Monday, August 22, 2011

The one about the destination and (thankfully) not the journey

I've been meaning to write this for a while. About summer and summer vacations, as I watched my friends and co-workers, take off for their annual retreats. Somehow, I cannot come to associate july or august with summer.For me, summer, will always be those two glorious months - April & May- the mischievous siblings and of lazing out in the sun, of feeling your skin turn brown and crispy, of guarding grandma's rice crispies, drying in the sun, from crows while reading comics, of improvising ice candies from frozen rasna and yes, of a big ol family vacation to the nether region of the country.

That's the beauty of hindsight I guess, that you can reminisce about family vacations with fondness, sitting under a quilt, half way across the world. When in reality, our summer vacation plans always managed strike a deep fear in my heart, primarily due to the machinations of my mother,who was the chief architect of all our vacations and ofcourse, her ole faithful the government of India.

I can't confirm for sure, but I think my mother developed a deep, unabiding wanderlust after she went on a sabbatical to europe when I was 6 years old and visited about a dozen countries. After that she was never quite the same and every summer, something deep within her soul rebelled and we found ourselves on a "vacation" in the boondocks of the country. Her vacation rumination usually began in March, usually when we would watch the 9PM news as a family and some news article like a terror attack in Kashmir or workers strike in west bengal would trigger her wanderlust and she would announce to all of us at the dinner table that our vacation that year would be to Jammu or Darjeeling. My brother and I would look at each other and then look at the food on the plate and seriously consider the probability of death by choking because anything was preferable to my mother's idea of a vacation.

See my parents were both government employees and the government of India has this policy of reimbursing travel for vacation for its dear minions and the said minions rightfully abused this policy to the hilt, choosing the farthest possible spot on the map. And so, even though we could not afford to travel to the far corners of the country ordinarily, the government of India, aided my mother's plans like a faithful but stupid accomplice. Yes the tax payers of this fine nation were funding the trip but who cares about the tax payer, fuck 'em! So she would proceed to book train tickets to places like Sikkim (1200 KM away), which entailed travelling by train for 3 days and eating train food for 3 days and then rightfully puking the train food for 3 days. I still haven't forgiven the kitchen at Behrampur station in Orissa, for making me puke for 4 hours after eating the food cooked there.I even remember, standing over the vibrating aluminium sink in the compartment and praying to god for all this to end. Deliver me from vacations instead of evil. So you can understand why my brother and I were about as thrilled as a bunch of hostages in a bank heist as far as my mother's vacation plans were concerned.

The government reimbursement policy was valid only once every two years so in the intervening years my mother would plan outrageous road trips because, get this, the Gov of India would also reimburse fuel costs! So into the hinterlands we went, in our car, a spritely Premier Padmini, my brother and I in the back seat and my mom collecting obscure plant samples on the way to assuage her botanist soul. We once went to this place called Bharvati, in interior Karnataka where I was promised a most splendid waterfall. We travelled for two days, 8 hours everyday, where my brother and I decided to play 20 questions to kill time. Long story short he always chose some obscure cricketer and I chose some obscure african dictator and we both accused each other of cheating and my mother shushed us and put some of her obcure plant specimens in between to keep us from killing each other.There is nothing worse than sitting next to your arch nemesis and being powerless to do anything because of the intervening, annoying fronds of an ugly plant. And when we reached Bhadravati all grumpy, the waterfall turned out to be a piddly little sprinkle. Yes, road trips were as fun as a beach trip to hell.

But even if the journeys themselves sucked and I almost died (inevitably due to throwing up regularly) she did take us to magnificent places in the country. Places you would never believe could ever exist or Places so different that it didn't seem like it belonged to the Indian polity. I remember visiting an ancient 9th century Buddhist Monastery in Sikkim when I was 9 years old and feeling like my world had been turned upside down. Seeing the monks, watching Buddhism at work, it seemed so removed from the conventional India. The India that was familiar to me. Seeing the mighty Himalayas was another such experience as well. The Himalayas looked so bad ass that they seemed to say "Fuck you guys, we're here to stay." The Himalayas are majestic yes but don't believe anyone who calls them serene. That's bull. The Himalayas to me always seemed to me like a bunch of bad ass motor cyclists who invaded town and for some reason decided to stay.They could be mean if they wanted to but decided not to. But they still evoked stifled awe and fear at their bad assery.

Another unforgettable moment was when I was on an abandoned island in the Andaman & Nicobar archipelago (Yes, again a gift from Government of India). I remember walking up the stairs of an old church that was crumbling and had Ivy running all around it. When I reached the top, I saw a deer at the altar, with crumbling stained glass and a peek of the azure waters, for a background. It still is the most beautiful sight I've ever seen and I was utterly spellbound! I blinked for a second and it was gone. No it wasn't an apparition but some idiot tourist had also sneaked up behind me and had decided to take a photo, all flashes blazing. I hate moronic tourists! Of course the deer ran away, and it occurred to me that you know you're on an island when the animals behave better than the humans.

The moronicity of tourists is something I could rant about for ages. We were once on a safari in a forest in southern India and we chanced upon a Lady Elephant shepherding her baby calf. Promptly all the tourists in the Jeep got out their long telescopic lenses and started clicking photos in a mad frenzy, so much so that she started chasing our jeep in anger. And what did the adults do? they continued to click pictures!! Would you really want to incite a female elephant who looked like she had just gotten off a bad date with a poacher the previous night? But I digress..

All those road trips and train journeys were nothing short of epic. It made us the individuals -my brother and I - we are today. We changed on a fundamental thanks to those trips. We became fascinated with cultures and people different from us, we learned to revel and partake in realities that were different from our conventional lives. We learned to respect difference of opinions and to treat divergent cultures with deference.That's why we both are the travel junkie nomads that we are, making a life for ourselves in distant lands. Most of all, what it showed was how beautiful our country was and how fortunate we were to see all shades of it - the beaches, islands, mountains and desert. That in itself was priceless.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Stuff!

The laundry list of "stuff" that's keeping me busy, not that anybody cares even though I'd like to envision my reader as awaiting updates with bated breadthand sitting on pins! Hey I can dream right?

1. First, got my hair straightened over the weekend.My stylist, correction, my soulmate stylist (every woman should have one, THE ONE and the ONLY ONE that GETS you and more importantly YOUR HAIR! more important to have than a spouse or boyfriend. Trust me!), err well, moving on, she suggested that I do a brazilian keratin treatment, and so without a second thought, I said sure, why not? Gosh, I can be so trusting sometimes. So she literally dabbed every strand of my hair with some concoction containing formaldehyde (!!!) and lo, behold, it is straight now! well almost..But oddly enough, this whole process made me reminisce about my childhood and growing up with curly hair. My mother or grandma would spend the sunday oiling my hair and in the process get to know what I'm upto. We bonded over hair and now here I am, more than 10 years later, not oiling my hair but putting some chemical through it. Made me a tad sad.

2. The search for the perfect bookcase is ruling my life right now. I ordered my bed, my dresser,my couch and my dining table in less than 20 mins but I took 3 days to search for the perfect bookshelf. Tells you a lot about me and my priorities no? I just couldn't find any that was worthy of my books. As a kid, I dreamed about living in an apt whose walls were adorned with books and beautiful book cases so this thing is very very important to me. Complicating matters a whole lot is that a lot of these needed to be assembled and I'm about as handy with a hammer as my finance professor was with stand up comedy. He wasn't. There are things that one should just NOT dabble in. So I finally lost patience and ordered one online. Fingers crossed, it will arrive soon and toes crossed, I'll be able to assemble it properly. Actually, I'll need more body parts crossed to accomplish the last one methinks.

3. So as things turned out, I used my signing bonus to sign up for a gym and trainer. Most women buy a prada or hermes bag but me? No, ma'am, I opt for pain and suffering. Again, more hint there on my wonderful clusterf**k of a personality. Actually, I'm really liking my training sessions. Although, I'm getting killed in every session because of all the workouts and yes I do go into the ladies room afterwards and sit on the toilet seat and cry for being a wuzzy BUT BUT, I feel much much stronger. Atleast I think I am and my trainer is awesome! as in, he gives me free relationship advice when I'm doing 3 sets of push ups. That's exactly the kind of thing you need to distract yourself from physical pain - relationships & dating woes. I lovee my gym too! its beeeautiful, very zen like and they have massive studios for dance and yoga classes and even a pool!! Best of all, no annoying kids running around or having to deal with cloying, closet-bullimic undergrads (aka The wilson gym @ Duke) only hot looking, broad shouldered men doing pushups. Sign me up baby! she said. And oh, they also had eucalyptus scented towels..after all, when it comes to gyms isn't that the top criteria? Hot men and Comforting Towels? losing weight is a lost cause anyway!

4. Another big to-do these days is meeting my friends and hoping they've not forgotten me after being away from Chicago for a month. For a whole month!! I helped a friend move into her apartment at evanston and also managed to have a wonderfully contentious argument with another friend over some really delicious ethiopian dinner. Aah I love my erudite friends, I feel smart just being around them. The biggest reason I miss school is not waking up everyday and going into class and being challenged to think differently. But thanks to hanging with my smart friends and co-workers, that intellectual vaccuum is rapidly ebbing. Oh I must say, that working in a tech company and talking geek feels awesome!! I even wear my tweety bird T-shirt, which says "Full of Geek," proudly to work! that's how much of a nerd I am!

So things have been rather eventful. Summer in Chicago is salubrious.Hope the weather and the Karmic Universe holds up. It would be awful if rain (or snow, chicago remember?) did stop play.

Friday, August 05, 2011

The Book Gobbler's Delish List

Just listing a bunch of books I've managed to read this year. Hoping to update this as I finish reading books. I don't get much free time, what with work starting and all, but I hope my reading list continues to burgeon and that at the end of the year, I can look at it and say, "That was not bad at all."

  1. The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson
  2. Help! - Kathryn Stockett
  3. Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis (currently reading)
  4. Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
  5. Around the world in 80 days - Jules Verne
  6. Treasure Island - Robert L Stevenson
  7. Adventures of Sherlock Homes - Arthur Conan Doyle
  8. Dreams from my father - Barack Obama
  9. The partly cloudy patriot - Sarah Vowell
  10. We need to talk about kevin - Lionel Shriver
  11. Blue shoes & happiness (from the series, "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency") - Alexander McCall Smith
  12. Siva Purana - Ramesh Menon