (noodles with bean sauce) in freezer sections. The few I've tried I'm not impressed. They just taste so much worse than the fabulous versions of these dishes in Korean restaurants.

Thai noodles - here it is, the original progenitor of the Nepalese Wai Wai, the most popular brand of instant noodles in Thailand. Wai Wai comes in a lot of generic flavours, like chicken, beef, pork and tom yum. Frankly eating the Thai Wai Wai is a bit of a let down after consuming Wai Wai from Nepal. The Nepalese version is just so much better, especially the noodles, because the Thai Wai Wai noodles are exactly like Maggi noodles.

Chinese noodles - I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the Chinese are not very enamoured of instant noodles (the ones with flavourings included). They don't take up a lot of space in Chinese grocery stores, as opposed to Japanese stores, for instance. Don't blame them - most Chinese communities will have several noodle shops that sell an excellent bowl of noodles for cheap - the instant versions don't seem like much of an alternative. The ones that I've tried though have been pretty bad - perhaps they go overboard with the MSG.

Indonesian noodles - Who would have thought - the best instant noodles I've ever had comes from Indonesia's very own instant noodle giant - Indofood. The company's Indomie brand is a bit of a cult favourite in the Southeast Asia region and Australia - spreading as Wai Wai did through hungry nostalgic Indonesian students bringing in bagfuls of the stuff from back home.

Though the regular Indomie packs are pretty good, it is the special Indomie Mie Keriting (curly noodles) that simply blows off the competition by miles. Let's see, you have curly noodles that seem to have some flavour on their own. To complement them you have - get this - five flavour packets! There's dehydrated vegetables, seasoning, sweet soya sauce, chilli sauce, and oil with seasoning and spices. They are meant to be eaten without soup, but what the heck, spoon in some extra salt and eat them soupy - they taste fine either way.

A lot of people take their instant noodles very, very seriously and write pages and pages of reviews on different brands and flavours. For me, it's an occasional guilty pleasure -nowhere close to the delight of fresh handpulled noodles immersed in a clear pork broth that I accidentally found in of all places, Singapore airport. However, when Singapore is a distant dream, and even the San Gabriel Valley is a drag to drive to, my packets of Indomie and yakisoba would do just fine.

The Comeback Post - So I Get to Ramble

2007-05-23T18:14:00.000-07:00

I have a theory. Your body weight has to be within the range of skinny - slightly less skinny to move to Santa Monica. Really. There isn't another neighbourhood in LA where you'd find a greater proportion of health nuts in the population (Hey Urmi, am I way off the mark here?). At any time of the day (think 6:00 a.m. to well past midnight) I've been in Santa Monica, I've seen folks (primarily women in their 20s, 30s and 40s) running around the block, either exiting a gym or walking briskly towards a gym. Speaking of which, there's probably a gym in every block (or two per block) in the business district there.

This is all very inspirational (did I sound like I might be annoyed with Santa Monica's ladies who kick ass - heavens no!). I have a tendency to underestimate my body's capcity to exert and toil and an inertia to exercise is very strong. So watching a 50 year woman in better shape than I've ever been go on her morning jogging rounds is like having my very own personal trainer pushing me to do better than jog half-heartedly around the track for 1 minute and 34 seconds ("I have the wrong running shoes", I whined, to which boyfriend said: "Umm...no, you just haven't ever been using them").

And frankly, a woman who runs a few miles a day, earns a decent amount of money, shops at farmer's markets, drives a hybrid car, and wears super cute ballet flats when she's not in her running shoes is just a better role model to aspire to. As opposed to one who maxes out her credit card shopping at Barney's, eats just three olives a day to keep her weight down, and obsesses over Manolos and Louboutins as if they were Picassos and Modglianis in shoe form (no you deluded bitches, those 5 inch stilettos are an instrument of mediaeval torture, not "the most comfortable shoes ever"!).

Of all the features that I listed I possess just two - I shop at farmer's markets and I wear very cute ballet flats. I'm working on the money thing, hopefully I won't be jobless and broke too long. I'm also working on getting some mileage on my running shoes by increasing the 1 minute 34 second run time to slightly more...seconds..ok, minutes.

This summer I also almost developed an intellectual crush. It's way less transgressive than it sounds (actually it doesn't sound transgressive at all, unless you think crush here has a sexual connotation and it doesn't). This of course has nothing to do with Santa Monica but I'm rambling and I can't be arsed to stick to a theme for the post. Well it all began on fine day (slightly before noon) when the flowers were in their early summer bloom and a shower of jacaranda blossoms had carpeted the sidewalks (that was crap - goodbye future chicklit career). I was walking towards an event on campus and I stood at a traffic light waiting to cross.

On the other side of the road, I could see a boy who looked like he was 16 initially, but then on closer inspection (well as closely as one can inspect across the road) he looked much older. Well, not that much older, but maybe a few years. The boy was seated on a bike, with his feet digging into the pavement to brake the bike's wheels. I suddenly had the feeling that the boy was staring in my direction, but I wasn't sure if he was looking at me or at something behind me. There was something very intent and earnest about his look - it was like the brazen innocence of a teenage boy mixed with the faraway absentmindedness of a poet.

"He's a mathematician", some brain cell of mine offered.

"How do you know?", another brain cell of mine asked sceptically.

"I don't think through these things, but something in his demeanor screams theoretical mathematician to me", countered the first cell.

"You and your theories about random strangers", laughed the second cell.

The light turned green and we crossed and he biked slowly by me. I studiously avoided looking at him. I had the absurd idea that somehow by thinking about him I had alerted him to my thoughts and now I ought to be embarassed for them.

I reached the venue of the campus event and found a few old acquaintances to talk to. I was talking someone when suddenly I saw the boy I had seen earlier make his way into the room. I mean, it wasn't as if I was scanning the room for him. My eyes were wandering because the silly guy I was talking to was boring with a capital B (I facetiously told him eating ants is good for you because they have Vitamin C and then he just went on about ants, Vitamin C and a whole lot else I didn't give a fuck about).

The boy went and sat behind me and I didn't really try to introduce myself to him because I was busy with folks at my own table. A little later, he left and then sometime later, I left the even as well. But this second appearance allowed my brain cell no. 1 to test out its theory about the theoretical mathematician. You see, the event invite had been sent through Facebook, so it wasn't hard to track the boy down. Well brain cell no. 1 had been sort of right. Kinda, sorta. Turns out boy with a bike (and intent look and flimsy blond hair) is a philosopher. With an interest in mathematics.

I mean he's a student of philosophy (which should technically make him philosopher no? A la economist, historian, etc.). How very.......nice. I don't know, philosopher doesn't have the same ring as theoretical mathematician. It's crushworthy enough, but there's a slathering of intellectual pretense to it which annoys me. So much for hoping to randomly pass by crazy mathematician boy as he winds his way through jasmine bushes (there's a jasmine epidemic in this city - has anyone seen so many jasmine bushes in bloom before?).

Ah well, there's always strawberry picking and LACMA nights for fun.

Cry My Beloved Country - Err No, Banish The Thought

2007-03-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

About two days ago, a combination of circumstances gave me a morning and afternoon to spend in Singapore, most of which I spent chasing famous Singapore grub and avoiding its celebrated malls. At one of the food shrines (hawker food court) I visited, I glanced around and found that while the Hainanese chicken rice stall much recommended by the food website had no customers, a rice porridge stall in the next hall had a line snaking across the dining space. I'm not the biggest fan of rice porridge (congee in Chinese, bubur in Malay), but if there are folks willing to wait an hour for this stuff, damn I want some. So it was while I waited in this line that I had my epiphany about Singapore.

The city is clean, with beautiful, gleaming buildings, and the biggest capital magnet in the region. The airport, a regional hub, is massive, they have the port with the largest container traffic in the world, and everything seems to be accomplished with a quiet precision, which even Los Angeles seems to struggle with at times. Sure it looks Disneyfied, micromanages its citizenry to the extreme, is a classic nanny state and operates as a de facto personal fiefdom of the Lee family. But let's leave the political discussion aside for a minute and focus on the economics of the matter.

Three British colonial cities - Bombay, Calcutta and Singapore. At some point in their history, all of them were more or less on equal economic footing. Well, only sort of. We can debate whether the combination of the Bengal famine and the Partition of India was a bigger challenge than the Japanese occupation and being at the centre of the Eastern conflicts of World War II. Perhaps Bombay and Calcutta did indeed suffer more during the Indian Partition. Besides neither city had the supreme geographical advantage of being situated at the tip of the Malay peninsula, in a water channel that sees some of the greatest movement of global container traffic. But Singapore didn't have access to the great Indian hinterland either.

Ok so not quite equal footing then, Singapore has the locational advantage, and suffered less going into its development path. But clearly, Singapore's headstart still inadequately explains the enormous wealth gap between the city-state and Bombay and Calcutta. Singapore is the 22nd richest nation in the world and Bombay and Calcutta, well, they don't exactly measure up.

And then it hits me. But first, I manage to get my porridge, with fish, and get a side of a salad that looks interesting and is being ordered by every other person in the line (this is all point and order business, I point at other people's food and ask for the same as the entire menu is in Chinese, which I can't read). Score! The porridge is first-rate, fresh fish, chives, shallots and fried peanuts. The salad is raw fish mixed with ginger, shallots and scallions. Very yummy.

So as I was saying, then it hit me. This deep depressing sense of disappointment. Of regret. Of rage and disgust. Of exasperation. Of I don't really know what. All I knew was that I was unhappy with India. Unhappy with its leaders in its formative years, who presented with a young nation, made it into a laboratory for socialist experiments. Nationalize this, regulate that. Unhappy with the generation of my parents', who turned their backs on the world outside, insecure, risk averse, with a deeply entrenched resistance to change. Unhappy with my generation, brought up to regard change with suspicion, perverted in our sense of innate superiority without basis, unwilling to learn from the successes of others.

When the economies of South-east Asia leapfrogged ahead in 1980s, when Korea was transforming itself into an Asian tiger, we convinced ourselves that this wasn't for us, that our development will be at our own pace, because it would involve sacrificing a nebulous entity known as "our way of doing things". When the monetary crisis hit South-east Asia, we erupted in collective schadenfreude, convinced that we had been vindicated in our approach.

Never mind that even after losing almost a third of its GDP, Indonesia still had a higher per capita income than we did. Yes, Indonesia, a country that scored below India on every single development indicator in the 1940s and had all of the same problems of a populous, multi-ethnic nation that India does. Let's not even mention Thailand and Malaysia here, because it gets embarassing. Even the Philippines, considered the biggest let-down of potential in South-east Asia has done better than India.

Somehow, we were convinced, and I guess many still are, that there was something worth fighting for in preserving "our way of life". Personally I used to think that our social fabric needed to be sheltered from the globalizing influences that economic reform would bring forth. In the foodcourt, I pondered over what this "way of life" truly amounted to. It definitely was a social safety net, an emotional support structure, ties that bind and anchor our lives. I love my own extended family, and cannot possibly imagine them not playing a major role in my existence.

But then, this was also a society of deeply entrenched traditional divisions of religion and caste. A society which is yet to internalize fundamental concepts of liberal democracy such as collective consensus, personal choice, checks and balances on use of power/authority and tolerance of dissenting views. A society where being born female still imposes significant constraints on movement and choice. We rejected rapid economic development so all this and more could be preserved. Not a cause worth fighting for. If democratic ideals are indeed what gives us a moral edge over a nation like Singapore, then where is the commitment to those ideals within our social structure and interpersonal relationships, our economic arrangements and our politics? I felt so cheated right there.

I've never felt such ambivalence about my homeland before and it made me sad and depressed on my flight to Delhi, not the sort of emotions people generally feel on coming home after three years. Not much had changed at the airport. Same shabby Eastern Europe style building (actually Bucharest airport is slightly better), same chaos, in fact the traffic in the parking lot was even more chaotic than last time. But the immigration officer smiled and joked. They always do.

The neighbourhood that my parents stay in now has become dilapidated in only about two decades since its creation. Roads riddled with potholes, community parks fallen into disrepair, used for wedding parties where guest routinely trash the park (because of course, we never learnt to be responsible towards civic common resources). Piles of rubble from rapid construction were strewn everywhere. The drivers were as crazy as ever.

I complained to my father. He merely smiled. And pointed out the new things in the neighbourhood. A new hotel. Another posh hotel being planned. A new shopping mall. And then, we had to travel to the centre of the city for work. And had the convenience of taking Delhi's gleaming new metro all the way. Hmmm........not bad, not bad at all. Clean station. Passengers duly purchasing tickets and moving expertly through the station. No pandemonium as the gates opened. People actually waited for other passengers to disembark before boarding. Has the metro succeeded in making the citizens unlearn the civic disregard that they had grown up with?

We visited two banks. Were provided prompt service at both places. In the second bank, I was amazed by the multi-tasking abilities of our service representative, who processed about 6 customers at the same time, a feat that would be impossible in an American bank, where the employees are often overwhelmed in dealing with two people at a time. Many of the customers at the bank looked like first generation customers - many of them women - expertly negotiating different kinds of deposits, cheques and investments.

So there it was - one step backwards, but hopefully, one and a half steps forward. Between all the crumbling housing stock and infrastructure, civic disrepair, and gnarled traffic, enormous amounts of wealth are being generated. Perhaps some of it would eventually make its way back into civic improvements, and the success of the metro experiment would trickle down to every aspect of urban existence.

As for religion, tradition, and equality for women, that's a hard one to crack in the Indian context. That seems to part of the one step backwards move, given the number of astrology shows I see on practically every channel (especially the news channels, wtf??). Temples flourish in every neighbourhood as land-grab projects (temple attendants running side businesses on temple premises), the divorce stigma is still well and alive, and in cities like Bombay all sorts of religious and dietary discrimination by housing cooperatives is being used to push certain people out of the rental and property market (and this is backed by a Supreme Court ruling, wtf??). A long, long way to go.

On another note, here's why I'm so happy to be in Delhi right now:

1. Oh to be able to hear people speak in earthy, idiomatic Hindi around me, and not just two words of grammatically incorrect Hindi punctuating a grammatically incorrect sentence in English, which seems to be the norm for Indian students at my university.

2. Being able to see hot Indian men. If you were at my university you would be forgiven for thinking that they perhaps don't exist. And today, just in a half day trip to CP and back, I saw so many cute boys, including two who were model quality. One of those model quality boys actually sat across from me in the metro. I leched and embarassed the hell out of him.

3. The street food, oh the street food! Such amazing goodies everywhere, including chaat, fruit and vegetable salads, mix of savoury snacks (namkeen served with onions and chilies), fruit juices, sweet corn with tomato sauce, etc. I had a few mini-samosas being sold on the street, and even these random tiny samosas were more amazing and delicious than anything an Indian restaurant in LA could conjure up.

Passing Through - Italy -1

2007-03-07T08:28:00.000-08:00

Train trips in India have always been rather uneventful for me. Not boring, there's plenty to amuse yourself with, not the least being the yummy food that's on offer at the platforms the train passes through. But there's hardly anything exciting going on, and quite frankly my family would usually wish there wouldn't be too much excitement and the journey would be mostly uneventful and hassle-free. A cousin of mine almost went out with a guy she met on a train. That didn't work out so well, but that's pretty much the closest any kin of mine has come to finding adventure and romance on a train.

The point is, I'm primed for a certain kind of train journey. You buy a ticket, board the train, find your seat, settle down, check fellow passengers, get disappointed at the unclejis and auntyjis (make that meshos and mashimas for Bengal-bound trains) and their brats wolfing down gobhi parantha and luchi-alur dom, and just coast along till its time to disembark. End of story.

So it is with this scenario in mind that I said goodbye to my friend Giuseppe and boarded the train from the Napoli station to Rome, where I would be changing trains to travel to my ultimate destination - Nice, France. I expected to share seats with the Italian equivalent of unclejis and auntyjis, the portly signore and signora, pacifying their brats with hot arancine bought from some station cafe. I walk up to the ticket counter, and after much hand gesturing and two words of rudimentary Italian (which I have since forgotten), I managed to get a ticket for Rome.

Behind me was a very pretty Italian girl wearing the most colour-coordinated outfit I've ever seen anyone wearing. Pink top, pink pants, pink shoes, pink bag, pink nailpolish, pink lipstick, well.....umm.....you get the picture. After I got the ticket, I just stood near the counter for a minute, trying to figure out the direction I should be moving to find my train. Suddenly, I felt that someone was trying to talk to me. I looked up, and it was Ms. Pink speaking in rapid-fire Italian, completely oblivious to my incomprehension of her, as I stood transfixed, staring blankly at her face. Suddenly she stopped, realized that I hadn't understood a word, took my hand and started dragging me along with her.

Stunned by this sudden move, I complied and walked with her, with absolutely no idea where she was taking me. Finally, we approached a train compartment and she gestured towards the board affixed to it. Ahhhh.......Roma was one of the stops listed. So she was going to Rome as well! I guess she had heard me struggle at the counter, and decided to take charge of me. We went inside and found a coupe with two empty seats. The rest of the seats were occupied by a lady with two kids, an older lady, and a young man.

The train started almost immediately after. I was the obvious odd one out, I didn't look Italian, and didn't seem to understand the language either. The others were curious as to where I was from, and it turned out that the young man knew some English, so he took on the role of the interpreter. So I duly answered all questions - where was I from, what do I do, what am I doing in Italy. When Mario (the young man) found out that I was travelling alone, he said:

Mario: You don't have a boyfriend?

TM: Yes I do.

Mario: Where is he from?

TM: He's from Greece.

Mario: Oh, that's why. If he was Italian, he would never let you travel alone like this.

I laughed and assured Mario that I actually enjoyed travelling by myself sometimes. Besides, my boyfriend was working and had no vacations.

After the question-answer session, the others started chatting in Italian, with such bonhomie as if they had known each other for ages. The older signora started telling the others (as Mario briefly explained) about her trip to America to see her brother's family. They then talked about the new Italian films to be released this year, and lamented the decline of Italian films and the rise of vulgar comedies at the box-office (again explained by Mario).

At some point, someone produced a packet of tarallini, and passed them around, and I got several rounds of the yummy and totally addictive bread sticks. Then I asked Mario what his destination was, and he said he was going till the last stop of the train, which was Genoa. A few minutes later, I got up to use the bathroom. On the way, I saw a map of Italy affixed inside the compartment. And realized (to give you an idea of the scatterbrained way I travel) that Genoa was right next to Nice. So basically I could take the train all the way to Genoa and then be just an hour away from Nice. Sounds like a plan.

I went back and told Mario that since my final destination is Nice, I would like to extend my ticket to Genoa, but had no idea how to do it. At this point, to my utter bemusement, a crisis buzz started in the compartment. Mario became agitated, started explaining the situation to the others who all started talking very excitedly. Mario went out of the coupe, walked first from our compartment to the one behind and then the one in front, and then finally came back and explained -

Mario: You will have to wait for [Italian term for train superintendent which I've since forgotten] to come by. He'll issue you a new ticket.

TM: Ok, that's good.

Mario: Don't worry, everything will be fine.

TM: Thank you, but I'm not worried at all.

This was followed by Mario repeatedly reassuring me that everything would be fine, that I shouldn't worry, and my ticket would be extended, and everyone else in the compartment saying essentially the same thing in Italian.

Finally after half an hour, the superintendent appeared, and the look of relief on Mario's face was definitely greater than on mine. Everyone in the coupe had broad smiles on their faces at this crisis resolution, and I managed to extend my ticket to Genoa.

After a while, the train reached Rome, and everyone in the coupe left except me and Mario. I said goodbye to Ms. Pink, the elderly signora, the lady with the adorable kids and continued on to Genoa.

The train rushed on and Mario and I chatted about things. Can't remember, perhaps we spoke about my trip to Napoli, how I liked his city, which I assured him I absolutely loved. We then talked about our lives, me as a student in America, him as a programmer in Napoli. At some point, he mentioned his girlfriend, saying that he planned to marry her soon.

Anyone who's travelled by train from Rome to Genoa would know that almost half the journey is traversed underneath what seem like limitless tunnels. At times it seems as if most of the journey is carried out in pitch darkness brought on by the tunnels. So from time to time, our coupe was plunged in darkness. After the first two times this happened, every time the train went into a tunnel, Mario switched on his cellphone as a light source, emitting this strange faint blue light. Like this we went, yellowish-white light from outside, and then blue light barely enough to light our faces and fingers, and then the light outside. And every time he turned on the cellphone, Mario smiled a sheepish smile, embarassed at his meagre means to alleviate my discomfort.

Mario: It is nice I get to practice my English with you.

TM: Ha ha, I'm sorry, I wish I spoke Italian. Perhaps I'll learn if I stay more.

pause...........the train enters another tunnel, the cellphone lights up our faces, Mario smiled, I smiled back, reassuring him that I understood. That I was comfortable. And secure.

Then we passed what looked like Cinque Terre, five villages along Italy's northern coastline, a place of amazing beauty apparent even at night.

Mario: Que bella!

TM: You know, I'd love to go there some day, it's so beautiful.

pause...................

Mario: You know................

TM: What?

Mario: I've been with my girlfriend for six years....................

Mario: I don't know..................................

TM: What don't you know Mario?

Mario: It is not love, you know..................................it's.....it's.......(and he struggled to find a word, or perhaps say something else)

silence...................we both turned to admire Cinque Terre........

The train was approaching Genoa. Mario had to get off at the first station at Genoa, I was travelling till the main station. It was almost midnight. He looked worried.

Mario: Are you sure you're going to be ok by yourself at the station? It's so late at night.

TM: Yeah, trust me, I'll be fine.

Mario: Here, take my cellphone number, call me if you have a problem.

TM: Thanks. You know I will.

Mario: .............and, here, take my email, write to me, if you feel like it.

TM: You take care Mario.

Mario: You too. Ciao.

There it was, my last image of Mario, waving to me from the station, pointing to his cellphone, call me if you need help, ok? I spent the night at the Genoa station, travelling on to Nice the next morning. As for Napoli - Napoli knows that I'll return, it enchanted me enough to extract a promise to return, and perhaps I'd run into Mario at the seaside promenade there, munching tarallini, accompanied by his wife, formerly his girlfriend of six years.

Notes From the Cuckoo's Nest: Part I

2007-02-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

My blog receives periodic calls to action from Rimi, and had it not been for her gentle reminder, I wouldn't have been guilted into writing this. I'm really glad I did though, because I had promised Rimi that I would write about certain episodes from a past life of mine, which is so far removed from where I am now, that it seems quite surreal. Perhaps this is my way of reminding myself of the very real people and adventures I found myself with.

Here is how I shall proceed. This is an ongoing series, but I'm not entirely sure how many episodes I'll write. It would be interspersed with other blogposts, because the theme can get a bit depressing at times. I'm also thinking of starting another post series where I'll write my travel stories, which would run concomitantly with this series.

About 10 years ago, a combination of events in my life landed me in one of India's largest mental diseases hospitals for a year. Despite all the jibes from my friends teasing me about how much shock therapy I received daily, I was not, in fact, a patient. I was not even supposed to be in the hospital. But it so happened that the social work department where I was studying had planned to send me to a prison correction centre as an intern.

The thought of working for the prison system was for some reason rather unpalatable at the time, so I refused. The only other choice, as it turned out, was the hospital. I had recently finished reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey and The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz, and was sufficiently interested in the workings of mental illness to look forward to the switch to working in the hospital. I was being accompanied by another intern, the very upbeat psychology nerd Ms. Phillips, who knew a lot more about diagnosis and therapies for mental illness than I did (I had never studied psychology at university). Ironically, that knowledge was completely useless in the set-up we were about to find ourselves in.

Our supervisor at the hospital was the head of the hospital social work department Mrs. SK, a powerful, though strangely, slightly repulsive person, whose views and ways were the cause of a major bout of unpleasantness later in my stint. Things started on a fairly friendly note though. Mrs. SK had three full-time social workers working for her, Mr. JJ, Mr. RR, and Mr. GG. Our duties were to assist doctors in the out patients department (OPD) with gathering case information from the relatives of patients, and examining case histories and organizing therapy sessions with patients admitted to the hospital wards. Ms. Phillips was assigned to the female wards and I was with the male patients(the wards were gender segregated). In the OPD, we worked together for the same doctor.

With this background in place, let me begin with the first of my many stories from the hospital. And tell you folks about about the person that was Dr. Dee. Many human beings manage to pack in a fair bit of contradictory, incongruent parts - manipulative but generous, chatty yet frigid, kind morphing to cruel, etc. Dr. Dee managed to stretch his contradictory ways to extremes that made him seem like an angel one moment, and an asshole the next. Let me explain.

Dr. Dee was the smartest doctor in the entire hospital. His diagnostic skills were impeccable, he always prescribed the right medicine, and his knowledge of his field was borderline genius. And yet, within the first week of working for him, I had developed a deep disgust for the man, which even my grudging respect for his talents could not overcome.........................

Day (perhaps Tuesday, or Thursday) Date - Forgot, sometime in the year 1996
Place - Dr. Dee's office, The Hospital
Time - 10: 00 a.m.

(A line of patients had formed outside the door. This is a government hospital, and in its scale, one of a kind in the entire region. We have patients and their families who have travelled overnight by bus/train and waited hours outside the hospital for the OPD to open. Most are dirt poor, and coming up with the bus or train fare must have been a struggle. They wait anxiously for their turn, with almost reverent faith in the doctor's ability to cure the malady that ailed their son/daugter/wife/husband/father/mother.)

Dr. Dee arrives and greets us. He notices the line out of the door, but also manages to catch the eye of the sales representative of a pharmaceutical company. He ignores the patients, and calls the salesperson inside. They're old acquaintances, and start chatting. About stuff. Hospital gossip. Dr. Dee trying to wheedle a medical conference invitation from the man. The salesperson dumping drug samples on Dr. Dee's desk.

One hour passes. The patients get impatient.

TM and Ms. Phillips: "Dr. Dee, won't you ask the first patient to come in?"

Dr. Dee: "Huh? They can wait. An hour is not going to make a difference."

Two hours pass.

TM and Ms. Phillips: "Dr. Dee, should we at least start doing case histories with the patients?"

Dr. Dee: "No, I need to see them first"

With this, he went back to chatting with the salesperson.

Salesperson (nervously): "Dr. Dee, why don't you see a few patients, I'll come back later"

Dr. Dee: "Oh no, no. Don't leave. The patients are in no hurry."

Middle of the third hour.......................................

I had taken to glaring at Dr. Dee intently in an effort to shame him into action, while Ms. Phillips , with a look of intense embarassment and anguish, was trying to find new spots on the walls to stare at.

Finally Dr. Dee and the salesperson run out of things to talk about, and with a supercillous wave of his hand, the doctor summons the first patient in. Once he starts seeing them, he's remarkably efficient. One case in particular stood out.

A young woman came in, accompanied by her father. She had been seen in another hospital, where she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The family had moved to Delhi, and she needed a fresh prescription for her medicine. Dr. Dee looked intently at her face (he hadn't seen any diagnosis reports yet), and then turned to us -

Dr. Dee: "She doesn't have schizophrenia."

TM: "But you haven't even asked her questions or looked at her previous diagnosis."

Dr. Dee: "Trust me on this. You'll see - she's not schizophrenic. She has borderline mental disability"

TM: "Umm....she doesn't look mentally disabled to me"

Dr. Dee: "Just wait."

With this he turned to the father of the girl.

Dr. Dee: "Iska kabhi koi buddhi ka test bhi karvaaya tha?" (Did you ever get her IQ tested)

Father: "Ji Dr. saab, pichhle hospital mein saare test karvaaye they" (yes doctor, in the previous hospital, they did all kinds of tests)

With this he gave Dr. Dee a copy of her IQ test. Yes, what he said. She had borderline mental disability. Then he started asking the girl questions. Trying to determine if symptoms of schizophrenia existed. None did. She had just been horribly misdiagnosed. He asked her to stop taking the schizophrenia medicine and referred her to another specialist.

When the last patient of the day was seen, he turned to us and said -

Dr. Dee: "You think I'm a slacker, but see how I saw the patients"

TM and Ms Phillips: "Yeah, spending less than 5 minutes per patient and after many had been diverted to other doctors"

Dr. Dee: "Ha ha, but I'm good at what I do. Five minutes is enough for me to diagnose."

The good doctor used to flirt non-stop with us. He was absolutely delighted to have us assisting him, unlike the glum doctor we had been assigned to before. He also flirted with every female hospital employee who was remotely good looking. Rumour had it that his marriage was in shambles, his wife, also a doctor, was working in another city, and they hadn't seen each other for ages.

Another day in the OPD...........................

Dr. Dee walks in, this time accompanied by the pharmaceutical salesperson. Much idle chat commences. A female hospital clerk walks in. She's in her mid-30s, pretty, slightly plump, and is more than little fond of Dr. Dee.

Clerk: "Dr. saab, aap ne to MBBS ki hai, yeh bataiye na meri gardan mein kya hua hai. Bahot dard hai" (Dr., you also have an MBBS, please tell me what's wrong with my neck. It hurts)

Dr. Dee: "Kal raat pati ko zyada zor se belan maara tha kya?" (Did you hurl the rolling pin with extra force at your husband last night?)

Clerk (giggling): "Kya Dr. saab, aap bhi na. Dekhiye na kya hua hai" (Oh please Dr. Dee. Why don't you see what's wrong?)

(TM and Ms. Phillips suppress a laugh)

Dr. Dee, instead of getting up to examine her neck, grasps her arm to pull her towards him.

Dr. Dee: "Kaafi solid baanh hai aapki. Bechara pati" (Your arm is a solid one, poor husband)

Much giggling ensues between the clerk, Dr. Dee and the salesperson, all the while the doctor held on to her arm, running his fingers on it. After another hour of banter between the three, the clerk and the salesperson leave.

Another two hours of OPD time gone. However, when the patients did start filing in, Dr. Dee was all attention, keen, perceptive, a sharp interpreter of symptoms, at times handing out medicine samples to patients too poor to even afford the subsidized medicine from the hospital pharmacy. When he concentrated on his work, he had no equal in the hospital.

However, his short bursts of productivity were squished into periods of indolence, indifference and plain apathy. Clearly, he did care about his skills, but at times, little about the people he practiced them on. An incident that occured towards the end of my term at the hospital pushed the doctor firmly into asshole territory for me - no amount of expertise or generosity could rescue my opinion of him.

We were sitting in Dr. Dee's office, writing down the case history of a patient, when an OPD peon walked in with a wicked grin on his face.

Peon: "WOH aayi hai, aur aapse milna chahti hai" (SHE is here, and SHE wants to see you)

Dr. Dee: "Woh kaun?" (Who?)

Peon: "Wohi, jis-se aapki ward mein anban hui thi" (The person with whom you had a tiff in the ward)

Dr. Dee's face changed. He looked grim.

Dr. Dee: "Bhejo usey" (Send her in)

A very stern woman in her late 50s walked in. She had an intent, fierce glint in her eyes that seemed to pierce through her glasses. She was agitated, but only slightly.

Woman: "Dr. saab, my work told me to get a certificate from this hospital that I'm fully recovered from my schizophrenia. Please sign a certificate for me"

Dr. Dee: "Ok. Give me the papers and wait outside. I'll call you in 10 minutes."

The woman went outside and Dr. Dee turned to us.

Dr. Dee: "Here's the deal. This woman, believe it or not, actually works in the social work department of (a major government) hospital. She's had chronic paranoid schizophrenia for the last 15 years or so with relapses from time to time. I don't know how fair it is for me to assess that she's fit to work as a hospital social worker."

Ms. Phillips: "Does she absolutely have to work?"

Dr. Dee: "She supports herself and her elderly mother with the income. She's not married, and doesn't have any other income."

Ms. Phillips: "If you think she's recovered for now, why not let her go back to work?"

Dr. Dee: "Hmm......we'll see."

He shouts to the peon to let the woman come back inside.

Dr. Dee: "I have looked at your papers, and I'm willing to sign them. However, I think you need to undergo another course of treatment before you join your work. I'm prescribing Clozapine which we recently got approved to use. It's very effective in treating your kind of cases."

Suddenly my mind went into overdrive. Clozapine...............Clozapine...............Clozapine........it's familiar...........very familiar........................in fact, I heard about it last week...................in Dr. RSP's office...........................the doctor was telling a patient's family about it......................the new effective drug................................that had a 1 in 1000 chance of killing the patient who went on it..............................the patient's family refused the treatment........................Dr. RSP was almost relieved they did.

TM (mentally): Dr. Dee, tell her about the side-effects.

Dr. Dee continues to talk about the drug's benefits.

TM (mentally): C'mon Dr. Dee, tell her it has a 1 in 1000 chance of killing her.

The doctor talks about all the chronic patients it had cured.

TM (mentally): C'mon you motherfuckin' bastard! Tell her it's dangerous!

Dr. Dee: "I really think you should go on this new drug. It would really help you"

The woman though was having none of it.

Woman: "Dr. saab, I was admitted to the hospital, and you people released me when I was cured. I'm cured now. Just sign my health certificate."

Dr. Dee: "I won't sign unless you go on the treatment."

All the muscles on the woman's face were quivering with anger. She was absolutely furious. She got up, muttering profanities under her breath and started walking to the door. On her way out, she slammed the door with all her strength, nearly shattering it, and screamed "Kuttey ka pilla!!" (son of a dog).

The doctor turned to us, his bright eyes, glinting brighter, with a slight smile curling his mouth.

Dr. Dee: "See, she's not cured at all. She's still relapsing, and she wanted me to sign that certificate."

TM: "You never told her about the side effects."

Dr. Dee: "What?"

TM: "You never told her that Clozapine has a 1 in 1000 chance of death for the patient."

Dr. Dee: "That's not a significant risk, especially for someone with chronic paranoid schizophrenia."

TM: "But you never told her about the risk."

Later, the peon told us that the woman, during her stay in the ward, had physically assaulted Dr. Dee and slapped him. He never forgave her that transgression.

Sound and Fury

2007-01-24T12:54:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one..................

who is royally pissed that Indian newspaper readers and TV-viewers are relentlessly bombarded with the vapid self-promotion and bullshit posturing of pompous windbag Piyush Pandey? I mean, It's hard enough to deal with him (started as an account exec, mysteriously transferred to the O&M creative department after 7 years) and his talentless hack brother (another adman) and decibel-busting sister (Vote for Ghaghra WTF!!) posing as some sort of genius family of super-achievers. But now he's gone and outdone himself.

To promote a new sports channel (all right scratch that - cricket channel), his agency created two ads purportedly showing the sporting rivalry felt by Indians towards the West Indies (the Caribbean for the non-cricket crazy) who are currently playing against India. This is what the ads showed, in a nutshell.

A West Indian, eating at a dhaba, finds the food too hot and spicy. He is desperate for water but nobody gives him any. Even the tap he sprints to runs dry.
Punchline: It’s tough being a West Indian in India.

A West Indian couple is cosying up on a boat ride. The Indian boatman looks at them angrily and jumps into the water, leaving them stranded.
Punchline: It’s tough being a West Indian in India.

Source: The Hindustan Times January 23, 2007

In both ads, the West Indian protagonists were black Caribbeans. Now all the sound and fury over Shilpa Shetty apart, we all know the sort of belittling bordering on hostile racist behaviour that people of African origin face in India. Anyone with half a brain can see that the ads legitimize such behaviour in the name of rooting for the country (how many Indians in any case can distinguish between black Caribbeans, Africans, other members of the African diaspora, etc.)

And what is the reaction of the O&M big boss whose creative team came up with this gem?

Piyush Pandey, the creative director of Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), the advertising agency that made the promotional films, said there was no racism in the ads. “People who think the ads are racist can go take a *****. I enjoyed them tremendously,” Pandey said.

I can totally see how folks like Piyush Pandey would enjoy tremendously what Alyque Padamsee, in his charming English-inflected Hindi, called "gadhagiri". Alyque, bless is heart, is too kind.

I'm Doomed to Hotdogs and Whiskey for the Rest of the Year

2007-01-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

My last post took way took long to come through, and look what happened - a year went by already! Best wishes for the new year everyone, and given what party animals the whole lot of you are, I have no doubt you contributed robustly to liquor sale spikes, chaotic dance floors, much midnight smoochies and general benevolence.

Let me write down my adventures for the night before I forget all of them. As it is, I only remember about 32 per cent of the night, the rest of my memories pilfered and spirited away by Mr. Chivas Regal (ha ha "spirited away", ain't I such a punster....umm....ewww).

I do remember how it all began though. Well, there was Em and I, and He Pumpkin and She Pumpkin. And we sort of got invited to the house of a woman who's the friend of Em's cousin. Interesting character, beautiful woman, a published author who also does a bunch of other things. Her house is in this really nice part of town, close to the Hollywood hills, in a neighbourhood full of artsy cafes, live music, bookstores and cool restaurants. Perfect setting for a writer's abode.

But the number one concern for us el cheapos was - how do we keep our good booze well-hidden so we save it up for private consumption? You see, we brought an entire keg of beer for the house, but we also had bottles of rum, whiskey and champagne that we wanted just for ourselves. Yes, selfish indeed, but have you seen how people wolf down good quality free booze at parties? There would have been nothing left for us.

Finally after we entered the house, we found a safe spot behind a tree in her yard where we stowed away our stash. However, we had reached the house with only about 20 minutes to go before midnight, so soon it was champagne time, and we pulled out our champagne bottle and guzzled down. Lots of hugs were exchanged, and then Em poured out a glass of Chivas Regal each for me and himself.

TM: "Dude, do you realize you've filled the glass with whiskey"

Em: "No dude, it's just ice. There's hardly any whiskey"

TM: "Umm..ok"

I was thirsty, and that cold whiskey on the rocks was very tempting. So I started gulping my whiskey down and had emptied the glass in a few minutes. There, that wasn't so bad now. And voila! I'm not even drunk. I'm....just......happy.......and......hungry.

Someone was barbecuing hotdogs in a corner. Em and I went and scored a hotdog each.

TM: "Dude, this is like, you know like, the most amazing hotdog ever"

Em: "Yeah, totally the greatest hotdog"

And, then we shared a burger.

TM: "Incredible! Best burger ever"

Em: "Wow, so juicy and tender"

TM: "You know Em, whiskey makes everything better"

Em: "Yeah, hotdogs and whiskey, great combination"

And then, in a fit of excessive generosity, Em gave me another humungous whiskey on the rocks. Which I proceeded to finish off with great urgency. Now this is where things start getting a bit blurry. All I remember are snatches of conversation.

Conversation #1

She Pumpkin, I and Dude #1 (French guy, builds boats)

SP: "Hey, that guy has a weird look on his face"

Dude #1: "Yeah, apparently his wife was making out with someone else a few minutes ago. He's pissed"

blurr...........blurr...........blurr

Dude #1: "So, as I was telling you, I met this chick at a New Year party here a few years ago. Within an hour, we found an empty room in the house and had sex"

SP and TM (mentally): Dream on loser!

Conversation #2

TM and Dude #2 (some sort of struggling film director)

(I swear I have no idea how this conversation even started)

blurr............blurr.............blurr

Dude #2: "So, who's your favourite author"

TM (mentally): Author.....hmmmmm.....author.........oh yeah, like the folks who write books and stuff. Oh yeah, author, ha ha ha.

Try as I might, I couldn't think of a single name.

TM: "You know, I do love poetry. I love Ted Hughes"

Dude #2: "Umm....Sylvia Plath's husband, right?"

TM: "Quite frankly, Sylvia was so overrated. Ted was the real talent in that relationship"

Dude #2: "Oh, absolutely. You are so correct"

TM (mentally): How pathetic. Too chicken to admit he's read neither Plath nor Hughes.

I wasn't about to give up.

TM: "And I also like Seamus Heaney, Constantin Cavafy, Odysseas Elitis, Philip Larkin, Eliot, Lorca........

Dude #2 (alarmed): "and, and......Emily Dickinson?"

TM: "Dickinson? Yeah, I've read Dickinson."

Dude #2: "and, Frost?"

TM: "Yes, Frost too"

Dude #2: "and, Whitman and Poe"

TM: "yes, some of Whitman, and some of Poe as well"

TM (mentally): What other name from your high school poetry class are you pulling up next?

Dude #2 "and Emerson?"

TM (yawn): "I need to go pee."

Apparently, my night's adventures also included being hit on by a fairly nice looking middle aged Jewish man (I do remember telling him he looked quite Jewish, and he said he got mistaken for Italian often. But that's it, the rest of our talk is a blur)

And then, there was weird creepy lawyer guy, who was apparently celebrating his birthday. And at some point I was dancing alone on the dance floor (I have no idea how I got there) and he whispered into my ear how he had seen naked pictures of Indian women online. Ha ha, what a revelation! Get a better pickup line, you perv!

After the party slowed down, the Pumpkins, Em and I headed home. As we were passing through downtown, Em and I decided we were hungry and stopped at the Standard 24-hour diner for some grub. I was still very much under the influence, and when the waiter asked me what kind of cheese I wanted on my burger, I put on my best seductive voice and said:

"Cheddar, please" (this should come with a voice effect to convey just how idiotic I sounded)

And then I proceeded to make an ass of myself by literally wolfing down the fries that came with my burger. This is particularly embarassing because the Standard is a very trendy and posh place, and Em and I are regulars at the diner. I haven't drunk large quantities of alcohol in a very long time, so didn't remember the horrible attack of munchies that follows.

But at the moment of my drunkenness, eating presentably, or making decent conversation was the last thing on my mind. What was my biggest concern through the night? I'm pretty sure any girl who's had many an alcohol soaked night would immediately identify with this:

Did I lock the door of the bathroom, and did it stay locked as I peed?

Don't laugh, I've had one too many adventure in club bathrooms, where girls have been just too drunk to secure the latch of their bathroom stalls, sitting on the throne in full view of all. As far as I know, I don't think I managed to traumatize any fellow bathroom users.

By all accounts, I think I had a fun night, though I find it very hard to remember most of it. Here's wishing everyone a very wonderful new year, in which you manage to ensnare every opportunity that comes your way.

There's No Right Answer to - Does This Make Me Look Fat?

2006-12-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past few days as the guest of my friend Em as my boyfriend's family is in town, and there just isn't room to accommodate all of us in our cramped little studio apartment. Hence my days have been connectivity-challenged, and my access to the internet has been sporadic at best.

A post has been long overdue, especially since I wanted to make it topical and coincide with this post that Rimi wrote; however, Rimi has moved on to other things. Regardless, I shall pontificate on all things porky and lardy.

When I first moved to the US, I developed a most unhealthy interest in experimenting with the calorie-laden fat-bombs that are strewn across the minefield that is the average American university cafeteria. Muffins and croissants for breakfast? Sure! Nachos and enchiladas with extra cheese for lunch? Why not! A giant portion of cheesecake for dessert? Absolutely! And then there was pizza delivered at home, a midnight burger run and bags and bags of potato chips. All of this washed down with large sized glasses of regular Coke.

Within a year I developed a virulent aversion to most of these things and to this day cannot bear to consume either cheesecake, fast food pizza or enchiladas. By then though, I had been packing in the pounds. I'm still way below the average American weight (in case you guys are wondering, admit it, you are), but I'm chunky by Indian standards at this point.

Over the years, it's been a struggle to shrug that first weight gain off. That struggle is compounded during periods of intense academic activity like the last few months have been, where the only exercise has been my fingers tapping away at the keyboard. As I resume my formerly physically active self, the dilemma for me, as reflected in Rimi's post, is shared by many, many other women.

What to wear, and what not to wear. All of us wonder about this from time to time, but for those of us with some extra, ahem, junk in the trunk, this becomes a very complex trade-off between looking chic, not looking dowdy, and at the same time smoothening out the wobbly bits, covering the bulges, and achieving a sleek silhouette. Not as simple as it sounds. Well, it doesn't even sound simple.

After emerging from many a wardrobe disaster, and many a quizzical eye wondering if that really is a pea in the pod, and not the metabolic nightmare that is my abdomen fat, I think I've achieved the Zen realization that there are some essential principles to building a wardrobe and dressing in ways that makes your weight your friend, not enemy. Without further ado, I'll lay it right out (oh, and the reason why I provided all that background to my weight gain was to serve as a dire warning to all who make their way to this land of whipped topping and high fructose corn syrup - lay off the cheesecake! Freshmen fifteen is no joke)

First, pay attention to the fabric. Neither should it be so stiff and heavy that it creates a poufy and ballooned out effect, nor so slinky, thin and tight as to highlight every roll of fat that exists on your body.

Best friends: medium to thick silk with lining, matte jersey, soft cotton, and a good quality polyester, rayon or nylon blend that feels substantial and flowy at the same time, soft wool, cashmere.

Worst enemies: Satin (just say no!), very thin rayon, nylon or polyester fabric, brocade, organza, stiff cotton, and thick wool knits like boucle.

Second, the cut. Many of us harbor the illusion that if we can only minimize the distance between our skin and our outfit to minus infinity, we'd look magically slimmer. Which leads to the sorry sight of chunky girls spilling out of their tight jeans creating the muffin-top effect, wearing the tightest of tops, wearing blouses so tight across the back that the back fat groan in agony.

No, no and a hundred times no. Just skim the body, don't hug it too tight and choke it. Don't wear a sack either. A well-tailored outfit is half the battle won, so even it takes a thousand trips to the fitting or trial rooms to find the perfect fit, do not give up. And of course, women in India are so lucky to have the services of tailors at such reasonable prices. Most of them would do fine alterations and modifications to store bought dresses, salwar kameez and blouses as well.

Finally, the design. Women know that there are certain well-established problem areas in the body, which become the repositories of the most stubborn and unseemly fat. Let's take an inventory of these parts - The lower segment of the upper arm, the area between underarm and the boobs, neck, abdomen, butt and thighs. Of course, the intensity of the problem would differ from woman to woman, and some women may have beautiful arms but jelly thighs, or a lovely butt but a large neck.

Thus it makes sense to speak of design elements appropriate for each problem area.

Underarm and boobs: This is one of those areas that you wouldn't normally think of, except when buying a sleeveless blouse when all its horrors are brought forth. Now there are sleeveless tops and sleeveless tops, and some are cut to cover this area much better than others. I've found that a sleeveless top with a deep round, bateau, or scoop neck, which is cut to fit snug on the arms is perfect for tucking in this fat.

Neck: Only one advice - lose the turtleneck (or polo, or whatever you choose to call it). Lower necklines are much better and do not make you look like you don't have any neck.

Upper Arm: No poofy sleeves. A short-sleeve, three-quarter sleeve or full-sleeve works much better than sleeveless. Though if you are going with any of the former, wear a nice deep neck to counter the granny look.

Abdomen: This is where the Bridget Jones approach works best - granny underwear. Something that nicely keeps all those bulging bits in check, minimizing the bulge, though not entirely eliminating it. Make use of control-top hosiery wherever available - otherwise, a hideously ugly high-waisted panty can do the job just as well.

Now that we've worked on some hidden controls, let's look at how we can create the wee bit illusion of a waist. An A-line dress just slightly nipped at the waist works fabulously. So does a wrap dress. For a kameez, go with the lovely long A-line shaped ones, or a nicely fitted angarakha style. For heaven's sake lose that godawful short kurti. It flatters no one, and makes even the slimmest woman look like she needs liposuction.

Butt and Thighs: Oh lord, we've really hit a roadblock now haven't we? Quite literally. Things are pretty grim here, but not entirely hopeless. For starters, if you wear a skirt or a dress, try to stick to a length that hovers around your knees, either just above, at the knee or just below. Anything higher, and you're needlessly airing your deepest troubles, anything lower, you've aged yourself by at least a decade.

Sari wearers get off pretty easily here, just be carefully with the fabric (nothing too thick or thin), and drape the pallu so that you get a really steep angle. Now what exactly do I mean? This for starters provides a clue. See how the drape on Sridevi's sari is brought up from almost knee level?

Now for the worst nightmare of the chunky girl - finding a pair of jeans or pants that fit well and do not accentuate the body fat. I've never been a huge fan of pants or jeans, and given that the LA weather allows me to get away with it, I almost always wear skirts and dresses. On colder days I wear them with tights to keep warm. But most girls are not like me, and many are actually deeply in love with their jeans.

I can sort of guess what might possibly work in picking a decent pair of jeans and pants, but don't take my word for it, because there's no personal experience to back this up. First, I think both a high waist an a low-rise would be extremely unflattering. What would work best is a pair of jeans or pants that covers all of the hip bone and rises up to the point where the waist is dissolving into the hips.

Next, do not listen to the fashionistas. Kate Moss has the body of a 14 year old boy, of course she can wear skinny jeans and not look like sausage casing. You on the other hand are blessed neither with dynamite metabolism, nor are mentally challenged enough to blow that Columbian slimming powder so beloved of Moss. In any case, the skinnies are not a good fit, neither are the tapered jeans. The boot cut, straight leg and flares are all much more flattering.

Well then, this is as didactic as you'd ever see me get. But most clothing advice for the curvy girl invariably advices her to dress like a dowdy, sex-less church lady. And that takes away all the fun of dressing up, the endless possibilities of glamourous, romantic, bohemian, or edgy. Ultimately that is what it really boils down to, the comfort and joy that we take in our clothes.

Despite all the do's and dont's I listed, I can also unequivocally say that if you love it, wear it, and do not give a damn about what anyone might think about the outfit. I got my best inspiration from all the well-fed, robust Greek girls I saw on my summer vacation trips. They frolicked around the beaches in their bikinis, swimming, sunbathing, having a blast with their friends.

Most of my American friends, on the other hand, put their bodies under a microscope in the fitting room when they go swimsuit shopping, agonizing over every little bump in the body. They think they are not worthy of wearing bikinis if they don't have bodies like models. The Greek girls though, just pick the most flattering and comfortable bikini, and revel in summer fun, not caring of anyone's disapproving looks.

Such a Long Journey

2006-11-24T08:49:00.000-08:00

That would teach me to not down an entire can of coffee at 11:00 p.m.! Went to bed at 3:00 a.m. woke up at 7:00 a.m., and with neither the energy nor the inclination to join the great capitalist orgy of Black Friday, have been pottering about the apartment ever since.

I think I am still in my charged dissertation writing mode, because till about 3 days ago, I was downing two large cups of coffee a day, the second usually sometime after midnight. I guess I'm still fairly disbelieving of the fact that I might have actually pulled off the impossible, that is, finished a not too rambling, mediocre but readable draft of my dissertation for submission. Probably my subconscious still thinks I need the coffee - focus, stay alert, and type, type and type some more.

Despite all the coffee, there were daily moments when my aching fingers and tired mind would conjure "what if" scenarios of life beyond a PhD. What if I quit and move to Sumatra? What if I become an illegally employed babysitter who reads books all days and occasionally admonishes the brats under her care? What if I buy my own farm and grow tomatoes all my life? Ok, you get the picture, my fantasies were really getting the better of me.

And so I started giving my mind daily pep talks, trying to dupe it into stretching itself almost beyond capacity. At this point, I've perfected the pep talk, so that at the first hint of a PhD student complaining about his/her PhD and threatening to quit, I can bring out the appropriate mix of guilt trip, dangling financial carrots, and explaining how the academic process is far less intimidating than it seems.

The last two days of writing the draft and finally submitting it were so mentally charged that I really needed a process to step down from my highly wound up state. I decided a visit to the LACMA to make use of my spanking new membership card was in order, but the bugger museum is apparently shut on Wednesdays. Argh! And to think I braved pre-Thanksgiving traffic to go there (yeah I totally blame them, and not the fact that idiot me didn't check their website for timings).

I did get some very peaceful moments though, through a marvellous sushi lunch and a relaxing cup of herbal tea at a Korean tea house. Urmi, we have to go to this lovely gem of a restaurant when you visit, which should be soon, so you manage a meal before the trendy sushi-gulping set invades this place.

The place is utterly unassuming on the outside, adjoining the nth Starbucks franchise, and set against a standard stripmall. The inside though is minimalistic, refined and unobstrusive. When I entered, the charming waitress mentioned with concern that the place was a traditional sushi restaurant - "I'm so sorry, we don't serve any California rolls". They've probably had one too many customer demanding avocado and cucumber rolled in with their tuna.

No, I'm fine with traditional sushi I said, and sat at the bar, the only other customers being a couple who seemed to be regulars. I had a light meal, but ate a few things I hadn't had before, including ankimo (monkfish liver) and uni (sea urchin). The horror with which sea urchin is mentioned by even some veteran sushi eaters, you'd think it was a terribly eccentric acquired taste. Frankly, the stuff was delicious, and no more odd than a prosaic bowl of daal for a first time taster of Indian food.

With the caveat that this fact has no bearing on my assessment of the meal, oh..my..lord.....the sushi chef was absolutely gorgeous. I mean, this is a man who can pull in the dining crowd on the strength of his looks alone (lots of single women dine alone or with their girlfriends), his sushi doesn't need to be as excellent as it actually is. But word on the street (well, actually, Chowhound boards, which is where I first heard about the place) is that he's married and the place is named after his daughter.

Later while drinking my citron tea at the Korean teahouse, I browsed through a coffee table book with Van Gogh's paintings. I was reminded once more how alternately fascinated and disturbed I was by his Crows over a Cornfield. I first saw it in a book about 8-9 years ago, and was immediately struck by the breadth of the canvas, the genius of the brush strokes evident even in a silly print reproduction.

I also learnt that Akira Kurosawa had based an entire section in his film Dreams on his impressions of the painting. I can understand Kurosawa's fascination with the work. If I have any special impetus to visit Amsterdam, it is to able to see the original "Crows over a Cornfield" at the Van Gogh Museum there.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and the only time in the year that I willingly and knowingly consume turkey. After a late lunch at a professor's house, I, the boyfriend unit, Em and another friend Zizi went off to see Casino Royale. As a great lover of commercial Hindi films, for me the Bond series are the closest thing in Hollywood to the kickass stand-off scenes and larger than life characters in Hindi cinema of the 1970s. And this Bond movie had plenty of thrills for me.

First off, count me among the sceptic-turned-converts to Daniel Craig's incredible charisma and raw sensuality. The very first extended action sequence (supposedly in Madagascar, but actually filmed in the Bahamas), was one of the exhilarating action sequences I've seen in any film. The narrative is thin and mediocre, but that's kind of true of most Bond films. The film more than makes up for it by filling frame after frame with Craig, and more Craig, gritty Craig, steely Craig, cynical Craig, ironical Craig.

And then there are the locations! While watching the film, we were mesmerized by the breathtaking visuals of scenes supposedly set in Montenegro, and I decided there and then that Montenegro was to be among my future destinations. However, when the final credits rolled in, Montenegro was nowhere to be found, and instead, the name of Lake Como cropped up. It was then that Zizi, who's Italian, realized that the so-called Montenegro scenes had actually been filmed at this gorgeous lake in northern Italy.

It's amazing, just when I thought I knew all about Italy's best attractions, comes a place that I had never heard about before. Just when I thought the country couldn't be more beautiful, I see a place whose beauty is surreal and truly exceptional. Some of Casino Royale's action takes place in Venice as well, but as Zizi said, the scenes pack in every single Venice cliche, including gondolas, gondoliers in striped shirts, and the Piazza San Marco and its pigeons.

Em booed at the end because he felt that they made the movie mushy in parts, which I agree was quite unnecessary. I mean for heaven's sake, all the chick-flicks in the world can cater to the mush and tears crowd, the women in the audience should be happy with Daniel Craig's eyes and abs alone. No need to make him say sappy stuff.

Global Gypsies and Their Caravans

2006-09-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

Em told me something strange a few days ago. Won't go into the utterly tortuous and convoluted channel of communication through which he received this information, but the gist of it is - A few years ago, we used to have a few Indian students living in the apartment complex where I used to live till recently. They were all on fairly good terms with me, friendly and pleasant, and at times we hung out together, although not very often.

But it seems that I was being excluded from their frequent outings, and at least one of them had an active dislike for me. Reasons - apparently I deny my Indian roots, fake a British accent, and avoid socializing with other Indians.

I won't go into all the different reasons why accusing me of "denying my roots" is patently absurd (and if you insist, then I'd ask you to either go read Bankim Rachnabali or Andha Yug for the purposes of discussion, take your pick). But I can't resist pointing out that it's incredibly amusing to be called a "roots denier" by my ex-neighbour who is a diplobrat, and barely spent two years of her life in India.

And now for the matter of the accent. For the record, I don't have a British accent (whatever that's supposed to be - I guess they mean a certain English accent). I've never lived in England, and have spent a sum total of 30 hours in that country, either in transit or transferring from one airport to another. I'm not Anglophillic, though there are certain things I like about the nation (I'm more of a Persophile and Philhellene than Anglophile).

What I do have is a generic Bong-Indian public school-worked for Oxbridge educated bosses for three years accent. And watched BBC and ITV shows when Doordarshan was the only game in town accent. Have things changed so suddenly and dramatically in India that no one remembers a time when we were encouraged to cultivate a slight English upper class accent? Yes it was a very class-ridden thing, and often condescending, but it was something that many of us aspired to.

But in any case, I do not in any way sound like someone who's lived in England, and to date, no English person has ever asked me if I've spent time in England. However, I do get asked by a lot of Americans if I've lived in England, if I have any English roots, or if I went to a British school in India. I guess they don't really distinguish between an actual English accent, and one that only sounds similar (very mildly). I'm told I sound very different from a lot of other Indians they know, and I'm at pains to explain that this might be due to a regional variation or a different background, or simply a generation thing, because a lot of younger Indians sound more American.

I can imagine someone who's not Indian being ignorant of all the different variations of Indian English, but it's strange to have an Indian accuse me of faking an accent, because I sound different from whatever their peculiar idea of an "Indian accent" is.

Anyway, the last couple of days made me feel even more how utterly petty and ridiculous such concerns were, as I listened to and read about the incredible travel adventures of friends who seem to be traversing all parts of the globe.

Two days ago, we had lunch with a friend who narrated her experiences of working for a month with a development project in a village in Ghana, travelling to Senegal to meet a cousin in a plane where the lights went out midflight, then quickly started losing altitude and the pilot made emergency manoeuvres to finally land it safely.

During her time in Senegal, she narrowly missed being injured in a street explosion, and then later in the week, went off to the jungle to follow the footprints of giraffe families. Her cousin, an American man, was an artist who was married to a French woman working for the UN. They had spent their entire adult lives in Africa, moving from country to country.

Yesterday, we had lunch with another friend, a Turkish boy with a Russian wife whom he had met in Japan (and married in Las Vegas, yes it really is that incredulous). He told us about how he and his wife had gone to Indonesia to work on a research project and spent a month travelling from village to village in Java, collecting data. Apparently the Javanese can give stiff competition to the American South with their love of fried chicken, it can be found in every street corner.

And then, you can feast your eyes on the absolutely gorgeous pictures by my friend Alex, who took a month off to travel through South-east Asia, visiting Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Alas, his travelogue is in German, but hopefully a good online translator will be found. Especially his one photograph of Luang Prabang is absolutely breathtaking. I'd never been very interested in Laos, but now, my curiosity is piqued.

Waaaaaaa, everyone gets to travel but me! So not fair. Even my boyfriend took off for a ten day trip to Hong Kong today to see his childhood friend who works there now. And he doesn't even like dimsum! Why, why?

In fact, this is the last detailed blog post you'd see from me in a while, because the next month or so will be crazy. In fact, I should not be writing this at all, but finishing off my goddamn dissertation which is long overdue. Yes, the blog will be in hiatus, but I'll peek into comment boxes here and there.

And before I forget, I'll be a good Bong girl and wish everyone my best wishes for Durga Puja. Shobaike Sharodiyo Shubhechchha!!

Silly Photo Tag

2006-09-06T01:15:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged by Urmi with the silly photo tag, and now I'm kicking myself for not buying the crap photo they took of me screaming my head off on the Jurassic rollercoaster in Universal Studios (for the record, I'm a wimp and I hate rollercoasters, and was kind of tricked into sitting in that one). I almost never dress up for Halloween, so I don't have any of those as well. So I thought long and hard, and decided to make this a silly with a twist kind of tag.

Silly as in giddy, girly, fawning and nearly squealing with joy. You see, this is how it all happened -

Place - Piazza Venezia, Rome

Time - Evening

Becks and I are on our 10 day Italian vacation, and this was our first day in Rome. We had spent all afternoon marvelling at the Colosseum and the ruins of a Roman agora near it, bought icecream and water from Bangladeshi vendors who insisted on giving us discounts, and after a crappy pizza at a tourist trap cafe, were looking forward to a great, inexpensive Italian meal.

Ambling along Via Del Corso, we reached an intersection, waiting for the lights to change, trying to drink in the surroundings like good tourists. Suddenly, there they were, visions in white, two of Italy's finest, crossing the road on the other side. In a flash of a second, Becks and I looked at each other and said in unison - "Run!"

And we did, weaving through the Vespas and honking cars, screaming "Signore, signore". They turned around to face us as we caught up with them, sheepishly sidling up saying "Can we please have a picture with you?". They smiled and agreed, and we took turns to take the pictures, and both of us came out grinning ear to ear in the photos.

Well, I decided to protect my little shred of internet anonymity and blotted out my face (so you cannot see my obvious giddy glee), but you can see what caused that silliness - presenting TM and the fine officers of the Italian Navy aka Marina Militare Italiana

Edit: On the suggestion of Tabula Rasa, I've decided to add a layer of sophistication to this image by presenting a graphic re-enactment of what my giddy smile looked like. Enjoy!!!

5 Steps to Fashion Whorism

2006-08-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

It is not every day that the opportunity to be flippant, shallow and snarkalicious lands on my platter oh so casually. But then, I don't really read Indian newspapers every day. Especially the lifestyle sections. But when I do, goldmine dahlings! May I present Seema Goswami, whose bio from the Hindustan Times website reads:

A published novelist, a familiar face on television, a senior journalist, Ms Seema Goswami is best known for her popular weekly column, Spectator, in Brunch, the Hindustan Times Sunday magazine.

So far so good. Apparently Ms. Goswami's novel is entitled "Designer Passion" and unfortunately no reviews of the work could be found, and to cut all unnecessary evil from this post, I'll refrain from the severe itch to judge a book by its title.

Ms. Goswami's column focuses on society, fashion and other such fuzzy logic categories. It is rambling at worst, and doesn't even benefit from the guilty pleasure of bitching and name-dropping. Anyway, on to the column that appeared this Sunday (August 20) which was all about how to tell a true fashionista from a fake one (the HT website requires a free registration to view content, but here's a Yahoo India link to the piece). Anyway, according to Ms. Goswami, here are the characteristics of a true fashionista:

#1 "The Gay Walker: Even if she has a husband/boyfriend/lover, no fashionista worth her Fendi baguette is ever above cheating on the side with a Gay Best Friend."

Congratulations gay men, one more strike for gay civil rights. You've officially acquired the privilege to be the lifestyle accessory to a bored rich housewife. And Seema honey, when you're done hanging your gay accessory back in his closet, read the fashion press. The Fendi baguette went out of fashion since, like, when the second season of "Sex and the City" ended in 1999 (an episode in the show had initially popularized the bag).

#2 "The Pet Designer: The true fashionista always has her ‘favourite’ designer – well, okay, maybe one for every city – though the person in question may change from time to time."

Pet Designer? Ok, besides the obvious silliness of the expression, the concept is utterly and hopelessly redundant. You buy clothes that match your personal style. In the process you have a few favourite brands and designers who seem to design with your colour, style and silhouette preferences and body type in mind. This is not the prerogative of a "fashionista" (whatever the fuck that means), and simply sticking to one brand or designer does not make you automatically stylish.

#3 "The Limited Edition Hand bag: It doesn’t matter what the label or how long the waiting list, she takes pride in nabbing the handbag of the moment even before it has hit the stores."

I'm sure fashion houses and designers secretly have their own cruel terms for describing the women who spend every waking hour filling up waiting lists for handbags. But let me try. Umm....fashion victims? Fashion magazine brainwashed sheep? Cash cows for high-end brands? Women with zero confidence in their own taste who would rather be validated by celebrities and their handbags? Women with far more money than style? Ok I need to stop, but you get the idea.

#4 "The No-Repeat Policy: To be seen twice in the same outfit is a social solecism in her book. And to be actually photographed in the same outfit more than once – frock! horror! – spells social death itself."

To be photographed in the same outfit twice is a breach of good manners and social etiquette? And I suppose no savoir vivre and etiquette is being violated in shamelessly pestering designers to borrow their clothes for such social soirees. What about the Page 3 sort who seem to unfailingly appear in every social event in town every single day? Do they have a new outfit for every day of their lives?

#5 "The Bastien pedicure: ......Needless to say, this procedure is impossible to schedule unless you’re Very Very Important Indeed, like our true-blue fashionista."

Fucking insane. So now we have pedicure pissing contests? Ok wrong metaphor, women technically don't have pissing contests. But equivalent thereof. I bow to the utterly superior marketing genius of the French. Really, scraping off dead skin from the foot elevated to the ultimate in style. Who would have thunk?

So ultimately, I think what Seema Goswami seems to be telling us obliquely, but is perhaps afraid of identifying the elephant in the room directly for fear of being labelled classist is:

Style = Money.

To a certain extent, I agree. Let me explain. The best craftsmanship costs money. A beautifully crafted dress with expert cutting, complex details and superb tailoring from a brand with a reputation for excellence like Lanvin, Dries van Noten, Alexander Mcqueen, Rochas, etc., will not be dirt cheap. A Savile Row suit is worth every penny you pay for it, given the numerous fitting sessions, superior fabric, and cutting and stitching techniques that are unique to tailors in that tradition.

Real Jamawar shawls are painstakingly brocaded on handlooms, which is why so few of them are in existence and the market is flooded with cheap imitations. An excellent Lucknawi chikankari garment would have countless motifs using very fine versions of the murri and jaali stitches and the finest work is usally reserved for tone on tone embroidery, mostly white on white. Most of the cheap chikankari that is available in India is made with the coarse bakhiya stitch or very poorly executed murri. High-end Banarsi and Kanjeevaram sarees are always made with real gold thread and 100% silk, driving up the price of the finished product significantly.

However, Ms. Goswami's article was not so much about high-end fashion and style that is distinguished by finesse, but more about what involves the maximum waste of cash. It is obvious that her ideal fashionista is a woman with a good chunk of money to splurge, but very little cultivation of taste and understatement. And then there is that offensive fetishizing of gay men right at the top.

If this is about humouring and validating rich, desperate Page 3 camera-hogs that the world at large thinks that they are faaaabulous dahling, absolutely fabulous, and oh so chic and stylish, then fine, go ahead. I can read it as an amusing parody and be done with it. However, if this is meant to be some sort of normative guideline for all things chic, then I'm sorry to say, but what this would produce is a caricature, the sort of woman who befriends gay men solely to appear cool, slavishly follows everything fashion magazines tell her and name drop obnoxiously at every opportunity. In short, just because your subject is shallow, doesn't mean you have to plumb the same depths.

Omkara and Being Accused of Harboring the Oedipal Complex

2006-08-05T00:36:00.000-07:00

To move on to something totally different, which is what I wanted my earlier post to be about, but I started getting fish cravings and it became something else. Anyway, so the Indian blogosphere has been abuzz with reviews of the film Omkara, and how wonderful it is, and how everyone should go see it. And every single review seems to devote a large section of the text to the fact that the lead male characters abuse and use swear words freely in Hindi, and how that injects a sense of earthy realism in the movie because it captures the ethos of small town and rural North India. The implication being that the coarse expressions become signifiers of rusticity for the audience, along with the locale, the costumes, etc. (caveat: haven't seen the movie, just paraphrasing from reviews).

To this I say, you urban Indians grew up around some mighty polite people it seems. My Presidency College-educated, Fulbright-recipient uncle thinks nothing of using words like bokachoda (roughly, idiot fucker, but more nuanced) and haramjaada (bastard) in his everyday Bengali conversation. My very urbane microbiologist cousin uses gandu (asshole) as a term of endearment. In Delhi, in my high school, we thought nothing of peppering our conversation with chutiya (cunt), but once I casually used it in front of my father, and he was not amused. My college classmate Sandy, who later went on to greater things at IIMA, could not say a sentence without using behenchod (sister fucker) in it. He also did Shakespearean theatre. I can be quite potty mouth when I want to, but then you already knew that about me, right?

My point is, use of swear words is neither a class, nor regional marker or attribute. At least the Indians I know use swear words regardless of class or urban-rural origins. There is some gender difference though, some words seem to be exclusively used by women. Chhinaal (whore) and kanjari (kept woman) are mostly used by women towards other women. But other than that, the use of swear words follows a near identical pattern in urban and rural India. Swear words are used freely in the company of peers, especially young men in the company of other young men, however, they are almost never used in the presence of elder family members. This is even more so in the villages, where the hierarchical family structures ordain deference to older, specifically male members by the younger members. And trust me, despite what your impressions might be, no one in his right mind would swear in front of his family in rural Uttar Pradesh. Ever.

So with this background I fail to understand why urban Indian filmmakers try to get their rural characters to speak in a barrage of swear words to presumably emphasize their authentic rural context. If so, it is only fair that their urban characters should incorporate swear words into their speech given that urban Indians swear as much as rural Indians do. But it seems that for a lot of urban filmmakers, rural = coarse everyday speech, regardless of context.

It sort of reminds me of a bunch of non-mainstream Indian films that are ostensibly based in slums and show female characters who look like shit with ratty, messy hair, no make-up and dishevelled clothes. Makes me wonder if any of these filmmakers have seen an actual slum or interacted with women in the slums. When I worked in a slum a few years ago as a social worker, the younger girls all eagerly traded skin care tips with me, and were better put together on any given day than I was (not hard to do, as the last post has shown). Even the women who would stay at home and not work, would neatly brush their hair and tie it in a bun, apply kohl to their eyes, stick a bindi on their forehead and had at least a few ornaments, mostly cheap glass or metal bangles and necklaces. None of them looked like the "graduated from fugly-wins-award Charlize Theron school of acting" women acting in these films.

In the same way as no-makeup becomes a shorthand for edgy and alternative for women, it seems swear words have become the same for men. Except that the shock is not so much that there are men in India who swear so much, but the fact that in the past film dialogue has been so over-sanitized (thanks to the censors), that anything approaching how people actually talk (though exaggerated) seems so revolutionary. Unfortunately, this fairly normal, everday aspect of speech has somehow been associated only with the rural underclass and urban criminals in Hindi films, thus perpetuating yet another set of stereotypes which would only set to alienate the rural and urban underclass, not entice them to contemporary Bollywood.

Fishy Folk

2006-08-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, I was at my local Korean grocery, picking up some grub because I decided I was too lazy to cook. Ok so...wait, digression, what is it with all the Korean women at the grocery store? I mean, here I am at 10:00 a.m., eyes barely open, with my ratty t-shirt and skirt, looking for all practical purposes like the cat-loving spinster who sits on her couch and eats a gallon of ice-cream and moans about how men never get women. So I look like shit. And then I stand in the check out line. Behind the chichest chic woman ever, flawless makeup, gorgeous outfit, with a $2000 Fendi Spy bag casually slung on her shoulder (I kid you not! Who goes grocery shopping with $2000 bags?).

I look behind, hoping to be reassured by catching a glimpse of some harried housewife. And find another flawless woman, in a designer dress, daintily pushing her cart, this time with a $1000 Gucci bag. I look around, and even the grandmas seem better dressed than me, looking gorgeous with their coiffed hair and pearl necklaces.

I got my vanity taken down several notches, but at least I didn't get food poisoned. At the fish counter I got very tempted to buy a sushi assortment, which though pricey for a grocery store, was several dollars less than what I'd pay for a comparative meal in a sushi restaurant. I asked the fishmonger, who was Hispanic, "Was this packed today?" He looked at me, and then in a conspiratorially low tone said, "No, on Monday", and then motioned with his eyes that I should drop the packet. That's one of the big advantages of looking Hispanic, I get loads of brown solidarity and insider tips. It's especially helpful at fish counters, because they always steer me away from the bad buys towards the truly fresh stuff.

Speaking of fish....oh...my...lord. I had the best, best sushi I've ever had a week ago, and I truly believe that it was so sublime that it probably wouldn't be topped by any other sushi meal, even if I go and eat a $500 dinner at Urasawa some day (this is of course subliminal rationalization, I know I'll never be able to afford that $500 meal at Urasawa). But truly, this was divine sushi. It was toro, or the fatty part of tuna, something that I generally order at every sushi meal, but thist had all the creamy, velvetty texture of butter with none of the queasy feeling of consuming pure fat.

The restaurant, Sushi Gen, is fairly reasonably priced by sushi standards, but the meal can get pricey pretty fast if you keep consuming stuff like toro. Also it gets packed like crazy at meal times. Apparently people start lining up at 10:30 a.m. and the place starts serving lunch at 11:15 a.m., and the average wait for a lunch table is 1 hour. I got lucky because I was alone and they took me straight to the sushi bar, where the head sushi chef (who's apparently very well known) flirted all the time with me, and made me promise that I'd be back in dinner and drink sake with my meal.

It's funny, but sushi is one of my rare indulgences that I tend to do on my own. It just feels like a very adult thing to do, to sit alone at the bar, concentrate on the simple, incredibly fresh flavours, minimal conversation with the chef. For some reason, I never feel like eating alone at any other kinds of restaurants, so when I'm out for work and need a quick lunch by myself, I always look for a sushi restaurant.

Also, is it just me, because as an Indian woman, I feel especially awkward eating by myself at an Indian restaurant. The one time I did that I got stared at by everyone, I mean, counter guy, chef, waiter, every other male diner, and after a point it was so persistent that it became uncomfortable. I'm sure the Japanese men stare too, heck they flirt, and Japanese public transport is pretty notorious for sexual harassment, but here in LA they seem more subtle. Or maybe I'm biased.

The Semitic World and Assyrians

2006-07-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

In another corner of the blog world, I allowed myself to be drawn into a pointless argument over the issue of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict forgetting the golden rule about internet arguments: never bite the flame-war bait.

Anyway, this post germinated because someone used the term "anti-Semitic" in that exchange, and I realized yet again how much ignorance there is about the history and composition of different ethnic groups in the Middle-East among many of us.

In many parts of the world, the term "anti-Semitic" is bandied about as exclusively meaning anti-Jew without much thought as to its correct meaning and application. The term is a misnomer, because in its correct application it should apply to all Semitic people, more specifically, Semitic language speaking people including Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews, etc. The correct term should be "anti-Judaism", but "anti-Semitic" is overwhelmingly and incorrectly used. Here's Britannica's take on it.

In the post, I decided to write about a Semitic language speaking people, with whose history I'm a bit more familiar, why, I shall tell you in a minute. First, how many here can refer back to their ancient history lessons in school, and remember the discussion of ancient civilizations of the Mesopotamian region?

Let me go ahead and tell you what I was taught about it. I do recall being taught about the Sumerians, and the Babylonians found mention as well, perhaps mainly due to Hammurabi's Code. Perhaps the Assyrians and the Akkadians were discussed, but I honestly cannot remember. As abruptly as they had made an appearance in my life, the Sumerian gods, and King Hammurabi disappeared, and in my understanding the ancient Mesopotamians had been entombed in their relics and ruins, with little relation to contemporary Middle-East.

Till I met this friend of mine for the first time. The usual trivial banter:

TM: So where are you from?

Friend: Iran

TM: Oh, you're Persian.

Friend: No, I'm Assyrian.

TM: Ummm....from Syria then?(quizzical look on her face)

Friend: No, Assyrian.

TM: Hmm.....

Friend: Do you know about the Babylonians?

TM: Oh sure!! (not falling asleep in ancient history class can pay off)

Friend: So my ancestors were from Mesopotamia and were the great rivals of the Babylonians.

TM: (Trying desperately to remember whose kingdoms the Babylonians were pillaging, but only the names Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar pop out. Damn you Nebuchadnezzar, must you have such a quirky, memorable name?) *sheepish grin* I'm sorry, I don't think I know about the Assyrians. Tell me about them.

And so, over the years, bit by bit, my friend filled me with accounts of Assyrian history, ethnicity, religion and diaspora, albeit from his specific perspective as an Iranian citizen of Assyrian descent. And when I tried to find more information on the web, I found a tangled web of history, migration and geopolitics, somehow exemplary of the historical progression of the region we know as the Middle-East.

It all started in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present day Iraq, an area called Beth Nahrain (house of the rivers) by the Assyrians and Mesopotamia (meaning land between the rivers in Ancient Greek) by the Greeks. In the 1400 year history of the Assyrian state, there were moments of expansionary conquest, as the rulers campaigned as far as modern day Egypt on the west and modern day Bahrain on the east. There was also a bitter rivalry with the Babylonians, who subjugated them and were in turn subjugated by the Assyrians. After the death of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, the kingdom disintigrated rapidly and the Assyrian state ceased to exist in 609 BC. Details about the history of the Assyrian state can be found here.

Even though the Assyrian state was gone, there was still the matter of the Assyrian people and people claiming Assyrian descent, who were now to be found across the breadth of the territory of the erstwhile Assyrian empire. Everyone knows how ethnic Kurds are divided by the geopolitical borders of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. For the Assyrians, it's a similar story, as the region of their erstwhile empire falls between the four modern states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. There are Assyrian in all these nations, the majority being in Iraq, estimated to be between 1.3 million and 1.5 million. The ubiquitous Foreign Minister of Saddam Hussain's so-called al-Qaeda supporting regime was Tariq Aziz, an Assyrian/Chaldean Catholic.

Almost all contemporary Assyrians are Christians, and follow diverse sects of Christianity although a majority are followers of some branch of Eastern Orthodoxy. The ancient religion of the Assyrians was Ashurism, worship of Ashur, but they became the earliest ethnic group to convert to Christianity, and the first Assyrian Church was founded in 33 AD.

And this is where the Indian connection of the Assyrians comes in. If I have any Malayali readers, they would be familiar with the Syrian Christian community or the Mar Thoma Khristianis (St. Thomas Christians) of Kerala. They happen to be the earliest converts to Christianity in India and were converted by St. Thomas the Apostle, who came to India in 52 AD. Now in those days Syrian and Assyrian were synonymous, and a researcher on the Kerala Syrian Christians I spoke to in the past confirmed that "Syrian" does not refer to the name of the modern day country of Syria, but rather the ethnic group using Syriac in their religious liturgy, i.e., the Assyrians.

The language of the Assyrians is an interesting topic. Initially, they used to speak ancient Assyrian, an Akkadian language. However, with the growth of the Assyrian empire, another language gained ground and was sanctioned as an official lingua franca of the state. This language happened to be Aramaic, the language of the Aramaean people, which remained widely spoken in the region even after the fall of the Assyrian empire in 609 BC. One of the dialects of Aramaic was the language in which the most famous son of those lands, Jesus Christ (or Eshu M'Shikha in Aramaic) spoke and preached his message.

Present-day Assyrians continue to speak a language which is a form of Aramaic (also called Syriac or Assyrian Neo-Aramaic), however it is completely different from the old Aramaic of the Assyrian empire and the mother tongue of Jesus, though there are certainly many common elements. In fact, the Assyrians are one of the few living communities speaking a form of Aramaic. Being a Semitic language, it also has common elements with Hebrew and Arabic.

As I stated earlier, the trajectory of the Assyrian people is a reflection of the complex and tortuous history of the Middle-Eastern region. Many Assyrians were either killed or forced to flee their homeland in northern Iraq and North-western Iran due to the conflict with the Ottomans during 1914-1918, which depending on which side you are listening to, is either the Armenian and Assyrian genocide, or an uprising by the Armenians and Assyrians against the Ottomans (I'll be honest, I tend to believe that there was a genocide of ethnic Armenians and Assyrians). In recent years, after the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979, thousands of Assyrians have migrated to the West, leaving what had been their homeland for more than 3000 years. And the Iraq conflict has also led to many Assyrian/Chaldean Iraqis to migrate to the West from the Beth Nahrain, from whence their empire once sprang.

To conclude, I'd leave you with this:

Many of you must have heard the song Kandisa, sung by the band Indian Ocean, which is apparently a 2000 year old Syrian Christian hymn. Given that the language of the hymn has to be Old Aramaic, it is most probably the language that was spoken by Assyrians at the time.

I did ask my friend to try and decipher the song lyrics, but his knowledge of Syriac/Aramaic hymns is limited, and he also suspects that over 2000 years, the words have been considerably Indianized to the point of non-recognition by someone who actually knows Aramaic. For example, he told me that though he isn't familiar with the word "Kandisa" (according to Indian Ocean, it means "praise") but there is indeed a word "Q'adisha", which means "holy" (search for "holy" in this lexicon and scroll down).

So just as I was looking for more information on Kandisa, I stumbled upon this great transliteration of the Kandisa song, provided to the blogger Zimbly Mallu by a Syrian Orthodox person, and now it does look like Aramaic compared to what the Indian Ocean were singing.

I kept digging further, and finally found the source hymn, which happens to be an important part of the Syriac liturgy and indeed Christian liturgy in general, known as the Trisagion, and is unrecognizable in its "Kandisa" form:

Qadisha alaha, quadisha Khailathana. Qadisha la maiyoutha, ethrakhem 'ailaen

(Holy God, Holy and Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us)

Courtesy: Syro-Chaldean liturgy (scroll down to prayer before the Trisagion)

Here's the hymn being sung as liturgy in the Syro-Chaldean church (scroll to Qadisha alaha). Notice the pronounciation, Aramaic being a Semitic language, sounds closer to Hebrew and Arabic.

If you'd like to find out what contemporary Assyrian sounds like, a good introduction are the songs of Evin Agassi, an Iranian Assyrian singer, who sings with an Iranian Assyrian dialect. Notice anything unusual about his name? Yep, the reason why he shares his last name with the tennis champion Andre Agassi is because Andre's father Emmanuel "Mike" Agassi is half-Assyrian half-Armenian, and is also from the Assyrian heartland of Urmia in Iran.

Fair and Ugly

2006-07-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm too lazy to do an entire series on Bollywood's Bong Belles (there I've done the stupid alliteration), but I just couldn't resist taking this up. Desi Pundit directed me to a post on Pickled Politics, which had decided to expended valuable column space on a remark by Rimi Sen, an actress, whose been fairly successful in Bollywood recently. What exactly did our lady say to merit this attention? Speaking of her role in the upcoming movie Golmaal, she says:

I play a sweet and beautiful girl in the film. The best thing that I like about the film is that though it has four heroes, I am the only heroine. Rohit Shetty is amazing as a director. He can make even a black African look pretty

(The quote first appeared in an interview with Glamsham.com, who have since replaced the offending sentence in the interview. However, Pickled Politics has saved a screen shot so you can see it still)

Apparently, this is not the first time that Rimi has made such horrific statements. As a commenter on Pickled Politics said:

As shocking as this is, its not the first time. At the time of the release of “Kyon Ki” last year, I saw one of her interviews on TV. The host complimented her on her beauty and in reply she said that she’s not very beautiful. In fact, without makeup she looks like a NEPALI

Now of course as every Indian knows, the worst thing about this sort of racism is that the speaker of such statements is usually completely oblivious of the racist connotations of their words. I have heard my own relatives state that white is beautiful and dark is ugly without the slightest bit of consciousness about how culturally warped their perceptions are.

The beauty aesthetic in India is so strongly hardwired to only recognize white skin and big eyes as beautiful that anything that deviates from that aesthetic is immediately dismissed as lacking in beauty. All my life, it hurt me to see perfectly gorgeous girls being called ugly just because they had dark skin (and we Indians are absolutely shameless when it comes to passing rude comments on someone's appearance). And very ordinary looking girls celebrated as great beauties simply because they had lighter skin. Of course this is not entirely universal. I've know many Indian men who assure me they prefer darker women.

I'm normally never so mean, but I thought in the context of her remarks, it wouldn't be amiss to give Ms. Sen a dose of her own medicine. I think her interviewer was quite correct in assessing that she isn't beautiful. In fact, Rimi Sen doesn't even have one ounce of the beauty, elegance and grace of any of the Ethiopean girls in my neighbourhood. These Ethiopian girls are tall with slender, willowy bodies and chocolate skin that positively glows (I swear I've never seen anyone's skin glow so intensely). They have broad foreheads and beautiful eyes, and the appearance of a gazelle when they move. Those are the sort of genes that created Liya Kebede, a supermodel universally considered one of the most beautiful women in fashion.

As for Nepalis, which is basically Rimi's shorthand for women with East Asian features, I wouldn't embarass her with a whole host of East and South-east Asian women who are far superior to her in beauty and charm. Actually, on second thoughts, I will. There's Song Hye Kyo, the hugely popular Korean soap opera star. It's perhaps a bit harsh to invoke someone like Zhang Ziyi, given she's so out of Ms. Sen's league, but I'd do it anyway. And then we have the Indonesian Tiara Lestari, who good heavens, is both dark and has oriental eyes, so I can imagine Ms. Sen going into a paroxysms of horror on seeing her. All gorgeous, gorgeous women, sensual, alluring in a way that our Behenji-Turned-Mod actress can only wish she was.

But the point is not that there are African and Asian women far more beautiful than Rimi is (that was just me being bitchy, in case you didn't notice). No one, not even theoretically the most beautiful woman in the world (Aishwarya I'm NOT looking at you) can get away with saying things like that. The point is that beauty is culturally constructed, and if you hold any specific race to be devoid of beauty purely based on racial characteristics, then you're stupid at best and deliberately racist at worst. Given Ms. Sen's track record, I'm more inclined to believe the former, but surely her stupidity cannot be an excuse for such nauseous statements.

First we have the Pooja Bhatt controversy where our good ol' porky-pie tells a South African woman that she's too dark to succeed as an actress in Bollywood. I mean, Pooja Bhatt telling another actress what works in Bollywood and what doesn't has to be pretty ironic. And now this. Can someone please give these Bollywood actresses some awareness workshops so they don't come off as jackasses. Anyone?

Where the bell goes Bong Bong

2006-07-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

When TM is bored:

Snippet #1: So some Joe Stalin in the Indian government has decided to go ahead and ask Indian ISP providers to ban a bunch of websites, ostensibly for their anti-India propoganda. My guess is that they'll get rid of this a week or two week's time. Otherwise someone can haul their ass in court and they'd end up with egg on their face. Not that Indian politicians are much deterred by the prospect of public humiliation from their hare-brained ideas.

Snippet #2: I take the free tram provided by our university for the ride home from campus. It's a bright summer day, hot but not blazing hot. There's a slight breeze blowing, and it's pleasant. As the bus approaches a stop midway to my house, I notice the waiting passenger through the window. Waiting patiently for the bus, with a huge black umbrella over his head.

I make a mental bet with myself. Bong, Bong, has to be Bong. He enters the bus, sits near the exit and says to the driver: "you bhaar sapposed to stop obhaar theaar. Baat you only stopped heaar." Score! After that, it was a foregone conclusion that the umbrella has to be the KC Pal brand.

You see, we Bengalis are from a land of gentle seasonal transition. So the barest extra glint of heat in the sunshine sends us scurrying under our umbrellas. And the slightest winter morning chill has us reaching for our sturdiest monkey caps. The black umbrella and the monkey cap are a Bengali's proudest possessions. My dad has a black umbrella he's owned for nearly 35 years now (touchwood). We once forgot it in a taxi in Delhi. And were distraught enough to hunt the taxi down from among the thousands plying in the city (it helped that I remembered part of his license plate number). Yes it is KC Pal as well.

Snippet #3: Speaking of Bengalis, time to check on one of our very own Bong lasses in Bollywood. The poor dear has, oh, shock, horror, been accused of plastic surgery to enhance her looks! Here's an excerpt from a report speculating about Koena Mitra's "facelift" (I think they mean plastic surgery and are using the two terms interchangeably):

What about reports that Koena herself has undergone cosmetic surgery? Is that the reason she’s looking so pretty these days? “I take it as a compliment if people think I have gone under the knife to look good, when actually, it’s “natural”. People don’t use their brains before asking such ridiculous questions — I am not at an age where I need a facelift.

Poor, misunderstood Koena. Except there is the small matter of the hundreds of pictures from photoshoots of Koena Mitra in Calcutta-based magazines from her pre-Bollywood days. Including many photoshoots in a magazine my mom was an ardent subscriber to - Sananda. Why are these pictures relevant?

Because if that Koena has the same nose as this Koena, then I'm Bill Clinton. Someone should put Koena out of the misery of having to lie once too often and do a side by side comparison of her current nose with the pictures from the past. If I had access to my mom's old Sananda issues, I would have done just that. That would be a fun project for when I visit home. The strange matter of Koena Mitra's nose job.

Snippet #4: Today's my Bong day, and I just randomly found the most interesting Bengali singer I've heard in ages. Well, in my defence I havent' been listening to a lot of contemporary Bengali music, so if there are some gems I've been neglecting, do buzz me on them. But I did discover this gem all on my own, because magic happens when champion time waster meets Youtube.

The reason why I didn't know about him was because he's based in Bangladesh, and I'm terribly ignorant about the Bangladeshi music scene. His name is Tahsan, he's a very gifted musician with an amazing voice who writes his own songs. No big deal in Bengali music, right, where singer-songwriters pop out in all directions. But trust me, there's something quite special about this fellow, about his voice, music and lyrics. And even if you don't understand Bengali, his voice still makes for very pleasant listening. Here are a bunch of his songs, from his first and now latest album.

http://tahsan.net/

I'd highly recommend the songs Shoshta Khobh and Irsha.

Violent Times

2006-07-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

It's exhausting. With the world being hard enough to live in as it is, we seem to grasp at every opportunity to make it harder. The whole of last week, I first tried to make sure that acquaintances in Bombay were unhurt after the bomb blasts, and then spent more time getting in touch with Lebanese friends to ascertain that their families were safe after the bombings.

It took Europe two crippling wars to finally come to its senses (well, sort of). I wonder what calamity it would take for the Middle-east and South Asia to rid themselves of this cycle of violence that seems unending.

I wonder if the military elite of Pakistan realizes that there was a time, in the not so distant past, when Karachi was the premier port of South Asia, a bustling cosmopolitan city exporting wheat from the Punjabi hinterland to the entire world. Today it's a city drained of its vitality by sectarian violence, overrun by crime lords and fundamentalist thugs who export a pernicious brand of mindless brutality across the region.

Why do I talk of Karachi in the context of the Bombay blasts? Because actions have consequences. Because you cannot possibly cynically encourage the extremists without having a lot of it spill over in your own backyard. You cannot be encouraging the crime mafia without them setting shop in your neighbourhood, emboldened by your support. You cannot be handing out AK 47s to the Taliban without having a lot of them sold in open markets in Peshawar. You cannot bleed your neighbour without wounding yourself grievously in the process.

And decades from now, when your children look back at the havoc you wrought, both on yourself and your neighbour, they would wonder what happened to Jinnah's hopes and aspirations for a fledgling nation when he said:

The creation of the new state has placed a tremendous responsibility on the the citizens of Pakistan. It gives them an opportunity to demonstrate to the world how a nation containing many elements can live in peace and amity and and work for the betterment of all its citizens irrespective of caste or creed. Our object should be peace within, and peace without. We want to live peacefully and maintain cordial friendly relations with our immediate neighbours and with the world at large."

On each of these counts, the Pakistani leadership over the years has been a miserable failure. And it is the citizens of India who pay a heavy price indeed for their incompetence and cynical hunger for power.

PS: I'm fervently hoping, wishing for a speedy end to the Israeli outrage against Lebanon. Let's hope for an end to this madness.

Those Cancer Sticks Never Look Good on Anyone

2006-06-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

You'll have to pardon my incoherence. This is not easy. I found out last week that my dearest, beloved uncle A, my mother's sister's husband is terminally ill. I do not even think that writing this is cathartic for me, because at this moment, I would like nothing better than to forget that. I am in denial. I'll perhaps be in denial for a long time. Which is why I'm trying to weave together clever words, a turn of phrase, amuse myself with my own deceptions.

I need to stop being pointless, because there was a reason I started writing this post. A few months ago, I lost an ex-colleague of mine to cancer. And now I have a very dear family member afflicted with the disease. Both were smokers, my uncle especially so, and despite my best efforts throughout my life, I could never persuade him to kick the habit. Thankfully no one in my generation in my family smokes, but I do know that a significant number of persons around the world do.

I'm rarely didactic or preachy in this blog, but at this point, my impulse is to plead for people to reconsider their lifestyle decisions. If this post could impel even one of the readers to consider quitting smoking, I would consider the pain I felt in writing this down more than worth it.

This is what the American Cancer Society has to say about cigarette smoking and cancer:

Cigarette smoking accounts for at least 30% of all cancer deaths. It is a major cause of cancers of the lung, larynx (voice box), oral cavity, pharynx (throat), and esophagus, and is a contributing cause in the development of cancers of the bladder, pancreas, cervix, kidney, stomach, and some leukemias.

About 87% of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women, and is one of the most difficult cancers to treat. Fortunately, lung cancer is largely a preventable disease.

Details can be found on the American Cancer Society information pages.

Compare this with only about 3 per cent of cancers attributed to environmental toxins.

With the spate of lawsuits against tobacco companies in the US, and major public awareness campaigns against smoking, it is feared that these companies would try to expand their businesses in developing countries. This article is four years old, but it details the expansion of tobacco multinationals into countries like India. I'm sure the onslaught of tobacco advertising has already begun at full swing, and brands like Wills are ponying up big money for events such as the India Fashion Week in Delhi.

Let's get this straight: THERE IS NOTHING COOL STYLISH OR TRENDY ABOUT SMOKING.Those who in a fit of mistaken bravado continue to smoke in the face of overwhelming evidence about the harm it causes have absolutely no idea of the misery of being afflicted with a deadly disease. Both for themselves, and for their family members. They have no idea of the excruciating physical pain of cancer and its treatments, and the emotional pain of dealing with terminal illness in the prime of life.

And for the examples of those who've been heavy smokers all their life and never suffered, that's like playing Russian roulette with your life with nearly half of the bullet compartments loaded. Don't believe me? Here's the American Cancer Society again:

About half of all Americans who continue to smoke will die because of the habit. Each year, about 438,000 people die in the US from tobacco use. Nearly 1 of every 5 deaths is related to smoking. Cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined.

To be more explicit, if you continue smoking, there's a 50 per cent chance that you will die of a smoking related illness. None of us would ever drive a car which has a 50 per cent chance of spontaneously catching fire. None of us would ever consume food with a 50 per cent chance of poisoning you. And yet, many of us would continue smoking, oblivious to the grave risk it poses to ourselves and those around us.

However, I am well aware of how hard it is to quit. I had a neighbour who couldn't stay without a cigarette for long. The strict non-smoking rules in our apartment complex meant that he had to rush to the parking lot every 30 minutes, and even this inconvenience was not incentive enough to quit. But then, there are those who do manage to quit, through sheer force of willpower and peer support, and I've seen enough success stories to know that it's possible. My own father quit before my sister was born, and so did my boyfriend's father shortly after my boyfriend's birth. I regret every moment that my uncle wasn't one of them.

Perhaps I come across as brusque and offensive in my personal anti-tobacco crusade, but for the life of me, my mind cannot wrap itself around the fact that it would snatch away someone who grew me up, loved me like his own daughter and was kindness and care personified. What if someone had written this for him, maybe, just maybe he would have focused a bit more on quitting. Who knows.

BlondBoys and Indians

2006-06-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

Reproducing conversations is fun. Here's one of the stranger ones that I've been part of:

Time: last Tuesday (oh wait, that was the much hyped 666 right?)

Venue: A little place on Sunset with cheap-ass margaritas and tacos

Occasion: An industry networking mixer organized by a casting agency in LA to bring together actors/actresses, casting directors and producers

Oh wait, what the hell are you doing there then, TM? Well, I was the fly on the wall, just tagging along with E-M who was there to do some actual networking. Though I was under strict instructions to pretend that I'm an actress if approached by any casting director type (Which is kinda oxymoronic if you think about it).

So anyway on to conversation. I'm in the line for the bathroom, and the line happens to be unisex and is snaking around the bar (all those cheap-ass margaritas). In front of me is a blond dude with a helmet of hair who's had one drink too many. Acting in the hallowed tradition of bathroom line small talk he turns to me and goes:

Blond Dude (BD): You must be Indian right?

TM: Wow, you're very perceptive. Usually I get called Mexican.

BD: Naaaa, you're not Mexican. Mexican girls are more like....(and here he wiggles his body as if to enact a sleazy dance move). You've got Indian written all over your face.

TM: (I ignore the sleazy allusion and nod my head)

BD: You've got a great smile, you'd have to be Indian.

TM: (I nod again, getting fidgety with increasing desperation to pee)

(Hot girl passes by)

BD (bringing his face close to my ear): She's hot, but her tits are small.

TM (weirdo alert up to level yellow): Yeah, she's very pretty.

BD (changing tack): Hey listen, I think I'm in love with this one Indian girl I met last weekend.

TM: Oh, good for you.

BD: Yeah, I figured, even if I have to smack her ass or something, I'd go ahead and do it, 'cause I really dig her.

TM (eyebrows arched up, weirdo alert up to level orange): Sure.

BD: Hey, so let me ask you, so when you are with someone, and you're having sex, do you like to be smacked in the ass?

TM (red alert going off like crazy in my mind): Dude, I really need to pee.

Just then, one of the bathroom doors opened, and BD, being first in line went in, leaving me to figure out what the hell I just heard. Actually, what I really wanted to do was take my mind off the mental imagery this had produced.

As I turned to my right, I noticed the boy right behind me in the line. Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.

TM: You're beautiful.

Gorgeous Boy: Excuse me?

TM: You're so beautiful. I just had to say it.

GB (blushing furiously): Oh thank you.

Other bathroom door opens, and I walk in, pleased to have replaced ass-smacking thoughts with pretty boy thoughts.

The rest of the evening was nice enough. The place was swarming with actors and actresses with nary a producer or casting director in sight. If only trapping the fat cats were so easy. But the actors were having a merry time all by themselves, trading stories about nasty managers and cocaine habits of Hollywood megastars.

I met an actor who was a trained classical cellist who had gone backpacking aroud South-east Asia after struggling in Hollywood for many years. After a year and a half of backpacking, he had returned, to give Hollywood fame and fortune another shot. The acting bug is a hard one to shake off. He joked about how you can tell that there was no producer or casting director in the room because everyone was so good-looking!

After the networking party, E-M and I decided to visit our friend Em, and turned up unannouced at his apartment. Turns out he was in the shower. Without the patience to wait, or the inclination to turn back, E-M and I broke into his house by removing a window panel (yeah, hide those valuables of yours the next time I come visiting).

We merrily jumped in, helped ourselves to cake and soda from the fridge, and slumped on the sofa to watch TV. Em, having figured out that two intruders were watching "Dr. 90210" in his house, sensibly retrieved his clothes from the other room. He then joined us, as we watched in amazement as perfectly attractive looking women were willing to undergo painful and potentially dangerous surgeries just to look closer to an imaginary ideal. The delusional and their money are easily parted.

P.S.: I apparently look so unlike Indians (as if there is an archetypal Indian), that many Indians cannot tell if I'm Indian or not. I've been mistaken by Indians for Mexican or Malaysian, leading to the hilarious situation where a couple of boys kept saying nasty stuff about people (including me and my friend) right next to me assuming I couldn't understand them :)!

In my Mexican immigrant dominated neighbourhood I fit right in, and every day I have to reply to "Ola, como estas" with a silly smile. The Mexican assistant at my grocery store insisted that I cannot be Indian - "Oh no, no, you not Indian, you look Mexican". To make matters even more confusing, I run after every peripatetic Mexican street vendor for tacos, tamale or fresh fruit, as I did this morning and managed to score some good tamales and champurrado.

So it is always a pleasant surprise when someone does manage to get it right, however, quite frequently these are the Curry Kings a la the gay Curry Queens. Which means they have an inordinate interest bordering on fetish for Indian women to begin with. Which I find amusing, and a little annoying. I've often told friends that during my singledom, the phrase "I love Indian food" and "Indian is a fascinating country" from a man trying to interest me romantically used to send alarm bells ringing in my mind. Little did I know I would find such a specimen lurking where I least expected, as a fellow sufferer in the bathroom line!!

Thalassamikrus Indicus

2006-06-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

Let's start by recounting the anecdote that set off my rumination.

Place: Beautiful beach in Santa Barbara

Time: Sunset

Protagonists: Me, E-M (our Greek actress friend), Em (my dearest friend), and BO (Em's childhood friend, a student of music).

Conversation: About places and their beauty. BO was telling us how visitors to his university were brought to this beach and the restaurant there, because it was a beautiful place worth showcasing.

E-M: Huh - you think this is beautiful? You should travel to Greece to know what a really beautiful place looks like!

Me: (exasperated by this display of uber-nationalism): What makes you think the country he comes from is not beautiful? (for the record the country is Iran).

Em: (addressing E-M): Your friend MH is from the most beautiful part of Iran. You should ask him to show you some pictures sometime to see how beautiful it is.

E-M: Well, if it is so beautiful, how come MH never praises his country like I praise Greece?

At this point Em, BO and I look at each other, roll our eyes and leave it at that.

I should provide some background to this exchange. E-M came to Los Angeles with the sole ambition of becoming a Hollywood star. However, not only was this the first time she was living apart from her family, but she had lived a very privileged and pampered existence in Greece. She hates being a struggling actress, and her disappointments and rejections in Hollywood have turned into intense loathing for America.

On top of this, she's also internalized the extreme nationalistic rhetoric that is quite prevelant in Greek popular culture, and hence simply cannot recognize the merits of any country other than her own. At some level, this parochialness is a product of her naivete, hence we do not argue her assertions.

However, this conversation had me contemplating how the way I conceive of my love for my country is so different from the terms in which E-M formulates hers.

Yes, I'm guilty as charged. I rarely if ever tell anyone how beautiful India is. When I see a beautiful place in another country, I do not throw back my head arrogantly to say how much more beautiful my country is compared to this. I can appreciate how gorgeous parts of the California coastline are without needing to recount their similarities with places in India. I do not need places to give me a sense of deja vu and familiarity to feel comfortable and at home in them.

Then is it that I don't appreciate India enough, that I feel ashamed of being Indian? No, it is because my love for India is so deeply etched in some corner of my mind, that I don't feel the need to keep chipping away at it (see, even as I wrote love, I thought how much more appropriate anurag, or maya in the Bengali sense of the word would be).

Which is why I can read the poetry of Yeats and Elytis and in the complex layers of meaning that they imbue their land with, I can recognize the layers of endearment that bind me to my own land. Flag waving leaves me cold, and the only reason why I care about the national anthem is because it is a marvellous poem (especially the last 4 stanzas that are not sung).

But I often think about being able to walk down the sloping avenues of Shimla, where many, many years ago an Indian Army jawan had clambered a wall and showered me and my cousin with tea roses, because we were too tiny to fetch them ourselves. I contemplate myself within the iconic Bengali image of a traveller on his/her way on a red-earth road (Ranga maatir rasta beye), which indeed I have been on many times on my way to my ancestral village.

There is longing, and often I'm at a loss to explain what this longing is all about. It is not the longing of unhappiness, for I'm very happy and indeed endlessly fascinated with Los Angeles and California. Perhaps it is for a certain colour of the earth, a certain way the sun rises, a certain way the clouds amass, a certain way evening descends. Perhaps it is everything that California possesses and yet, I long for that which it does not possess. Who knows why the heart desires what it desires!

There is much that infuriates me about India as well. The cynical disregard of civic duty, the contempt for the poor, lack of public accountability, petty moral policing, etc. And yet my anger and frustration at India reassures me at some level. Because I can be angry, hate certain aspects of the place and yet feel accountable and responsible for it and be optimistic about its existence and future. There is no need for denial under a veil of jingoistic rhetoric, no need to see ugliness in the rest of the world to see beauty within.

Such love for the country is very liberating. For it is not contingent on place or passport. One can be a global gypsy a la Amartya Sen with a very Indian intellectual core. Although I know that there is a corner of my heart that is inordinately fond of that little blue booklet, with the four lions from the Ashokan pillar stamped on it. Through all the tedious bureaucratic hassles that I have endured in my travels to different nations, not once have I wished to swear allegiance to another country. Maybe secretly I am as nationalistic as E-M is, though not the flag waving kind, but the passport hoarding kind!

Mirrors Reflect Mirrors on the Promenade

2006-05-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Sign held by a panhandler on Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica: "Need the money to buy my wife a new vibrator". The wife, her sleek look completed with a mohawk and a streamlined biker jacket, sat next to him, bantering with passers-by who joked with the husband- "Man, you need to work harder!".

That was pretty much the high point of my quick run to the Promenade. That, and the Chinese acrobat balancing a dozen plates on his head. On earlier visits, a bunch of hotter than hot band of Argentinian musicians who used to perform regularly on the Promenade were a major attraction. But they've been missing for a while now, which makes me suspect that some corporate types might have swooped them up, and they'd be coming out with a record soon. They were crappy musicians anyway, the only appeal being that they were yummy eye candy.

But seriously, the Promenade is becoming more and more lacklustre for the likes of me as we speak. All the quirky, independent shops are long gone, the last to disappear being the beloved independent bookstore, Midnight Special.

Instead we have rows and rows of outposts of corporate empires, clothing stores where the season's trend infects displays with lightening speed, meaning that shopping is basically an endless succession of deja vu. This year's trend flu happens to be ruffles on shirts and tops, and by goodness they're everywhere.

I happen to like ruffles, so don't mind much, but given that clothing is so ephemeral and disposable these days, most of these garments are awfully constructed and made from synthetic or poor quality fabrics. Viscose, polyester, rayon, nylon, polyamide. Chances are, this is what the fabric content on your garments reads like. The irony is that these fabrics make their appearance across the spectrum, from bottom of the barrel stores like Old Navy to high end designer wear. Don't believe me? Check this out then. You've got to have some nerve to sell a dress made of viscose and elastane for $2139 (which by the way, is the discounted price).

Anyway, I digress, but not too much. Point is, the Promenade has been taken over by overpriced, mind-numbingly similar corporate clothing stores. There is also a de rigeur Starbucks (but of course!). Actually, I'm happy for the Starbucks, it's the only place on the promenade that allows you to use its bathrooms for the very nominal price of their cheapest coffee. This may not seems like a big deal, till you're actually stuck on the Promenade, and you really gotta go, and the only alternative to the Starbucks is buying a meal at one of the mediocre restaurants for bathroom privileges.

So now that Midnight Special is gone, we have the excellent choice of deciding between the tightly controlled genres and selections of Borders on the one hand, and Barnes and Noble on the other. Oh wait, there is an actual element of real choice, Barnes and Noble serves Starbucks on its premises, while Borders serves Seattle's Best Coffee. Happy now? Ok, ok, I should not quarrel with bookstores, especially with bookstores that have very liberal policies with regard to browsing and even reading on the premises.

This article, by a former Santa Monica mayor was perhaps written a few years ago, when the takeover of Third Street Promenade by large corporate chains was not yet complete. It is fairly prescient about things to come and correctly predicts that the place has become nothing more than a shopping mall with jacaranda trees, such a change from the vibrant place with independent retailers that it once used to be.

Lest anyone thinks I'm reflexively anti-big business, let me clarify that I have nothing against large corporate chains whatsoever. I shop extensively at retail chains like Target, Ikea, Zara and Trader Joe's, and am thankful for the bargains these places offer to a starving student like me. However, I also like diversity, and the happy co-existence of large and small players in the retail business. However, given the megastore uniformity that the Promenade has embraced, each visit yields more and more disappointment on that score.

A pity indeed, a street of shops and cafes by the ocean has such a nice ring to it!

NIMBY Chinese and the Plunder of Indonesia's Rainforests

2006-05-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

This seriously makes me sick. Apparently the Indonesian government has gone ahead and signed a deal with the Chinese government to trade off the fabulous rainforests of Kalimantan and Sumatra. The forests would be chopped down and the wood used to service the construction boom in China (especially given the 2008 Beijing Olympics). In return China seeks to develop palm oil plantations there to supply the growing world demand for palm oil in detergents, soaps, etc. Ironically China is putting in place an initiative to save its own forests, even as it plunders rain forests in South-east Asia. A number of Indonesia based bloggers have written about it here, here and here.

I live in a country where the level of thoughtless, wasteful consumption shocks me on a regular basis. What shocks me even more is that I seem to be morphing into one of those thoughtless, wasteful consumers. I use disposable plates and cutlery on occasion, use non-organic, polluting detergent for my clothes, liberally use paper towels in my kitchen and generate more trash on a weekly basis than my family of four in India would in a month. My boyfriend chides me for my carelessness in leaving lights on when I leave the apartment, something I would have never done in India. I live in the midst of a quasi-desert, and yet when I wash dishes, the tap runs continously.

Somehow, it seems very easy to be seduced and sucked into wanton wastefulness. Especially when there is no incentive to act otherwise. And especially when this very callousness with resources is seen as one of the perks of leading a first-world lifestyle. And now, more and more people around the world want a taste of this American life, and all the rampant consumption that invariably accompanies it. And so the Chinese government scours the world for wood to build its Olympics showcase apartments and feed the demands of the growing Chinese middle class.

Is it fair to judge them? According to Mahathir Mohammad ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia, Western governments are hypocrites in asking developing countries to protect their forests, when Western nations did no such thing for their own environment in their scramble for industrialization. And for those living in poverty, the romanticising of nature by the intellectual elite can be very cruel.

Certainly Indonesia could do as Germany did, embark on an ambitious programme of reforestation, once they became acutely aware of the ravages wrought on the environment by all the steel mills and coal furnaces that came up during Germany's great industrialization drive. Germany's afforestation drive is a remarkable success story, as they managed to increase their forest cover from 6 per cent in the middle of the 20th century to more than 30 per cent at present. Not without its problems as often the hardwood oak and beech trees were replaced by softwood trees unsuitable for local conditions. And there's a certain amount of biodiversity that has been permanently lost in Germany and cannot be replenished.

If this is the case for Germany, imagine how much worse is it for Indonesian rainforests, that are home to an incredible variety of species of plants and animals. And unlike Germany, which is unique in the widespread environmental consciousness of its population, most forests cleared around the world have never really been replenished. The North Sumatran forests chopped down to make way for Dutch colonial coffee and palm oil plantations in the late 19th and early 20th century have been irreplacably lost.

Every year, more forests in Sumatra are cleared by surreptiously setting fire to them, causing neighbouring Malaysia to suffer horrific pollution (wonder what Mahatir Mohammad has to say to that). And now, instead of checking this rampant clearing, the Indonesian government gives its official stamp of approval to the violence against its natural heritage.

I fear that it won't be long before India jumps on the bandwagon as well. After all India's always chided in the West for not growing fast enough, for being bogged down by the myriad voices of its constituents. We are told to look up to the Chinese model, one aspect of which is the pillage of the Chinese environment and the alarming growth of pollution in Chinese cities. And given that, mercifully, we do not have the diplomatic wherewithal to arm-twist South-east Asian countries, we would perhaps start devouring our own forests.

Is there an efficient solution that allows the world to have its cake and eat it too? In the case of many other environmental problems such as vehicle-generated pollution, burning cleaner fuels and newer, more efficient engines is partly the answer. Environmental challenges are the top concern at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and implementing better operating practices and technological advances to make the ports environment friendly are seen as the best ways to balance growth and the environment. In the case of the rainforests, we need to stop using virgin rainforest wood for housing and furniture, using wood from newer plantations instead. Also we need to find alternatives to palm oil in industrial uses.

But in the meanwhile, as we press for these changes in industrial practices, we can all contribute to stop what I fundamentally believe is a terrible loss for Indonesia, and indeed the world as a whole. And what's an inconsequential, irrelevant consumer like me to do, except in my own small way indicate my displeasure. By writing a blog post.

PS: What really, really breaks my heart is that all these rainforests are being destroyed for the Olympics, the most pointless waste of resources ever invented. My boyfriend and I have argued zillions of times over this, but I truly believe that apart from some much needed infrastructure additions, which the EU would have paid for anyway, Greece really got the short end of the stick with the 2004 Olympics.

It got saddled with umpteen sports venues that no one would ever use, the security paranoia meant that actual visitors were far less than projected ones, and now its saddled with a debt that would take years to pay off. For S, it's more a matter of national pride and the triumph of the Greek spirit, which I understand, but I don't think that such national glory should be attempted at any cost.

And now the Chinese government is trying to show off its new found economic might in another wasteful exercise of self-aggrandisement. And the Indonesian rainforests pay the price.

Life, One Scribbled Note at a Time

2006-04-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

Snippets, because I'm lazy:

Bloggers are cool. At least the ones I run into. First, I got to meet Urmi, our resident chocolate expert and gourmand at large. And what followed were some amazing conversations and meals, and now I get to vicariously partake in Kasama Loha-unchit's amazing Thai meals through her. Then Sudipta found me and a very good thing it was, because she's super fun and a great cook. And she's right in my hood! And then yesterday, I finally met up with Adagio, and gosh, I grew up around a bunch of physicists, but none were ever as engaging and interesting as him. Intellectually astute and fun, some people have it all! So yay for us.

Em likes Himesh Reshammiya's music. Now Em is no musical pleb, his interests range from Pergolesi, Bach and Rachmaninoff to Pink Floyd and System of a Down. But we were having dinner at our favourite Indian restaurant, and the background music caught our attention. It was hard to pin down, and had such a melange of styles, Indian Classical music, traditional Arabic sounds, techno, and funky pop beats. It was catchy, and Em thought it sounded pretty cool, so I had to ask the owner about the CD. Turns out, the song was from Reshammiya's Aapka Suroor album.

And I agree with Em. Reshammiya's voice may remind you of a cat with a cold, but there's no denying that his sound is very refreshing. And I don't buy the "his songs are repetitive" argument, because I've heard a lot of them and most sound different (except for the common factor of Himesh's voice). And as for the music snobs who turn up their noses at anything that catches the fancy of the masses, I'd tell them to toss it. After accumulating enough trauma for a lifetime listening to a succession of live garage and underground bands in clubs, each sounding exactly like the other, I've become pretty sceptical of the alternative and non-mainstream label. There's just interesting music and not interesting music, period. And my spectrum of interest happily accomodates Emma Kirkby's performance of Hildegard von Bingen's hymns and Himesh Reshammiya's "Tera Suroor". Here's someone who seems to agree!

In news that has me conflicted at all levels, apparently the saviour du jour of Bengali cinema, Rituparno Ghosh has been signed on by Planman Motion Pictures to direct a movie. Planman, as many members of the Indian blogosphere know, is run by Arindam Chaudhuri of IIPM, whose adventures have been well documented over the last year, and even figured twice on this blog, here and here.

Now lord knows the West Bengal film industry is severly cash strapped and needs all the help it can get. Which is why I bite my tongue and hold my peace as Rituparno ignores talented Bengali-speaking actors and actresses and casts folks who cannot speak Bengali to save their lives in an attempt to attract pan-Indian attention and finance. And lest anyone thinks I'm being ethnocentric, let me assure them that I'd be happier to see the likes of June Maliah and Priyanka Trivedi, both not ethnically Bengali but consider Bengal home, rather than Soha Ali Khan, who is nominally Bengali but speaks the language haltingly and with a pronounced accent.

With the background of the sorry state of Indian Bengali cinema, I can sort of understand why Rituparno would let Kiron Kher get away with the travesty of claiming the National Best Actress award for a role in the film Bariwali where her dialogues were dubbed by a Bengali-speaking actress. Kiron had the nerve to claim that she spoke all her dialogues in the film, which is hilarious, because anyone who saw the film can clearly figure out that:

a) the voice is not Kiron Kher's voice
b) the dialogues are spoken by a native Bengali speaker, which Kiron is not, and certainly not spoken by someone who learnt Bengali in six months, which Kiron claimed she did.

It is easier to place all this in perspective when you find out that Kiron's husband Anupam Kher ponied up most of the film's finances. But then why blame Anupam and Kiron, when Bengali filmmakers should be grateful for any money that comes their way to make anything other than out and out commercial over-the-top films. Even if it comes from Arindam Chaudhuri's Planman Motion Pictures. However, I do draw the line at mafia funding of the kind seen in Bollywood films in the past. But I don't think the likes of Dawood and Abu Salem would be lining up to finance Bengali films with artsy pretentions any time soon.

In Which Rude Delhi Gives it Back to Those Ones

2006-04-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

I'm irritated about the fact that I'm such a sucker for trolls. I'm one of those persons stupid enough to bite flame war baits every single time, which is why I try to avoid internet troll hotspots. But this time, the irritation is both personal and academic. And it is this Outlook cover story that triggered it all. The cover headline screams "Rude City". The lead article is titled "Mean Streets...All HQ, No IQ". The accompanying collection of sound bites is titled "Why Delhi Sucks".

Ok, I get it, sort of. Trashing a city allows you to be daringly politically incorrect while avoiding charges of being a bigot. "Why Delhi Sucks" just does not have the same ring or the same provocative potential of say, "Why Bengalis Suck". But strangely, despite the fact that I'm a nostalgic, parochial fool when it comes to Delhi, it is the shoddiness of the cover story per se that really gets to me. I'm a scholar of urban studies, and at earlier stage of my life as a PhD student, I had even considered writing a dissertation on 19th century Delhi. I still research urban development and urban spaces, and hence from that academic position, most of the writing on cities in the Indian media appalls me.

Despite the fact that the Indian media is overwhelmingly based in urban areas, and concentrates on news that occurs in urban areas, there is a severe lack of understanding of how cities grow and evolve, what impacts urban space, how urban political consensus is formed, how urban logisitics works, what is our vision for our cities, etc., etc. Instead, what we get are a few well-worn cliches - Delhi is rude, Bombay has traffic jams, Calcutta has terrible work culture and Bangalore's infrastructure is in shambles. And these cliches get repeated ad nauseaum in article after article till they lose whatever information value they might have originally possessed.

Ok, not to be a pessimistic whiner, there are exceptions. I thought the stories done by CNN-IBN and earlier by Outlook on religious and ethnic discrimination of tenants in Bombay were very competent. Last Sunday a Hindustan Times story on fast food restaurants in Indian metros mentioned that because Bombay and Delhi have different zoning laws, restaurants are allowed in residential areas in Bombay but not in Delhi. A-ha! Now that's something I didn't know of, so very nice indeed. But merely for the purposes of illustration, not to compare, something along the lines of stories in LA Times and LA Weekly in Los Angeles, and NY Times and Village Voice in New York would do wonders for awareness about our cities.

Addendum: Here's one more interesting journalist to be optimistic about. And ironically she writes for Outlook! These are a set of some very competent pieces written by Chitvan Gill, where she brings a finer, more complex understanding to what ails the modern Indian metropolis. She's obviously someone who is well aware of urban debates, though this probably makes her writing a little less accessible to a lay reader. But she's definitely worth a read.

But back to the Outlook piece, because I'm itching to do a hatchet job. So the lead story begins with a quote by the Delhi media's favourite dial-a-quote academic, JNU sociologist Dipankar Gupta. Now Dipankar Gupta is a fairly fine scholar, but not exceptionally so. One of the prime reasons why he pops up all over the place is because he's a bit of a hottie, and having a TV friendly face does help. So anyway, here's what he has to say:

Delhi’s grown from sleepy town to metropolis, incorporating a rural population of independent and aggressive small landholders over whom the urban influence is still very shallow.... Delhi is also the seat of power; everything here is a power play...negotiable and up for grabs. Even among the educated, who’ve been to the right schools, the first instinct is to break the law.

That does not make any sense whatsoever. Almost every Indian metropolis made a very recent transition from sleepy town to metropolis. Even Bombay, which made the transition earlier than most others. And Delhi has had an unbroken history of an indigenous urban culture for nearly 500 years now, ever since Shahjahan decided to abandon Agra for good and shift base to Shahjahanabad.

And do not miss the condescension to small landholders "over whom the urban influence is still very shallow". Without even defining what it means to be urban in the Indian context, we've already decided whom to exclude. Very fine academic insight indeed!

And here's Mukul Kesavan holding forth:

Contemporary life in great cities is documented in close, loving, obsessive detail by writers and by filmmakers, its neighbourhoods are invested with magic, not just for those who live in them, but a wider world beyond. That has happened to London, to New York, to Mumbai, to Calcutta, but not to Delhi. We need to ask ourselves why

Thank you Dr. Kesavan, for letting me know that all the works of Bhisham Sahni, Nirmal Verma, Rajendra Yadav and Krishna Sobti amount to nothing. Poets like Gulzar whose Delhi nostalgia oozes forth in songs like "Logon ke Ghar Mein Rehta Hoon" and "Kajra Re" amount to nothing. Filmmakers like Romesh Sharma (New Delhi Times) and Pankaj Butalia amount to nothing. The creative outpourings of Jamia Millia's MCRC amounts to nothing. Oh right, you're not aware of any of them, because their medium of expression is Hindi/Hindustani, a language that sort of flies under the radar of Delhi's resident intelligentsia. And then over chais and samosas they can have their whinefest over why there is no creative documentation of the city, splendid!

The reason why I concentrate on the quotes by the academics is because the main article is just so poorly written that it cannot even be dignified with comment. Fudged facts, hyperbole, lack of even a shred of nuance, it is a pathetic reflection of what passes for cultural commentary in contemporary India. I look in vain for some insight, some causality, some background to what is being described, how did things come to such a pass, how to fix responsibility, etc. But the article flits from one shock value fragment highlighting Delhi's rudeness to another without pause, breathless with delight at finding yet another piece to fit into the convenient narrative.

Ultimately though, what strikes me is how pointless this sort of article is for any sort of constructive thought to emerge. So now that we've established that Delhi is indeed a nightmarish, impossibly rude, post-apocalyptic city, what do we do about this? Depopulate the place, raze it to the ground and start anew? There's historical precedent for that, the British did something similar after 1857, angered by the city's resistance to British forces. Or do we do require residents to take etiquette lessons and anger management courses? How do you encourage civic pride and responsibility, when the city's intelligentsia happily pours scorn over the rest of the unwashed masses, while presumably being above it all and very suave and urbane themselves?

How do we fix the city's apathy to high culture performances (never mind that an organization like SPICMACAY began in Delhi, and Delhi has its own well established gharana of Hindustani classical music). Indeed, try squeezing in to the Nizamuddin Dargah during the Urs celebrations, when qawwali performances mesmerise audiences for hours on end. One of the biggest and most consistent patrons of Indian classical arts are the Shri Ram family, the most well-established business entities to emerge from Delhi. The yearly performance of the Ramayana at Ramlila Grounds in Delhi plays to packed audiences, who stay up all night to watch a story they've known all their lives. That's living, breathing, dynamic cultural expression, but perhaps it does not fit into what our chattering classes would like to think of as "culture".

What we are left with then, are a bunch of silly soundbites, some by established intellectuals like Gerson da Cunha, whose statement, though hyperbolic, is something I can still sort of nod in agreement with. Girish Kasaravalli's statement is a personal impression I can certainly understand. Lutyen's Delhi can be a bit visually confounding, because there are rows and rows of white bungalows without any landmarks between them. The other commentators though, are not so cerebrally gifted. There's Shobhaa De, flogging whatever's left of her 15 minutes of fame when she wrote bad sex in her books in pre-cyber savvy India. And Jogen Choudhury, whatever his artistic merits, makes disgusting, rude comments about people from Punjab, UP and Haryana, which just goes to show how "cultured" he really is.

And now after reading this entire piece, it seems almost as if I was consumed by the cover story for days, which is not true. I wrote out the post in two sittings, and between them, I attended two amazing Greek Orthodox Easter celebrations. The first was in the church as usual, and after the boys bungled our post-midnight dinner reservation, we randomly got invited to someone's house party. This person turned out to be a fellow student from our university, a very warm and hospitable host who kept plying us with food and wine. We stayed on till nearly 4:00 a.m. talking and laughing, oblivious of the time.

And today we had a grand Easter picnic, with lots of friends and acquaintances, and the cutest old couple ever. When the weather got a little chilly the old man, ever attentive walked off to get a jacket, which he proceeded to lovingly wrap around the woman's shoulders. There it was, all my desires for the perfect relationship summed up in one gesture: companionship and regard in old age.

So as you can tell, I've already started losing interest in what I wrote, because ultimately the Outlook article is more comical than anything else and my attempts to seriously analyze it make me look like a Don Quixote charging at the windmills. But I typed all that nonsense up and my fingers hurt dammit, so read it if you must.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me a Match

2006-04-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

Carrying on from the marriage theme in the last post. Mostly because my daily existence does not inspire even a creative squeak. It's hard to muse over laziness and its discontents ad infinitum. Hence, I need to take up little slivers of incidents and stretch them into reflections on love, life and samosa (and zero inspiration for PhD may be because I haven't had a decent samosa in soooooo long *remember, sigh and drool*).

Anyway, so I was woken up from my precious Sunday slumber by my aunt who called to inform me of the existence of yet another eligible for marriage Bengali man who has graciously consented to deign to look at my photograph. So make haste and email your photo pronto...oh no, not just any photo, but....mmmmm.....you know...the decent kind. The one in which you wear decent clothes (preferably Indian) and gaze longingly into the camera, and perhaps an obliging friend can photoshop and airbrush your mug to within an inch of its existence.

I really have nothing against my aunt informing me about eligible men, besides the fact that she lives in the Midwest and invariably forgets about our time zone difference when making calls. "You sound sleepy, o ma, did I wake you up?" Duh!!! I've also figured out that 9 times out of 10 she only calls me to inform me about some overeducated Bong man she had encountered who she thinks would be oh so perfect for me. She is an amateur matchmaker ("ghatak" in Bangla, my cousins in India have nicknamed her "ghatkali champion"), and has also tried to set up several other cousins of mine and my mother's as well.

Efforts to get me married off are super fun for me, and spice up my otherwise entertainment starved existence. My parents never obliged. They barely mentioned marriage a bunch of times in the last few years, and then after being informed of the boyfriend, duly asked for pics, and then indicating approval, have more or less left the matter alone.

I know I can put a stop to all this by telling her about my boyfriend, but I really don't want to do that unless I have to. There are two reasons for this deception:

a) It would involve a long-winded explanation which I am loathe to provide. Said aunt is a bit of a gossip and chatterbox and wouldn't rest till she gets down to the last details, like his high school grades and his shoe size.

b) This is too much fun, I wouldn't want to stop it, and maybe I should tell my parents not to discuss my boyfriend with her :).

This time, she came up with a prize catch. A PhD holder who works at NASA, no less! The NASA tag seems to command a premium in the Bong marriage market, I've heard it mentioned approvingly several times before as well. This is hilarious, because I have acquaintances who've worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, who'd never believe that working at NASA helps land chicks. That pick-up line doesn't work.

Last time around, she had found a man, raised in Bengal, who was temporarily in the US for a Post-doc. Initially she had tried to set the fellow up with a dazzingly accomplished cousin of my mother's (let's call her DD) who was raised in the US. Now DD isn't averse to the idea of an arranged marriage, but definitely wants a Bengali-American. When I asked my aunt why she had suggested this fellow, who was obviously not what DD was looking for, she snapped, "Well, it doesn't help to be picky, does it? And she's over-the-hill, she should take whatever she can get". DD was 33 at the time.

For my aunt, women are selling in a buyer's market, and we beggars can most definitely not be choosers. But as she finds out often, this is not how the real world works. She once tried to set up a beautiful and quite vain cousin (call her BK) of my uncle's with a man severly challenged in the looks department. The only excuse was that BK was divorced and hence should be grateful for whatever she gets. BK had married a hottie of a first husband, and was in no mood to lower her standards. This resulted in an embarassing fiasco, where the man travelled all the way to India to meet BK, only to be rejected on the spot.

I've often been tempted to play along more fully, but for the fact that my aunt will not be amused when she finds out I'm taking her for a ride. So I've considered sending an ironic photo of me in traditional garb, radiating domestication and "I cook perfect maachh shorshey on weekends" look. But the last thing I'd want to do is play a joke at the expense of men who are seriously looking for a wife. I've friends who've either gone through or are going through the process right now, and you don't need a scumbag like me to make it any more uncomfortable than it is.

Seriously though, if I did want to be set up with someone, I'd pick a close friend or parent's recommendation over that of a relative who knows me quite superficially. I remember how when I first met my boyfriend, my friend Becks sat me down and told me exactly why she thought we should go out with each other. It was very sensible advice, given by someone who knew me as a person as well as what was missing in my life which could be complemented by S's interests. This was much more valuable than the CV rattled off by my aunt, detailing academic and professional accomplishments.

Marriage and the Indian Diaspora

2006-03-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

Rimi had a very interesting comment on my last post, wondering why Indian-American men gravitate towards desi women, despite having been brought up outside India. Fascinating question, and I've definitely pondered over it quite a bit, but as you shall see, I'm hardly the person to provide any valuable insights on the matter. Why is it so? Well, let's see.......flashback to the time when I was 13 years old (a long, long time ago).

We receive a letter (pre-telephone days for our household, the arrival of the postman was eagerly anticipated). The letter is from my mother's aunt, annoucing that her son who was in the US pursuing a PhD is engaged to be married. This is how the conversation between me and my mom went:

Me: So who is he marrying? What does she do?

Mom: She grew up in D...(Mom's hometown). She's studying for a Masters in Math.

Me: What? He's not marrying an American?

Mom: What do you mean? Why would he marry an American woman?

Me: He lives in America. Why should he marry a Bengali woman?

Mom (gives me a hard weirded-out look): We don't do those things. We marry our own kind, and he's a very good boy who let his parents choose his spouse.

Me: Oh no! Don't tell me he's having an arranged marriage!

Don't ask me why, but I always assumed that my uncle, studying in the US, was statistically far more likely to date an American (and I excluded Indian-American from the list) woman. It was a bit of a shock that not only did he not date an American woman, but he actually came over to India on vacation and got engaged to a girl shortlisted by his parents. I had a hard time understanding why an Indian immigrant man might want to seek out his own kind, facilitated by his parents; the fact that Indian-Americans might want to seek Indians and Indian-Americans for the purposes of marriage was beyond my comprehension.

But then, over the years, I've come around to understand to an extent why cultural affinity is uppermost in the minds of a majority of people when they think of marriage. I personally cannot relate to it, I've never, ever pondered over the question of cultural affinity in picking out dates. But cross-cultural relationships require a lot going for them, not the least being the willingness of the persons involved to look beyond differences and focus on similarities.

That's easier said than done, and depends to a great extent on the value systems of the persons involved. An acquaintance of mine, an Indian woman, was dating a Turkish man for 5 years before they broke off their relationship. The reason? Disagreement over the religion their yet unborn children would follow! Religion is a huge bogeyman for many, and many in the Indian diaspora are brought up by conservative parents who incessantly drill it in them to "keep their faith".

In fact, religion is a big deal for many diasporic communities, not simply because the norms of a previous generation get fossilized, but also because religion becomes a focal point for the community to bond over. Many Greek-Americans actively seek out followers of the Greek Orthodox faith, so this is not just confined to the Indian community.

And then of course, there is the amorphous, hard to define concept of "shared culture", which could mean anything from childhoods spent preparing for Spelling Bee Contests, to keeping track of Shah Rukh Khan's hairstyles over the years. This of course would only apply to Indian-Americans seeking other Indian-Americans, and indeed that's exactly what an overwhelming majority are looking for, if Shaadi.com profiles are to be believed (yes, I have many stellar uses of my time, including trolling Shaadi.com for the priceless amusing profiles).

In fact, the relationship between an Indian-American and an Indian who grew up in India would have cross-cultural dynamics, and there are many Indian-Americans who are loathe to take that on, besides of course unwilling to become visa and green card mules. But there are some Indian-Americans who would actively seek out spouses from the old country, and perhaps these persons were the focus of Rimi's comment (Rimi, please clarify).

Now I personally know only one Indian-American woman who got married to an Indian man who was raised in India. As far as I could tell, primarily it seemed that she held the notion that someone raised in India would have a stronger commitment to what are perceived as "Indian values": loyalty to the girlfriend, commitment to a long term relationship (and the institution of marriage), and specifically the idea that dating would eventually lead to marriage. In fact, she made him commit to a wedding in the future even before she went on their first date!

Now gender reverse all of these things for an Indian-American man seeking a desi woman raised in India. Of course I'm not implying that's the only reason why an Indian-American man might date an Indian woman, he might be just attracted to her, period. However, if an Indian-American man insists on only going out with women raised in India (usually for the express purposes of marriage), probably he has a few of these ideas in his mind.

He may have grown up with the exotized ideal of a submissive,homebound desi woman, projecting perhaps the qualities his mother possesses on contemporary Indian women. Again, this is not merely confined to the Indian-American man, a lot of Caucasian men have similar fantasies about "docile, meek" Asian women. He may have a very romantic and regressive notion of an ideal family, and feel that a woman raised with "old world values" is best suited to raise such a family. He may be disillusioned with Indian-American women for some reason (real or imagined) and seek out an alternative in the form of Indian women. And finally, I think there is the very real concern about the compatability between his future wife and his parents, and he might feel that a woman raised in India would be the best fit with his family.

All this pop analysis isn't backed with a shred of data, but is mostly gleaned from conversations, lives of acquaintances, debates and articles about the subject over the years. Now that I re-read the post, it seems to give the impression that cross-cultural marriages are very rare in the Indian diaspora. Far from it, I've seen several cross-cultural relationships and marriages involving one Indian or Indian-American partner and someone from another culture. It's really cute when the kids from such relationships are brought to community celebrations, heartening to see how effortlessly they seem to straddle two cultures and glean the best from them.

Ultimately it all depends on whether you focus on the commonalities that transcend differences, or choose to opt for what is ostensibly familiar. I try to be objective, but I will say that there's something magical when a girl from the Midwest and a boy from Bangalore are brought together over their shared love of rock music. Or a girl from Pakistan bowls over a US Marine, and a he dances the bhangra on their wedding. Or an Indian man, married for over 30 years to an American woman celebrating their son's graduation.

Red, White, Blue and Gold

2006-03-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

Let me not waste space trying to line up the 653 different reasons why I didn't update for weeks. There really aren't 653 reasons, that random number is courtesy my friend Em, his random numbers are never rounded off. One of those reasons was being chatted up at professional seminar by an Indian-American man (I know too many people who hate ABCD, so I refrain from using it). All because he caught me peering into his name-tag in the line for appetizers (yay! free food).

What piqued my curiosity was the fact that he had a Bengali last name, and my odds of running into a fellow Indian, let alone a fellow Bengali at these professional dos are hopeless. So yes, I peered a bit too intently. And soon enough, he walks up to me and introduces himself. I find out that he's not Bengali, but yes, his parents did migrate from India. And then he starts asking me questions, when did I come to this country, what do I do, when am I graduating, what jobs am I looking for. And then finally, most peculiarly "So, are you a citizen?"

Huh??? I'd consider it a bit presumptious to ask a stranger you've met 10 minutes ago what's on their passport. But my brain, trained from years of FOB-ABCD discussions, suddenly hit epiphany. Oh lord, he's hitting on me! And not only that, he wants to make sure I'm not a citizenship-whore by asking what passport I have! "I'm an Indian citizen", I said pointedly. He seemed slightly disappointed. By this time I was plotting my escape. "Mmm....I need to go get some ice tea". Conveniently, my glass had just become empty, and I started darting towards the drinks line. But he had recovered sufficiently by then to hand me his card and make me promise that I'd look him up when I visit his city.

Dude may be tactless, but he's certainly loaded, the VP of a huge bank that has branches all over the US. Unfortunately, I was born without an ounce of gold-digging instinct, so I get to go snuggle up to my boyfriend and earn my own dough. But somewhere there's a paranoid Mr. Moneybags looking for a desi woman who wouldn't screw him (literally and literally again) for his passport. If you're as fed up of grad school and being poor as I am, and believe that the bourgeois should share their wealth with the proletariat (meaning fund their shopping sprees at the Beverly Center), then send me an email and I shall provide contact info.

India's Past Through the Lens of Ebay

2006-03-09T02:11:00.000-08:00

Contemplating on the Banaras bomb blasts, reading the posts for Blank Noise, and fretting over my own dissertation had made me very morose. It was hard for me to concentrate on my own work, so I did what I do best under such circumstances - troll the internet. Specifically, I tried to lift my spirits with retail therapy (yes, I'm that shallow) and ended up browsing through the mother of all retail therapy websites: Ebay.

Now Ebay's great for a bunch of things, but what it is excellent for is vintage stuff. All of American seems to be unloading its old junk on Ebay, and the most amazing bargains on coveted stuff from yesteryears can be found. I'm especially fond of silk sheath and pleated, flared dresses from the 1960s, the sort my mom used to wear before giving them up when she got married, that are still stylistic inspiration for many women through images of Jackie O and Twiggy. So as I was looking for the dresses, I came upon one in particular that was made in India. Curious about what else of vintage India might be out there, I searched for Indian vintage stuff and found a curiously eclectic bunch of things.

For starters, here's a boarding card for Air-India from the 1960s which has the most adorable illustrations, which have unfortunately disappeared from Air India ads recently. The illustrations are very similar to the legendary Amul ads, so they may have been done by the same agency.

Also I saw at least three examples of souvenir pillow covers and tablecloths with the exact same image: a map of India with the Taj Mahal ensconced within it. And guess what? In each case, the map of India is a pre-Independence map, with the landmasses of Pakistan and Bangladesh included. Also included is Ceylon (Sri Lanka), which was part of British territories at the time. Here's one of them.

This is absolutely amazing. It is being sold as a textile label from the 1920s, but it appears to bear the images of three of the most prominent political figures in pre-Independence India. I can recognize Sarojini Naidu, Kasturba Gandhi and Kamala Nehru. The fourth figure is a bit of a mystery. How interesting that they used to put images of political personalities on textile labels!!

Speaking of which, this seller, who incidentally is based in India, has a bunch of other textile labels from the 1920s. Very cool images, do check them out.
The name of the textile mill? Kaloomal Shorimal. Jeez, why did Indians of that era have such godawful names! I've heard Gaindamal, Kirorimal, Vilayatiram.....

And then someone is selling scans from a tourist guidebook on India. The images appear to be from the 1940s or 1950s. There's a gorgeous view of Malabar Hills, Bombay, and now the nostalgia of a Greek sailor I met for 1960s Bombay becomes amply clear. Wow, the place was so pretty!

And another one which is actually a postcard sent by someone based in India to the US. The card was sent in 1951, so obviously the image is even older. Also check the Indian stamps affixed to the postcard. The image is of Khiddirpur in Calcutta, and I would love to have folks reflect on how it compares to current Calcutta.

There's tons of such images, textiles, craft and memoribilia that is either locked up in Western and Indian museums or languishing in private homes in India. I remember visiting the National Archives in Delhi for a project on photographs of Indian women from 19th century and eary 20th century. The staff at the Archives were absolute sweethearts, they just asked me to go sift through the piles and piles of photo albums they had and pick what I liked to be reproduced.

The collection had some stunning gems, like a mid-19th century album of Kachin tribal women in Burma taken by a British army officer. Also potraits of the Nepalese royal family from late 19th century. And a very, very young, very delicate Indira Gandhi, years away from morphing into the fire-spewing satrap she eventually became. There were nearly a hundred albums of photos taken during Nehru's Prime Ministership, following the Prime Minister on his travels around the country,including on crucial album of his first ever visit to Kashmir after Independence in 1948.

So basically what I'm getting at is, please do take the time to appreciate family memoribilia when you can. Old pictures, old textiles, handicrafts. In some cases, simply because they don't really make them like they used to. So if you have a Jamawar shawl lying around the house that your granny carelessly tosses into the musty trunk, hold on to it for dear life, for the art of Jamawar has declined drastically. Ditto for old Lucknawi chikan, a delicate craft that bears no resemblance to the atrocious mass market stuff sold in its name. Sometimes, the Indian past feels like another place altogether, a place long vanished, so take good care of its souvenirs.

Blank Noise Project

2006-03-07T00:03:00.000-08:00

I have terrible posture. That's what I discover in every exercise-dance class that I attend. Movements that should look graceful with the right posture look awkward, my shoulders droop. Did I never learn to walk with my head high in air, shoulders thrown back, breasts thrust up and with the confidence of being secure in the space around me? Actually, in my first gawky teenage moments, horrified by the first signs of a sexual persona in the form of growing breasts, I closed in my body to obliterate this shame of mine. And thus I walked home from school, fearful that my transition to womanhood would attract more of the sort of groping and pinching that had sporadically occured even when I was a child.

Yes, even at age 7. By a man who had kindly offered to seat me, the little kid, in his lap in a crowded bus. And then proceeded to grope me under my dress. I was puzzled, terrified, and never mentioned one word to my beloved uncle who had seated me on the monster's lap to save me from being choked by the crowded bus. In later years, I had the relative security of a school bus full of fellow students for most of my commutes, but the rare bus ride would be full of dread and anxiety, and as I grew up, I created a mental force field around myself, and became preternaturally aware of any clammy hand that tried to violate my physical space.

However, unsavoury incidents occured frequently. I told a male friend that I had been harassed twice by bastards who had been trying to press their obviously erect organs agains my shoulder as I sat in a bus. He was incredulous, he couldn't believe that there could be such lewd public behaviour in a country that can't seem to shut up about morality. A few weeks later, he called me, shocked, and told me that he had indeed seen a man on the bus he travelled in, with a very public erection, trying to thrust it against an unsuspecting seated woman. I wore, loose, ill-fitting clothing in the hope that it would make the harassers forget about my gender. Regardless, men even when they couldn't touch my skin, would try and tug at my clothes.

A friend of mine got her breasts groped in a crowded bus while her father was next to her. For months, she walked around morose, afraid of the dreadful incident being mentioned in her presence. Another friend had a man ambush her from behind and brush his lips against her cheek. She felt so violated that she burned the skin on that spot with a hot spoon. Sometimes, mentally I pummell and beat the crap out of every man who had ever sexually harassed me, and I had not retaliated then, because I was too afraid, too embarassed, too concerned with propriety. Yet, the one time I did complain to a police officer standing nearby that I was being harasssed, I stopped the officer from thrashing the guy and insisted that we take the man to a police station for due procedure to be followed. You see, I don't really believe in vendetta, I believe the effective implementation of existing laws is the best deterrent against harassment of women.

At times, Suze and I talk about our experiences growing up, and wonder why we aren't all cynical and jaded and hateful of Indian men. The fact is that for every asshole who's sexually harassed us, we've found countless other men who've been strong, supportive, and empathetic. Some of them have horror stories of their own, of being sexually harassed by other men, stories that meet with far more incredulous responses than women's sexual harassment accounts. A friend had to endure sexual predators who were his male teachers at a religious seminary he attended, till he couldn't fend them off any more and ran away.

Of course, we are the world champions of sexual hypocrisy. Suze called me one day, fuming, saying she had read about a 5 year old child getting raped by her grandfather in India, and legislators yak on endlessly about how Western influence is finishing off our civilization. We hear non-stop sermonizing over the relationship between revealing attire and harassment, and yet, in all my months of working in poor settlements, I heard conservatively dressed women, the sari draped over their heads, frequently express fear of harassment in public spaces. We are obsessed with keeping appearances, and denial of uncomfortable truths.

Though I think the worst problem is not denial that sexual harassment takes place at all, but to not think of it as a serious issue that restricts a woman's ability to make use of public spaces and amenities and live a life equal to a man. Years ago, the journal that I was the editorial assistant for had carried a superb piece by the Pakistani journalist Imran Aslam, where he had detailed his traumatic experiences of taking a bus in Karachi covered up in a burqa which hid the fact that he was in fact male. He was stunned at the level of harassment he had to endure, given the fact that not a single curve was to be discerned within the shapeless burqa. Perhaps that is indeed the solution, to make all the academicians, politicians, religious leaders, saviours of society at large to don a burqa and travel in a public bus all day. Then we can get them to shut up about how revealing clothing provokes harassment and take proactive measures to address harassment of women.

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The Dubai Ports World Saga

2006-03-02T15:37:00.000-08:00

I should have been rubbing my hands in glee, basking in smug, self-satisfaction to see my obscure, niche, academic field get its moment under the sun. I cannot turn in any direction without a constituent of the American and international media pontificating over the takeover of P&O by Dubai Ports World. I've loved and studied ports for the last four years now, and back when I started there were but a handful of academic port experts in the country, one of the finest being one of my own mentors. That was rapidly changing even then, as the September 11 events saw a great sense of urgency around port security. I have little to no academic interest in port security matters, but that's where the money was being poured in, and the greatest buzz of activity.

However, even though congestion and environmental pollution concerns in the Los Angeles region garnered the two local ports regular headlines in the local papers, ports had not yet become a matter of tremendous national interest. Animated discussions over the maritime industry was the substance of academic conferences, and mention of a dissertation on ports did not invite too many other questions. For the past two months or so I had been following the bidding war between the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) and Dubai Ports World (DPW) over P&O, one of those venerable British companies that are almost institutions, with great interest. The matter was being reported in the pages of finance publications and tucked away in the business pages. Till on February 10, PSA decided to bow out of the race, and DPW was all set to acquire P&O.

At that point, something curious happened. Within the next few days, rumblings of controversy started brewing in Washington with some Senators expressing strong reservations over the takeover of P&O by DPW, as P&O had leases to operate terminals at six US ports. Well, actually, that is not how it appeared in the media, as newspaper after newspaper proclaimed around February 16 that six US ports were being sold to the Dubai based company, which of course is not the same thing as a terminal lease. The argument advanced was that this would compromise security at the ports, as Dubai banks had been a conduit for al-Qaeda money and the UAE government had recognized the Taliban regime.

Now, just like all other industry experts and professionals, I see no problems with the deal. What is very amusing to me, and a bit disconcerting is the near-hysterical coverage of the issue, and lack of rigorous and accurate information on the matter in the media. The number of self-proclaimed port and port-security experts have multiplied several fold overnight, and it seems that everyone and their grandma have an opinion on the matter which they are eager to dump on newspaper opinion pages. There are honourable exceptions, of course, and industry standard business publications such as Forbes, International Herald Tribune and the excellent Journal of Commerce (alas, subscription only) have managed to bring us consistently good coverage of the matter.

The issue has very quickly degenerated into a slanging match which has curiously turned the direction of all the verbal polemics that we have seen between conservatives and liberals in the American media. After a few years of hearing liberals accuse conservatives of racism against Arabs and Muslims, and conservatives denying the charge stating they are merely acting out of nationalism and security concerns, now the tables are turned. Hilary Clinton (Democrat) (with Senator Robert Menendez) writes:

But by first failing to adequately secure our ports and now approving the sale of operations at those ports to a company controlled by a foreign government, it is the administration itself which has put this nation dangerously at risk.

The entire piece is full of factual inaccuracies, not the least of which is the simple fact that companies controlled by foreign governments already run terminals at US ports (they don't own them, no country in the world except for United Kingdom allows for fully private ports). American ports are without exception landlord ports, they lease terminals and collect fees for use of the premises.

The outrage is bipartisan, and a number of Republicans have also expressed deep dissatisfaction with the deal. A Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter (from California no less) stated "I intend to do everything I can to kill the deal". Additionally he wants a rollback of all foreign investments in ports, electricity plants, and other areas critical to American security. Ahem....good luck with that. Senator Richard Shelby says "Everything in this country can't be for sale". Well sure, but these assets that you speak of belonged to a British company anyway, whose shareholders are scattered internationally.

Now while politicians and commentators at large are having a field day, I scan for news and opinion pieces for well-known experts in the area, officials from the Maritime Administration, high ranking port officials, shippers, terminal operators, academics, journalists who specialize in reporting on ports, etc. Very little is forthcoming. I'm a little puzzled by the lack of expert voices in the media, till I realize that most true experts have wisely decided to watch from the sidelines as politically motivated warriors battle it out over flimsy logical grounds.

Finally, day before yesterday (February 28), the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee called in a panel of experts for a hearing, where the respondents provided extensive information on the maritime industry and the very international nature of the terminal operations and shipping business (do watch the video if you are interested in global trade and have 3 hours to kill). The clarifications provided by the respondents were excellent. Wish I could say the same about some of the questions. Senator Barbara Boxer (California, again!) mentioned the dismal state of women's rights in the UAE as she grilled the Chief Operating Officer of Dubai Ports World, Ted Bilkey, about UAE's boycott of Israel! Besides the fact that it was a throwaway remark for which she probably had no evidence, if that was the basis for deciding business deals, most of them would fall through. And strangely, she asked Bilkey how many women were in senior management positions in the company. Huh???

Another Senator repeatedly asked Michael Jackson, Deputy Secretary, Homeland Security if the money spent for port security was "enough". Well, it all depends on the level of security desired, doesn't it? The fallacy of only 5 percent of containers being screened was repeated ad nauseaum till Jackson clarified that all containers were screened, and only 5 percent inspected. Which is exactly what I was told on my visit to the Maersk terminal at the Port of Los Angeles.

Senator Maria Cantwell wanted to know if DPW would require ALL their terminals around the world comply with US programmes such as worker background check, electronic seals, radiation devices, as a requirement for getting the deal cleared. Regardless of whether these terminals send goods to any US terminal or not!! It's pretty amazing, the Senate Commerce Committee seems to be ignorant about the way the shipping and port operations business is organized. It is almost as if the heavy foreign ownership of the terminal operations business came as a big surprise, almost a shock to them.

Actually, almost none of the American operators have any sort of global presence in the shipping or terminal operations industry. The field is dominated by players from East and South-east Asia, with a few key European operators like Maersk. And now, in a spectacular trajectory of growth, DPW has gone from starting with the port of Jebel Ali, UAE in 1999 to acquiring CSX International in January 2005 and now poised to acquire P&O to become the third biggest terminal operator firm in the world. Of course they've hit a roadblock in the American sector for the moment.

So yes, moral of the story. Contrary to a lot of the rhetoric around the world about Americans being at the forefront of globalization and expanding aggressively to other nations, sometimes they are caught by surprise to find the globe in their own backyards.

LA Summers Will Never be the Same Again

2006-02-28T12:37:00.000-08:00

Guess what can prompt the laziest of all bloggers to post twice in 24 hours? The most unfuckinbelievable news I've heard all month. After all the pining, the nostalgia bouts, and anguish, finally the Indian mango is headed to US shores. Apparently we now have the technology to get around US paranoia about alien species like pesky weevils making their way into US soil riding on Indian mangoes. Those hard, tasteless, available year-round Mexican mangoes in US supermarkets used to make me weep. Now, they can make as much salsa as they want out of those mangoes (mango salsa tastes great, but that's all Mexican mangoes are good for). But when it comes to enjoying the fruit for its own sake, nothing beats an Indian mango. Sorry Thailand, with all my unbiased scientific rigour, I pronounce that your fruit is no match for even one of the several stellar varieties India comes up with.

(Rimi, I'm sure you guessed this was going to be about food as soon as you read the first line :) )

Oh, and continuing on the theme, I have seen the light and been converted. For years I was a sceptic, a cynic an agnostic, doubting the affectionate rapture with which the believers spoke of their encounter with divine revelation. Till last night, when I finally met perfection, which enveloped me in its throes. Yes darlings, I have discovered single malt whisky. Now I see why people have such reverence in their eyes at the mention of Laphroaig, Macallan, Glenmorangie, et al. Of course I still reserve the right to call anyone who yaks endlessly about whisky a pompous bore, but I can see what he's getting at.

For the record, what dazzled me and Em last night was Glenlivet, which we followed up by sharing a Cohiba cigar. This does sound a bit comical, but in fact neither Em nor I are smokers. One of Em's professors had gifted him an assortment of fine cigars for Christmas. The professor's very eccentric, grows his own coffee, is built like a pro wrestler, and is a famous published author and known as a rennaissance man among certain scientific circles. I had a bit of a crush on him for about a week when I saw him at someone's dissertation defence. But I've heard enough nutty stories about him from Em for the crush to wear off soon. He's gorgeous though, one of the handsomest men I've ever seen. Anyway, so none of us have ever smoked a cigar, so were curious to try. The verdict: I pick my poison, and it's alcohol. I never, ever enjoy smoking, even one of the finest cigars in existence.

Oh forgot to mention what a flurry the last weekend was. Met up with Fred on Saturday who told me all about the new love in his life. I don't know if it is too early to say boyfriend, but seems like they have a good thing going there. Although distance seems to be an issue, because Fred is moving back to Boston, and the boy is going to be based in Chicago. We had such a lazy lunch, chatting and eating and drinking wine, and then drinking coffee. While I was waiting for him, I took a leisurely walk around the neighbourhood, which is so gorgeous, and a dog lovers' paradise. Seriously, it seems to me that you need to have a dog to even buy or rent a house here. And guess what, I saw dog poop on the grassy part of pavements with fairly regular frequency. So Ani, you shouldn't be too harsh on the Calcutta dog owners, the Los Feliz moneybags and hipsters do it too. But apart from minor inconveniences such as this, the neighbourhood is beautiful. Gorgeous homes within walking distance of all the artsy cutey cafes, bookstores, and quirky designer shops your heart can desire.

At night I went to a party thrown by the four men mentioned in an earlier post, when I was at another of their parties. One of them is leaving for Singapore, the straight man was celebrating his birthday and the others are shifting to a new apartment. It was loads of fun, it's always great to chat up with Josh, one of the housemates who's very smart and gregarious. I became an inadvertent paparazzi when I was goaded by Josh to take a picture with my camera phone of flamboyant man streaking through their living room without a stitch on his body. Apparently, it's a bit of a house ritual, something he does to celebrate the birthday of straight man every year. I have promised not to post the picture online, thus showing heroic self-control in this day and age.

The next day S and I went sailing with family friends of his who live in the area. Very relaxed and a beautiful day to be out in the ocean. Without even realizing it, I've actually managed to learn some sailing tasks. At least, I know that I should be lunging for the nearest rope when I hear "tack"! And then we headed off for our first Greek dance class, where I learnt this, and this.

A Spring in My Step

2006-02-27T20:06:00.000-08:00

I stepped into my third decade last year. You'd think that the consolation and compensation for slower metabolism and wrinkle paranoia would be freedom from acne. But dammit, here I am, who used to be the most acne-free teenager in my school, having to deal with these random little devils. Believe it or not, the weather is to blame. My face has become a barometer, for the past few years it announces a turn of season by breaking out in acne. Once the turn of season is completed, the acne disappears. Yes, I am that in tune with nature. I wonder how I can fool my face into believing that it's the same season all year.

But quite apart from the little pestilence, I'm completely enamoured of the celebration of spring. For me, no time of the year deserves more joyful festivities and brings such an immediate sense of wellbeing. Unfortunately my Bengali Hindu ancestors chose to reserve their most lavish festivities for a period in the middle of autumn which does not seem to mark any significant transition of season. Of course there are people who are fond of saying (including many in my family) that Durga Puja harkens the arrival of winter, and coincides with the blooming of the ubiquitous kash flower in the Bengali countryside. However there is nothing like the grand riot of flowers and foliage, the slowly invigorating warmth of the sun, and the anticipation of the early bounty of summer harvest.

We do celebrate spring, but tend to do it in the middle of winter, a lunar calendar date that usually coincides with a date in January. I still have traumatic memories of being woken up at a ridiculous hour on Basant Panchami, subjected to a cold shower, and then dragged off to a temple freezing and sneezing all the way. It almost seems as if we are trying to coax spring out of what is still a dismal winter day. By the time the Bengali New Year rolls in, spring is on its way out, and the first rumblings of kaalboishakhi winds have sounded. Bengalis are very fond of saying that they celebrate 13 festivals in 12 months (Baaro mashey tero parbon), but there is overabundance of celebration in some months and not much to look forward to in February and March. I have a feeling I'm inviting outraged comments admonishing the probashi Bangali (diasporic Bengali) for her ignorance, but I'm willing to stand by what I say :).

Of course I'd be directed towards Holi or Dol Jatra, which usually falls in the middle of March, and in its original form was all about the celebration of spring colours and a happy camaraderie born out of the advent of good weather. However, in the last two decades or so, the festival has degenerated into aggressive water battles, use of toxic chemical colours and physical injuries due to use of water balloons. The last Holi I ever fully participated in had ended in tragedy for my hair, after it got coated with something that looked like car paint and had to be completely chopped off.

Which is why I am considering switching to the Japanese and Persian calendars for the months of February and March, given the great significance accorded to spring celebrations in the calendars. In Japan March 3 is the Hinamatsuri or Doll Festival day, also celebrated as Girls' Day. It is marked by a display of dolls, also including peach blossoms. One of my favourite Japanese restaurants in LA has a special, seasonal menu of food traditionally consumed for Hinamatsuri. When I went there last week, I was told I was one day too early for the start of the special menu. The place is pricy, so I don't know if I can afford another meal there anytime soon. For that kind of money, I can buy a set of gorgeous Japanese tableware and create my own Hinamatsuri lunch. They had put up the doll display though, which was beautiful, especially since it was set off against their serene Zen garden.

Spring is also the season for a celebration that is almost instantly recognized worldwide as a Japanese tradition. This centres around cherry blossom or sakura, a flower deeply beloved of the Japanese. So beloved is the sakura, that the Japanese have found innovative ways to incorporate the sakura into their foodways. There is the sakura cha, a beautiful clear infusion with a tangy taste, with the blossom languidly suspended in it. I'm determined to hunt down sakura cha in Little Tokyo, even if I have to bug and pester every Japanese store attendant in sight. Then there is sakura mochi, salted sakura blossoms, desserts, etc.

Of course, the very fleeting blooming season is eagerly anticipated, and the Japanese even have a name for watching cherry blossoms bloom: hanami. This year I've decided to attend the local cherry blossom festival, which given LA's very peculiar blooming calendar is held all the way in the first week of April. Apparently even in Japan they are expecting a late blooming. Now why we Indians couldn't come up with a festival to celebrate the blooming of amaltas and gulmohar? Apparently the blooming of the ashoka tree was cause for much celebration in ancient India, but in contemporary times I suspect many urban Indians would be hard pressed to identify the flower.

The Persian Norooz on the other hand, does not centre on a specific flower or a feting the girl child, but revelling in spring itself. It is almost ironic for Muslim Iranians to pick a celebration based on the Zorastrian calendar as their biggest festival of the year. However, Norooz has remained an integral part of Persian identity from its very inception, and reflects the importance of spring in Persian life. Some of the metaphorical use of "bahar" or spring in Urdu poetry can be traced to Persian poetic influences (the word "bahar" is of Persian origin). As in Indian classical music, many melodies in Iranian traditional music are intrinsically associated with spring.

And since the festival focuses on the rejuvenation that is spring, the colour that dominates Norooz is green. Green sprouts (sabzeh) take pride of place in the haftseen display that is de rigeur for Norooz. The traditional food for the day consists of a pilaf made with rice and greens (sabzi polo). The subtle symbolic meaning associated with the handful of rituals for the day are accessible to all, and everyone enthusiastically shares in setting up displays.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that what appeals to me about these festivals is the fact that they are disengaged from religious rituals, and even an agnostic like me can participate with wholehearted enthusiasm. I almost invariably feel guilty about taking my place with the devout when Hindu festival rituals are performed. I love the grandeur of the ceremony, the precisely choreographed sequence of events, the emotional surge. But my interest is purely aesthetic and social, and hence feels a bit insincere next to the faithful who invest their spiritual energies in the ceremonies. These are the times I fervently wish that the Bengali New Year, on the whole a non-religious celebration was a much bigger deal than it is right now, and encompassed more than merely wearing new clothes and eating sweets.

Perfect Partner

2006-02-13T22:35:00.000-08:00

I'm responding to a tag that's long overdue, and in defence of my procrastination, I have to hide behind K's assertion that the quality of my posts improve when I take a blog vacation. I don't know if that would necessarily be true in this case. Here are the rules of the tag:

1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover.
2. Need to mention the sex of the target.
3. Tag 8 victims to join this game & leave a comment on their comments saying they’ve been tagged.
4. If tagged the 2nd time, there’s no need to post again.

Now before I even tackle the task at hand, I think I'll start with a small caveat. The list below owes its existence to a great extent to the nearly four years that my boyfriend and I have been together. I think everyone has a nebulous idea of what they are looking for in a partner, and before I met S I used to have my own checklist. It's useful, in that it helps narrow the playing field, focus our affections and eliminate dodgy prospects. The problem is, it also makes our desires ensconced within rigid boundaries, often leading us to overlook that which could make us eventually happy, but is not immediately apparent.

If there is a single insight to emerge out of my relationship, it is the fact that we know our happiness but very little, and there is always the possibility of learning to be happy in new ways. S and I have found new interests, new friends and discovered near-hidden aspects of our personalities in being with each other, things that we wouldn't have considered important or indeed looked for in a partner before. What makes someone a perfect partner for another person is an ever-evolving set, and indeed hard to enumerate. But, for me, these are some qualities that I cherish, many of which S does possess (and I'm not just saying this because I figured out you read my blog agapi mou):

1. Curiosity and Openness to My Interests: I don't necessarily want someone to mirror every single interest that I have. In fact a doppelganger who matches me in every respect, down to my favourite poets, would perhaps be insufferable to be with. But my partner should be willing to know and evince an interest in my preoccupations, knowing I'd do the same for his. Even if he doesn't like some of my interests, he should respect my fascination with them.

2. Sociable and Loves Company: I spent a greater part of my adolescence thinking of myself as an introverted person, only to discover later in life what a social butterfly I was! This is crucial, my partner has to love being surrounded by people. He has to love parties, spending time with our friends, a bonhomie that encompasses a wider social circle beyond just the two of us. Which of course, does not mean that we wouldn't love each other's company, simply that our happiness would only be enhanced in the company of others.

3. Has a Life of His Own: I quite like the idea of my partner having a fairly vibrant social life of his own apart from the one that we share, something that I'd possess as well. He should always have things to do apart from me, with his friends, and I'd want to spend time apart with my friends, or simply on my own. Neither should consider the other their only social ticket, or sacrifice their independent existence prior to the relationship to become joined at the hip.

4. Not Prone to Mood Swings: The brooding, intense man is sexy from a distance, but a pain to live with on a regular basis. I think the older one gets, the harder it is to deal with a temperamental man. Have you ever noticed in India, how in couples from an older generation married for ages, the wife manages to effectively tune out the grumpy old husband. The trade off is loneliness for the woman, no one to talk to. A cheerful and even disposition is a must, and so is oodles of patience.

5. Eternal Optimist: I have a friend who is into all sorts of new agey stuff. For her, people emit negative and positive energy, and those who radiate positive energy bring joy to those around them. I don't know what rays are being transmitted between people, but it is indeed refreshing to be around a positive person. Just as it is very difficult to stand a perennially pessimistic person. Optimism is infectious, and so is pessimism, and I'd only want to catch the right sort of infection.

6. Physically Attractive: This is so subjective, but this is all about me and my desires, so of course my partner has to be someone I consider physically attractive. Years ago, a cousin of mine wanted to divorce her husband after a brief arranged marriage because she found him physically very unappealling (with sufficient reason, I might add). The matter caused a mini row in the family, with people of my generation siding with my cousin, and my aunts and uncles vehemently opposing the divorce. One of aunts said then, "Purushmanusher aabaar roop ki?" (A man doesn't need to be good looking). The implication was that if a man could provide a woman financial security, every other aspect of the relationship was redundant.

I don't think so. Physical appeal is a big part of a relationship, and somehow in constructing the dichotomy of looks and merit, we at times fail to acknowledge this. And I repeat, this appeal is not some objective assessment that's carved in stone. It is very subjective, and varies significantly from person to person.

7. No Addictions: Even the most loving partner can turn into an ogre under the influence of substance abuse. Which explains why the wise women looking for love on Craigslist categorically state that the partner they are looking for should not have any addictions. I actually knew a woman back in India who was violently physically abused by an alcoholic husband. I love social drinking, and nothing ever comes between me and free wine at receptions, but consistent drug abuse and alcoholism is just not my scene.

8. Respect and Affection: And finally, the two most elusive, hard to define qualities that I want in a partner. It is easier to say what I don't mean by them. I don't mean deference, fear or loyalty when I say respect. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to say that my partner should consider me a competent person, capable of holding independent opinions, with the ability to accomplish professionally. And by affection, I don't mean obsession, a smothering, asphyxiating kind of love. Actually I have no idea what I mean. I do know that I see this affection every day, for which I'm eternally grateful.

I'd like to pass on the tag to the following, who'd all hate me royally for doing it:

Urmi, Rimi, Adagio for Strings, Jai (even though he hates tags), Bonatellis, K, Caramel Custard, and Eesh (who's been MIA for a while). I didn't pass it on to Anthony and Pidus, because they've already bared all and the posts were fun to read.

Short Takes

2006-02-08T01:20:00.000-08:00

Am reading Cavafy's Waiting for the Barbarians right now. In English and Greek. Of course I understand very little of the Greek, and yet it is almost reassuring to read the words aloud, almost as if the cadence of the Greek words would supply the meaning that is eluded in translation. I can be very silly at times. Cavafy's poetry is achingly beautiful, and yet a rigorous statement of his times, political but not in naked rhetoric.

The entire last week was spent in one massive schmoozefest at a conference in town. I didn't believe it was possible, but I think I'm a bit tired of this ceaseless networking. At least for the moment, which is why I tried to attend paper presentations and listen in on discussions as unobstrusively as possible. And only try and get to know those that appeared to have the potential to hold interest. I was really not in the mood to suffer bores, which is professional harakiri if you will be looking for employment to pay the bills a few months down the line. I did end up meeting some very bright, engaging persons, with drive and ambition that I immensely admire, but can never seem to be able to match. And there were some excellent presentations, that made the exercise very worthwhile.

Saturday night was spent going from one party to another. I had a fun conversation at the first one with an English boy studying the classics, and we talked about odds and ends, mostly about technique vs. narrative in contemporary cinema and Polish directors. I need to dig up some Kieslowski stuff he recommended. And also a Polanski film, which I'm sure S would love to watch because it's all about pirates. But then Soto was bored as hell at this party and wanted to go to the second one. So off we went across town, and arrive at the house at almost 1:00 a.m., after all the guests had departed, and part of the hosts had gone off to a gay bar.

Now the last time I had visited this house, there had been a lot of speculation between me and Em about the sexual orientation of the hosts. There are four housemates in the apartment. One smart, witty, incredibly entertaining and very, very gay. The second, reticent, brooding, and sexually ambiguous, though E-M swears up and down that he's straight. The third, flamboyant, eccentric, and suspected to be bisexual by me, which E-M has more or less confirmed. The fourth is a straight man with a wickedly possessive girlfriend.

So suffice to say, it is always fun to visit them and this time was no exception. We sat and chatted till 3:00 a.m. later joined by flamboyant man and another friend who returned from the bar. We talked of smart boy's interviews with homeless men in LA, the joys of Italian coffee (flamboyant man is part Italian, and the other friend Manny is Italian), religion in Italian politics (apparently plays a big role, to my surprise) and differing assessment of Kieslowski (me likey and Manny dislikes).

And then the boys gossipped about straight man's possessive girlfriend, a fantastic cook, who nonetheless had made herself unpopular with the other housemates by making the boyfriend be with her all the time. However, when I told E-M about this, she said "Good for her, she's afraid the gay and bisexual boys would seduce her man"! Tch, tch E-M, if seduction was on their mind, it could have been accomplished a long time ago when the straight guy was single. And this does play to the worst sort of stereotypes about gay men being predators who always have sex on their minds. E-M's just pissed at flamboyant man for something, and this is her way of taking it out.

Finally had dinner at Guelaguetza tonight, where the food is uncompromisingly Oaxacan, and showcases the finest of Mexican moles. The moles were very well done, but I think it'll be a while before I start having mole cravings. They are very complex, very fine dishes, but would probably take some more exploring before I settle on one that I can drool about at leisure. The menu has many, many items that are almost impossible to find in any other restaurant in LA, or at least any other restaurant outside of the neighbourhood of Highland Park. Which is strange, considering the very large Mexican immigrant population in the city. You would imagine that there would be more restaurants specializing in cuisines such as Oaxacan and Yucatecan/Yucatan, but I've only been to one of each. Both are excellent and regularly feature in lists of best places to eat in LA. Well if you're like me and don't particularly care for Cal-Mex or Tex-Mex, then Mexican regional cuisines are certainly worth exploring.

Dancing - Utilitarian and Then There's Art for Art's Sake

2006-01-30T21:25:00.000-08:00

The first step to dealing with a problem is to admit that you have one. And for months I was in merry denial, settling into languid rest, piling on the pork chops, virtually parking myself in In-n-Out Burger, and not setting foot within 10 metres of the gym. My clothes instead of warmly embracing me, started gnawing into my flesh. And yet I remained unconcerned, after all I was far from plus-size territory, and I still shopped for clothes in stores aimed at skinny 20-somethings. And yet, as the last year drew to a close, I had the epiphany, foresight if you will, that if the current state continued unchanged, it could very well lead to a cumulative damage that would have me bloated beyond recognition. That was a scary thought, because plus size clothing is nearly all hideous.

So off I went and signed myself up for a semester of workout classes at the gym. The portfolio of classes on offer is quite interesting, and for a one time fee, you can attend as many different classes as you want. What got me very excited was the fact that many of the classes on offer were dance based, there was Cardio Dance, Jazz Dance and Aerobics and Hip Hop Dancing. I had so wished that there would be some Belly Dancing too, but probably they don't have an instructor for it. I decided to attend a class a day and enthusiastically checked out as many classes as I could the very first week.

Of course, as soon as the first class began, I knew it would be a hellish initiation back to fitness for me. My well-rested body was loathe to let go of its repose, and croaked and groaned at every jump, kick and stretch. Several times, I paused in agony as one muscle after another developed cramps, unwilling to stir. The temptation to give up is always lurking at the back of the mind, and it is always hard to justify such arduous activity when the gains would be painfully slow in making their appearance. Exercising is hard, and I know people who've resorted to the most outlandish dieting for dramatic weight loss rather than become regulars at the gym.

And yet, when puffing and panting, I caught my breath and looked around, I became even more determined to continue. For all around me, were young undergrads, many of them sorority girls, pretty and skinny, and each one of them several times more fit than me. The ab crunches that left me nearly breathless, seemed like almost like bar hopping for them. These fragile-looking little girls were nothing less than pocket dynamoes, and the best motivational and inspirational figures in the world. It was strange that they were at once motivating as well as intimidating, because I also felt terribly embarassed for my lack of drive and energy, as well as the flab that clung to me. And yet somehow this dichotomy was held in perfect balance in my mind as the ideal carrot-and-stick to keep me going.

So far I've been good. I tend to flag at times, the body has pleaded mercy in the past, wriggling out of a disciplined gym regimen. But I'm hoping that my past follies have been ample warnings to not tread down that path again. And this is hard work, but super fun too. There's some funky music involved, lots of butt-shaking, and I'm learning new dance moves. I'm discovering muscles that I didn't know existed. And to my dismay, realizing just how uncoordinated my limbs are. There's a Yoga class as well, offered by a genial, sweet white dude who ends his class with an almost religious pranam, with his entire upper torso leaning forward as he said "Namaste!" Who knew the greeting was such a spritual experience for some. He's good, but I need more movement at this point.

In some other news, which is only slighted related to the above account, they've found the worthy successor to Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan, and it is none other than yours truly. In a bizarre turn of events, I, whose limbs never move in synchronization, who is the laughing stock of friends on the dance floor, have been asked to join a dance performance group. I'm still utterly bemused and shocked. It turns out that our dear friend E-M (the actress, now back in town) recommended my name to a friend of hers, a dance instructor who wants to build a Greek folk dancing group from scratch. Now on what basis would E-M make such a recommendation, I have no idea, suffice to say that at times E-M does stuff that is incomprehensible to mere mortals.

I'm clueless about Greek folk dances, I've watched them plenty, and at times even been dragged to join a simple group dance at Greek festivals. And this is a notch above, for after we've been trained and primped, we would be expected to give performances in Greek community festivals. Of course all this may never materialize, it all depends on how much progress is made in forming the group, and in about a month or so the picture would be clear.

The strangest part is that I stunned myself by agreeing to it. Let me explain. I have terrible stage fright. I'm the kid who avoided school annual days so I didn't have to collect any prizes awarded to me by going on stage. I get extremely nervous while making presentations, and even the thought of asking a question in a crowded seminar sends my pulse racing. For me to participate in a public dance performance is an extremely daunting prospect. And yet, in the general feeling of bravado that I've been floating on top of these days, with regard to my dissertation timeline, my research, my gym regimen, I unhesitatingly said yes. For one, there are the free lessons. And then, as I said in the beginning, it is important to tackle a problem head-on by admitting to it and boldly go where I've never ventured before - to my dazzling future stage career, providing a slice of old country nostalgia to Greek papous (grandpas) and ya-yas (grandmas).

Well, I'm exaggerating a bit, I did once contribute my lovely squeak to a school choir rendition of "We Are the World", but I was in the back row, most dimly lit corner. And then there were some dance performances many eons ago (when my age was still in single digits), but again, I was all the way in the back, virtually invisible, dancing with my socks and buckle shoes still on (I was supposed to be a sakhi of Shakuntala!). That experience wouldn't stand me in any good stead now, and perhaps I should invest in a really wide-brimmed hat and a face mask. It could all be incorporated into the show, and in a twist of sweet irony, my quirk would potentially blow away my obscurity and make me famous. Aah, such speculation, before even a single practice session has started. Actually, the boyfriend and I are really looking forward to this; he wants to join in too, because he's wanted to learn folk dances forever.

Short Takes

2006-01-26T01:55:00.000-08:00

Persian Pop Plugged On: Em and I have been amusing ourselves by listening over and over to the brightest star to hit the Persian pop music firmament last year, Arash. The man's phenomenally successful not only amongst the Iranian diaspora, the largest concentration of which is to be found in LA, but also in many, many other nations across the world. His song Boro Boro was the top song in Sweden, and now he's found a Bollywood niche with a Bluffmaster version of his song, with Arash singing a line or two in Hindi.

The amusing part is, having been raised in Sweden, Arash's Persian is a bit wobbly, and to a Persian speaker, his pronunciation of the Persian lyrics of his songs at times funny. Some parts are gramatically challenged as well. However, kudos to him for getting the first real crossover hit in Persian pop, and experimenting with sounds and influences that have till now been relatively rare in the Persian music scene. Since the song has only two stanzas, here's a very rough translation (for those who've seen Bluffmaster and are wondering):

Boro Boro (Arash)

Roozi boodi ashegh-e-to boodam
(There was a day when I was in love with you)
Az dastet to kheili raazi boodam
(With you I was very happy)
Amma to bad sheituni kardi
(But you were very naughty)
nazdik-e-man na aa to
(Don't come near me)

Boro boro delam toro toro nemikhahad
(Go away, I don't want your heart)
Dige dige nemikhaham bebinamet
(I don't want to see you anymore)
Boro boro delam jaie dige dige hast
(Go away, my heart is elsewhere)
Dige dige nemikhaham bebinamet
(I don't want to see you anymore)

The Human Interest in Political Economy: Here is an excellent blog that covers the Indonesian economy using a keen socio-political lens, and is very enlightening about the archipelago. Perhaps I haven't been looking, but I've hardly come across a blog like Yosef's about the Indian business scene. It is very well informed, backed by solid data, and yet at times chatty and slightly gossipy, never forgetting the real actors behind all those financial figures.

Here's a great profile on Yosef while he was a visiting scholar at Berkeley, and I believe he's still based in the Bay Area. Of course as a working journalist with over a decade of experience Yosef raises the bar pretty high compared to the average blog post. This is of course not true of some extremely eminent Indian journalists that maintain blogs as repositories of tedious opinion pieces that were either earlier published in newspapers or intended for them. Those are rarely insightful and often pompous, even if I overlook the fact that they rarely engage with their blog readers. In Ardi's case, professional journalistic experience is a definite plus. This for instance, is his take on the presumed wishlist of US multinationals part of a delegation meeting the Indonesian president. Most interestingly though, Yosef primarily wrote in Indonesian for Bisnis Indonesia, and I presume English is a second language that he adopted fairly recently for his writings.

And They Say Women Can Never Make Up Their Mind

2006-01-23T13:38:00.000-08:00

For those who've been wondering (a few, and thank you so much for being concerned) the blog hiatus was not due to some sudden calamity, but merely a bout of deep internet inertia, lack of a bloggable life, and guilt over emails not answered and papers not written. So now that I have answered all my pending emails (yay), had an interesting weekend, and woken up early enough to have the entire day to do research work, I can proceed to blog, guilt-free.

I had been thinking of writing about my gym adventures, but that should wait a few days, because I've decided to follow Pidus' excellent advice of pacing out my blog posts. So first off the weekend.

Totally unanticipated fun. Which means resolution to finish long due work goes out of the window, but some much needed social contact established. I was planning to spend my Friday evening working or at the most with a quiet dinner with S and Em, but an email from S and some frantic calling put paid to those thoughts. It seems that we were invited to a party, and S decided that we should make an appearance. Now the party wasn't as straightforward as it seems, neither our history with the person inviting us.

The girl, let's call her Jgirl, happens to be the ex-girlfriend of Soto, an interesting, perplexing, at times annoying girl who's my age, someone who's alternated between desperation for marriage and merrily living life with her dog, taking off to far-flung places, and generally surrounding herself with patchouli, meditation, nature-love. She's also Jewish, and on Friday night, she was helping a Jewish student organization host a potluck dinner in her building and decided to invite us. Now, given that she is Soto's ex, someone he's on very civil terms with, but not terribly keen to spend time with, I was surprised that both S and Soto wanted to go there. But apparently the attraction for Soto were the Jewish girls in attendance, and S wanted food.

So off we went, and besides a common Mexican friend of ours who also came, S, Soto, and I were the only non-Jewish persons in the room. For me, this was great, because I've never been to a Jewish gathering before, and was very curious as to how people with extremely diverse backgrounds relate to each other on the basis of shared Jewish cultural and religious mores. The food at the potluck was very eclectic, and all vegetarian, which I guess was because it would be impossible to be absolutely sure of kosher guidelines being followed for each dish brought in. There was some traditional challah bread, which was very yummy. There was no music in keeping with Shabbat observances, which starts with sunset on Friday.

And the students had very eclectic backgrounds, a hot, fabulously well-dressed girl from Russia, a very affluent Iranian Jewish girl, a sleazy player type from Israel, a very sweet and chic girl from Canada, and a tall Greek Jewish girl from New York, though most of them had lived in America all their lives. Of course, besides celebrating the Shabbat, a gathering of young, eligible, single men and women can be very interesting to the participants for its own sake. Especially if you are from a traditional Jewish family where you are expected to marry only Jewish men/women. So of course, there was much mingling and aiming to impress. More than one person mentioned JDate, and I wouldn't be surprised if nearly all of them had profiles up there (I knew Jgirl did). and in this eager atmosphere, Soto found himself surrounded by a host of very attractive choices. But then, he started crossing out the options one by one. Sweet Canadian girl was a bit too posh for him, Greek girl too tall, the Russian girl was cornered by the sleazy Israeli boy.

I guess Soto has become hopelessly confused with women and unable to decide about what he really wants. Em says Soto is a big danger to men around him because he cannot make up his mind, and then he is a rival to everyone else in their pursuit of women. Agreed, and over the last few months his attention and memory span with regard to women has dropped drastically. If I was a woman interested in getting to know Soto romantically, I'd be seriously pissed, because even as he talks to one woman, he's looking over her shoulder to check out another. And if within the first few minutes he decides she wouldn't be willing to sleep with him immediately (and I mean pronto), he moves on double speed. I think it's totally fine that he wants to merely find a woman to hook up with, but the restlessness in doing so is not attractive to anyone.

This was amply in display later, as all of us (including Jgirl and a bunch of folks we met there) moved from the party to a club in Santa Monica. And there, instead of concentrating on Canadian girl (attractive and interested) or Greek girl (very friendly), Soto continued to wonder why the sexily dressed Russian girl hadn't joined us (duh, she was with sleazy guy). Aaaaargh! And if this wasn't enough Jgirl decided that she still had feelings for her ex-boyfriend and kept hovering around him, butting into his conversations, flirting with him.

Sure enough on Sunday, his eagerness to get laid backfires on him. So with Em's help we had managed to convey Soto's phone number to the girl he met in Em's cousin's party. She calls up on Friday, they decide to go out on Friday. Sunday morning at 6:30 am (an ungodly hour if there ever was one) she calls him up and begs him to come and pick her up from a hotel where she had gone to attend a party, and where her acccompanying friend and a bunch of others were too stoned to leave. He picks her up from the hotel and drops her home, where she asks him to stay and starts a verbal sexual banter, which makes him think that she wants it to lead to something more. However, she continues talking and starts telling him how she has a multitude of admirers, how she made past boyfriends wait months for sex, and how she didn't think he was macho enough.

Fed up, Soto left her house, resolving never to call again. But given his talent for overlooking the right girls and landing up with the wrong girls (we shook our heads over his relationship with Jgirl) I wouldn't be surprised if he starts a disastrous relationship with this girl. I'm being too harsh on him. He's very sweet, and an incredibly kind, generous boy, but hasn't a clue when it comes to women. He thinks he's playing them, whereas all the time they end up playing him.

On Saturday we went to a club for a party organized by a student organization at the university. The party was fun, pretty uneventful, we met tons of old friends as well as some fairly new ones. I convinced Bulgarian economist guy to come, and he said he had lots of fun and was glad I pestered him. We wandered off into a conversation about happiness and what makes us happy, and he said that to be 18 and in love is true happiness. Well for me, to be 80 and in love is also happiness I guess. I don't know if the innocence and naivete of adolescence is all that can provide us happiness. The joy of discovery and new experiences, growing wisdom and seeing things from a new light at every age milestone these are all constituents of happiness for me.

So I ran into Steph, the guy we ran into here as well, and true to form, he hugged me warmly and continued to talk to me as he forgot to greet S. I saw S's face contort into a scowl, and he later complained about how rude Steph is. I don't think he was deliberately rude because he did wish a very warm goodbye to S. Just that sometimes, people tend to greet those they know better and become oblivious to those they know less.

I also had a watermelon martini at the party, which was red, with a cherry dropped into the glass, and looked very cool and posh. I'm usually not much of a martini girl, unless I'm able to specify exactly what brand of vodka, gin or other liqueur I want in it, but they do look tres sophisticated in clubs and bars. A Swiss girl had a fabulous looking drink in her hand which was ocean blue in colour and was served in a tall glass. I asked her what it was called and she said "Adios Motherfucker!" Whoa! helluva drink to order. Picture this, pesky sleazy boy, sidles up to you and says "Cool drink, what is it?", and you smile a haughty smile, dig in your Sergio Rossi boots and say "Adios, @$#%@!%%#*@%!" Too bad it tastes like a Long Island Ice Tea. A drink that's just a sorry excuse for a bar to get rid of its shittiest alcohol that no one ever orders. Don't believe me? Ask them to put Stoli, Bombay Sapphire, Sauza, and Bacardi Gold and see how the bartender's face changes.

And then on Sunday, in a very relaxed finale to the entire weekend, we went sailing with a friend of S on her boyfriend's boat. Calm sea with some wind, ample sunshine and good company. Such are the pleasures of harnessing the wind and setting ourselves afloat on little specks of white in a vast ocean.