Who' s The Mature Grown Up Now?

In theatre practice two days back, my friend Stephen and I were trying to fix a meeting for Saturday night. The " young ones" came down on us heavily , saying -NO NO, Saturday is Party Night, and surprisingly       " The Golden Oldies" echoed their sentiments. Apparently the only two people who belonged to Loserville and wanted to spend their Saturday Night," Play Reading" was the Middle Aged , 30+ idiots.

The middle ages have crept upon us slowly. First it slowed down our thirst for free alcohol, then tightened up the jeans of our youth, then made sleep a necessity not a hangover effect and finally produced  entire generations of younger people who had wispier goatees, dirtier clothes , newer pulp faiths .Before we knew it , we had turned into Hicksville ,our music started playing in the " Classic " slots and " Our Gods" started dying on us.Another more serious sign of middle age is the " changing relationship" which we have with our parents. Suddenly, you become the " mature- sensible " one. Let me share a few examples:

1. G's Dad is convinced that he is going to win the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes! He has been at it for 3 years, bought more encyclopedia's , plants, bric-a-brac, medicines, foot massage chairs than his family would care to account for. Entire rooms in the house have been sacrificed to the junk that Reader's Digest sends him, at  bargain prices of  Rs XXXXX ONLY! The man who used to rule entire mining colonies with an iron fist has now capsized to the lure of one of the biggest cons in history!
2. S & D's Dad has transformed from a "Chilled Dad" to a "Worrier". A father who had taught his daughters the pleasures of travelling ,being bohemian, and " getting comfortable with a nice book"......doesn't even let the poor things sit down anymore. He pursues them with long "to do " lists of what must be done immediately, and what must be done, 5 Min's from "immediately". If he so much as sees one of them lowering half a butt into the sofa, the sulks break loose!
3. Then of course, there are the " muzzers" My mother for example, has spent the entire year changing her mind about where she wants to retire. When she is in city A , she is sure that City B would suit her better. As soon as she lands in City B, she wants to go back to City A, from the airport , if possible. Then someone enlightens her about the pleasures of City C , and she believes them! I predict , a lot of furniture getting misplaced or damaged en route.This from a woman who was so sure of her mind, that she used to be called " The Queen Of Stubborn"!
4. L's mother is mortified with her workaholic daughter. Ahem...now then taking a step back.This lovely lady,  through school and college banned her daughter from meeting, mating, or even speaking to any sort of male form. No college trips were permitted, for fear of compromise. The highlights of poor L's then social calendar were CPA exams, CA exams., MCOM exams etc. Now that poor L is building her home independently and climbing the corporate ladder of success, her mater inquires of her twice a week, on " Why she has not gotten herself a  husband, or even a boyfriend yet? ", proclaiming great shock over her daughter's state!

Welll, ....Who' s The Mature , Grown Up Now? 

A Side of Emu !

Life can be a laugh riot!

A snippet from my Monthly Dose: Our grocery store has started stocking emu meat. There is a refrigerator full of emu sausages, emu curry cuts , emu kebabs – a Sunday kitchen of emu . The first time this refrigerator came in, I saw the owner proudly lounging by the spring banner which displayed happy emu birds with cartoon bubbles emerging from their beaks. In rhyme, they informed the customer about ‘how jolly it was to be organic red meat’.  Always ready for a chat, I seized the moment and got into a long discussion with the man about ‘who was buying the meat’, ‘how much had he invested, ‘the benefits, features , advantages’…. and I took a pamphlet home.

After three weeks I went back to the shop. To the naked eye it seemed that nothing had moved but the lounging owner assured me that he had already sold 25 kgs of Emu and had requested for more. I broke into a sweat. I imagined all my favorite neighborhood restaurants, buying the meat at half price and serving it to me as chicken, lamb, or beef.  I waited for the man to move and then I delved into the refrigerator. I did my own check and smiled in satisfaction- not a piece had moved!

The poor man , may have lost some money, but his pride was intact. It has now become our monthly ritual. I buy my veggies, stock up on my meat/fish and bounce along to have the ‘emu conversation.’ We play this little game of hide & seek, he ducks, I chase. Across grocery aisles, Behind the Fish, Between the Bananas and the Litchi cluster-sometimes I catch him, and sometimes he leaves the shop! The flow of emus has both of us living a lie. It is my belief that we have warmed to the charade, him pretending that everyone prefers emu and it is the wisest choice that he has made in a long time and me firmly inspecting the refrigerator content , to check the outflow.  To stir things up a bit, I have googled information about emu farming and I am waiting for my next weekly visit to exchange information.

Snippets from My Daily Dose:

On the route to office, there is a ‘Multi-Cushion Restaurant’ which conjures up pictures of ‘Happy Bottoms’
There is also that Remote IT Helpdesk Boy whose status message reads,’ Love me when I am down because that’s when I need you the most.’ Imaging the CEO of the company, asking him for help!         There is of course the building manager who distributes pamphlets like,
'Dropping rubbish from windows may be fetal to Passers On.’

But the funniest of them all, are the Thumping Sunday Believers from the corner AG Church, who go into paroxysms of Hallelujah, accompanied by Jumps and Shivers, 5 minutes into the service. It is their belief that this is the time the sacred Holy Spirit enters them. My Nana would call them ‘devil worshippers.’  I however feel that the poor souls are just acting out. Having grown up on a diet of Shivaji-The Bose(as they say in our part of the Vindhyas), they see the church as a stage and themselves as supporting artists in a gang-war shot!

A Snippet from My Last Holiday:

But the funniest thing which I have heard in some time was in the heart of Munnar. An excitable Bengalee Ledeej, asked the hotel manager, in her loudest Hindi –for all to hear.

‘Whaaat is there in this jongol, you are taking us to, tomorrow, leopards hai, Tigerrrs hai, Elephaaants- how many?’

The man, in his dusky drawl replied calmly,’ Maydum there is Gaaaaaad.’

Maydum had not expected this repartee and said in a shocked and trembling voice,
'Tomorrow you will take me to see God’!

To which the man said ‘ Yes, Gaaaaaaad is in the jongeel’ .

The Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, near the town of Munnar is famous for the Niligiri Tar, or the Nilgiri Goooat!... Next time you think life isn’t hilarious, call me !

Five Years

I knew a man who wasn’t scared to laugh or cry or ask for comfort

I knew a man who never ran away from giving of himself

I knew a man who always believed in living for the moment and for his dreams

I knew a man who was a traveler, never finding the home he was looking for.

I knew a man who loved the business of living …

Who was just a man, not a good man, not a great man

But  a man who could love and whom you could love very easily!

But he died five years ago

 and so I started walking his road…Being

The woman who is never scared to laugh or cry or ask for comfort

Who never runs away from giving of herself  

Who lives her dreams in every moment

Who travels with her home in her heart

A woman who enjoys the business of living , A woman, who is just a woman,

Not a good woman, not a great woman but a woman who can love just as easily!

Stuck!

Dramatic broken skies of picture post card quality. …And the rains are here again. There is a huge nude outside my office window. It is a bare tree with a thousand scorched arms.  As twilight is cut short, lightening darts streak across the sky, stopping short , curling, tangoing , following the wind tunnel around the tree. The sound of a fresh shower unsettles the evening calm . Washed by pleasant memories of well spent drenched hours, I sit and gaze into nothingness while the data crunchers around me dial it down. Hunched over laptops, body orifices plugged with gizmos, they shamble off to re-fill their coffee cups ….and discuss the difficult question of ‘How to negotiate the home bound traffic .’ And that’s where the romance ends. The best way to understand the innate competitiveness of the human spirit is to drive down a blocked, water logged, inner city road.

The Terrorist; Owner of The Truck: I own the bloody road. Being huge means that I can come and go as I please and anyone who wants to curtail my timings, will get a swollen lip and an abused mother. I will hog the middle of the road, get stuck in it, if I so wish and bring slow traffic to a complete halt. That is the only way I will get people to respect my girth, and beware of the terror that I can unleash.

The Suicide Bomber; Owner of The Motorcycle: I am wily and weak. Hence I will weave in and out of every available gap, change lanes as much as possible, scowl at and terrorize the cretin who drives on 4 wheels. I will also pretend that everyone is out to kill me while I go and block their ‘right of way’ and gently graze against them, leaving streaks of torn paint in my wake.

The Schizophrenic; Owner of The Auto-Rickshaw: I believe I am a truck. I will therefore behave like one. I will also hog the middle of the road, and splash my passengers and other cars alike. I will physically spit in the direction of anyone who nears me and suddenly stick my leg out to support and push all fellow autos who get stuck on the road. I will sometimes get amnesia and forget I am a truck and behave like a motorcycle weaving my way in and out of lanes while balancing the other auto with my leg.

The Passive-Aggressive; Owner of The SUV: I will treat the waterlogged road like I am on a hunt in the jungle.  I have paid a lot of money to pretend I am a macho maaaan and have a higher sperm count than anyone else. The salesman has sold me the divine right to try and mow down anyone who comes in front of me, failing which I will throw a tantrum and just block all the parts of the road which have been left available by trucks and auto rickshaws.

The Manic Depressive; Owner of the small car: Here I am and here I will be for the next three hours. The world has it against me. The only day that I am able to get out of office early, I get stuck in this god forsaken mess. If the water level rises, it may get into the engine. Then I will have to get out and push, while I am roundly abused by the world. I am going to curl up in my seat, hit out viciously at mosquitoes and listen to my ‘rainy weather compilation of 125 soul washed songs all beginning with ‘ Bheegi Bheegi.’

The Over Compensated Egoist; Owner of the Large Sedan :  I am going to yaaak yaakkk yaaaak on the phone , crib crib crib about the traffic and the ‘Naaaarth indians’ who are obviously the root cause of every problem in Bangalore. I will intermittently scowl at the driver in a half-hearted attempt to lay the blame at his door. I will be unable to play golf tomorrow and hence sack a few employees to feel better about myself again.

Dramatic broken skies of picture post card quality. …And the rains are here again.

A singleton's challenges with houses and babies

Have you noticed that as soon as you step into your '30s , the significant village elder finds his or her way to your doorstep. Then he/she looks at your tummy and your rented digs reprovingly, does the head wag much like a ' bewildered elephant with really floppy ears' and volubly goes 'tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock'.
This kind of 'tick-tocking' sends most happy couples  into a fit of life-changing frenzied pregnant mortgage.
But what of the singleton?

I am surrounded by people who make buying houses and popping twins , seem like an easy breezy thing to do. While i make detailed route maps of my next vacation, or get  really excited about this month's 'wine club' order catalog,..most of my couple friends are getting pregnant and going under the 'EMI' hammer.It gets worse in your mid thirties when they are already on their second mortgages and second children and your still 'thinking about it.'
My question is How Do They Do It?

I too keep trying to buy houses. I too set out , on fine Sunday mornings , sacrificing my regular jaunt to the second hand book store and attend marketing events organised by 'new age builders.' These events normally take place in huge vacant plots, populated with colorful canopies, multi-purpose cars and hassled parents.  I sit on masked plastic chairs with the 'drooling dreamers' and squint through animated presentations of 'Tropical, Italian, Moroccan, Affordable Paradises, right in the heart of the city, just 10 Min's  away from everything which matters.'

But , how do you commit to spending the rest of your life with a bunch of  'mine is a bigger than yours' strangers? How do you commit to 1200/2100/or 3000 sq feet tucked between similar other 'carpet areas' for the rest of your life? How do you sign up to sharing germs and other effluents with your neighbor's children in the common pool? It seems like an end , and i don't want to give up on myself so fast.
I keep thinking , I can do better than that. The truth is, 'nothing you want is affordable.' The houses which beckon to me are never in my budget. The hovels which i can afford, just wont do. My councilwomen  have advised me to just invest for investments sake, but i don't agree. To think that i would deprive myself of a much needed vacation because of 'some 1200 sq feet' of brick and mortar which i don't ever want to live in , does not add up.

Similarly babies: I went to the gynecologist for my yearly appointment and she started 'tick-tocking' me from the word go. Not convinced with my carefree singleton status , she wanted to weigh me down with possibility. The absence of fertile sperm bearing partners in my life, did not seem to deter her one bit. All she wanted was to turn my Rs 300 for 10 minute session into a year of fertility jabs, donor eggs and IVF's.
I kept trying to convince her that i did not want to join the dance, but like a strict housemistress who stands guard by the prom door,she would not take no for an answer. She offered me a range of fiercely potent sperm all artificially seasoned to produce the best swimmers possible. I pointed out that I might be an unfit parent, since i worked all the time and had no support structure. She pointed me to Japa Maids . For the uninitiated ,' Japa is is a traditional way to look after a neonatal baby and mother so that both parties remain alive.' Japa maids cost Rs 900 per day. ha ha ha-evil laughter ( Read Contract Form)http://www.caregeneration.com/CareContract.pdf........ and so the finger pointing continued.

We 'Highway On My Plate' 30 + singletons are facing some severe challenges. True we don't have to battle with the pressure of in-laws and double mortgages, but what with the fall of morality and no one going ' chee chee' over single parents anymore, we are on our way to getting trapped by all the ' responsible symbols of middle age which we have tried so hard to avoid' - Ghar, Bachha aur EMI ka Kharcha.

So here my cry , fellow middle aged singletons-rally around
As, Bill Pullman says in   'Independance Day'-
We will not go quietly into the night! ( Read-We will, as they say in the South Of India- Make Purty till Don ) 
We will not vanish without a fight! (Read - into little cubic cms of block flats) 
We're going to live on!( Read-Travel The World, drink champagne in shoes, and not cry about salary packages)
Today we celebrate our Independence Day - (Read- We have just this one life and since no one gets to go to heaven with a mortgaged flat .. kindly excuse us from participating in social trauma traps)

Enjoy Maadi :)

Where Have They Gone?

Believe it or not , each of us are riding on our private space shuttles. Sometimes we embrace change to avoid unpleasant memories or leave behind unworthy opponents. We spearhead into another dimension, erasing habits, cruising along the bylanes of ‘happy times’ trying to make a forever stop. As we move from experience to circumstance to phenomena there are some artifacts which get left behind, which history stops producing and we stop consuming and this blog is dedicated to those lost crafts.

The Dooley: In Anglo Indian houses , in times before the refrigerator became a necessity, there lived a small wooden cupboard with a netted front. This was called the Dooley or meat-safe. The Dooley was a cool dark fragrant cupboard, which nurtured in it’s recesses, left over meat curries , sambol, tomato rice and Christmas cake . No one quite knew the science behind the Dooley or how it kept Christmas cakes from spoiling from December to March. It was store crafted by the ‘hand of god’ and many grandmothers and grace said, we left it at that. Goodbye Mysterious Dooley..the flies have flown to Canada.

The Round Oven: In little cantonment towns , thirty years ago there lived a small steel round oven with a black coil which shuddered and sparked and sometimes sang ‘ping’ when it got too hot. These towns were home to army colonies, forest rangers , mining engineers, and were also known as temporary posting sites. In these sleepy little nooks where life revolved around the mines or the dam or the army, the local excitement was provided by the monthly trip to the ‘nearest big city’ and afternoons spent in competitive baking. Pies, cakes, biscuits, breads and toasties were manufactured in those little tin ovens marking the ‘true colony wife and mother’ from the ‘ just landed new-bees’. Goodbye Round Oven…Your coil is going to remain forever unchanged.

The Aalna: The clotheshorse or aalna has become a ‘curiosity piece ‘in heritage hotels. Yet in a time not so long ago, there lived in the red tiled, flowered patterned corridors of old Calcutta, the mighty Aalna. An aalna was truly an essential piece of furniture in a tropical land. It had a wooden frame with two beautifully carved side stands which held twelve rods between them. You took off your once worn cottons , drenched with the afternoon sun, spread them across the aalna to dry, sprinkled some talcum powder on it , switched the fan on and let it be. You bought time for yourself, you could stare at the aalna, and contemplate on the dirt quotient of your clothes, without them getting in everyone’s way. You could decide if you should iron them out and wear them once more or did they need to go into the wash a.s.a.p. Nowadays, the choice does not exist. OCD freaks like me possess a bunch of faded clothes since everything goes into the washing machine after a one time wear. Or you spend your time sniffing naphthalene and day before yesterday’s perfume on people with bright clothes.( It went straight into the cupboard)Goodbye Aalna..you are sorely missed.

The electric water heating rod: In cold, paying guest accommodations across campus towns there lived a wicked, heating rod with an evil temperament. In Hudson Lines, North Campus, PG’s were treated worse than dung beetles. They had no coolers, no working kitchens, no dignity and no company after ten, when uncle ji locked the gates. In this waste land, the only kicks one got was from using that little bit more electricity, without informing the landlord. To stay alive in the cold Delhi winter, students would hide electric heating rods under clothes and behind books. The rod would be attached to a bucket and it was a mean ingrate. It would give us shocks so that we sported permed frizzy hair , burnt our buckets, tripped the electricity and got us caught. I for one, am very happy that the electric water heating rod is no longer a part of my life. Goodbye and good riddance!

The Sataranchi: Parents of the seventies did not have ‘Little Champs’ and ‘ Voice of Young India’ to indulge in, so a whole lot of us were chased off to learn classical dancing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday’s . An important part of the Indian classical dance training experience was the ‘on the deathbed’ guruji, with absolutely no teeth but enough spirit in his bones, to whack you on your legs whenever you bungled a move. This cadaverous old gentlemen would be seated on a sataranchi, which looked like the illegitimate union between a wooden platform and a bed. There would also be a disinterested ‘tabalchi’ seated beside him, keeping lack lustre rhythm and looking out of the window. The guriji would more than make up for the tabalchi’s lack of interest, by keeping his own beat. He would hurl the child beating baton against the sataranchi beating out ' dha dhin dhin da' ( if it was a monday it would be kathak) or ' talanku jhum'(if it was a wednesday it would be bharat natyam), as the occasion demanded.
Who knows if in some small dancing school in the middle of a market , a podgy little cross eyed child is still trying to measure her footsteps to the ‘na thin thin tha’ of a beaten sataranchi?

The Festival Of Food

Come October, nostalgia fills the air. Airports get clogged as the 'last minute Kolkattan' rushes back home to participate in the Durga Pujo binging . In little and large corners across the world, pockets of Bengalis gather, get organised and chomp their way across 'cultural programs' and ' Kabiraji cutkets' , the focal point of all pujo celebrations.The important questions which dot the day are- 'Which artist is coming?' ' When is the Sit and Draw competition', ' Did we finally get that biryani stall we wanted?'

While the rest of India, goes into a nine day fast, the Calcuttan goes into a 5 day hyper-food festival mode, with 'Silly Chicken' and 'Moten Biryani'. Continuous feasting without fasting. The best thing about the Pujos though, are that they are completely divorced from religion. Growing up, it was as much a part of Indrani Chakraborty's social calendar as Elina Da Silva's or Nitasha Islam's. We didn't grow up thinking we had different gods, just specific cuisine occasions. Come Id , we would line up outside Nitasha's or Shabnam's door, come Christmas the good Brahmins would sit on the overstuffed sofa tucking into the 'beef vindaloos.'

So come October, no matter how far we are from the many miked lanes of old Kolkata and the lights which showcase the political satire of the day, if we want ,we always have a way back in. You may be crossing a Manhattan street, or nurturing a Soho beer, you may be picking mangoes in Darwin, or freezing your little bits off in Toronto. You may be eating idlis in Bengaluru or commuting in a matro between Gurgaon and Dilli. Come October, all you need to do is close your eyes, and connect with the memory of the dhak ...and suddenly you are enveloped in a circus of senses...fragrant arati , women dancing, the lingering taste of ashtami mutton, a hot kolkata evening and a gorgeous mother, who only comes visiting once a year :)

Shubho Bijoya everyone and much love