Reflections on a Year Gone By

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since I stepped into the pink lehenga and out of my parents' home. We set up home here, in a foreign land, and are about to take it apart and set up a new one. Such is life.

The year has taught both of us a lot. About each other and about marriage and relationships. About learning not to sweat the small stuff. And to tell the small stuff apart from the big. About being patient with each other. Doing little things for each other.

I know this is a bit of a cliche, but you don't really understand it until the time you experience it for yourself. Marriage is not always smooth sailing. You have to make adjustments and compromises. But it's all worth it. When you see the smile on your partner's face when you do something special for him, that makes it worth it. When you feel the warmth in your heart when he does the same for you, that makes it worth it. When you know there's at least one person in the world you can always count on, no matter what. When you know there's one person with whom you can discuss all your fears and worries and share all your joys.

That's what marriage is about. Knowing that you have a companion on the journey called life.

A First - A Weird One

In Delhi, I've stopped my car because there were cows in the middle of the road, even donkeys or pigeons (right in the middle of the DND flyway, when I was coming at almost 80 kmph, and the car behind me was at 80 kmph), but I did not expect that kind of thing out here. Well, what do I have? A big, fat, probably quite juicy turkey crossing the road in a leisurely fashion just inches away from my car! Now that's a first.

A Winter Like No Other

It's the last day of February, for crying out loud! If I were in Delhi, I'd have put away my warm clothing almost a month ago. Those who know me well would know that I generally dress less warmly than those around me. But now I'm surrounded by people who are used to the -5 F weather that we had around here for a while, and who are now roaming about with very light jackets in 40 F weather. These women will wear mini skirts, Capri pants and open sandals in this weather. And it's still snowing. Well, not today, but it was snowing yesterday. So I'm still wearing boots (Boots! I never wore anything other than open toed sandals in India, except in the gym or on trekking trips. I would never even wear socks. I didn't even own a pair of socks!) most of the time, and fairly warm jackets which protect from the wind.

And here's the worst part. It rains the day after it snows. The snow melts. So I don't see the pretty, white, Christmassy scene outside my window. I see dull, brown, withered grass and trees. When will spring come?

Random Little Things That I Miss...

...about my single life in India:

• Having someone to cook for me. I mean, it's good to be able to cook for yourself and make exactly what you want to eat, but at least once in a while you want to eat something cooked by someone else who does not cook for a living, and you want to not know what's for dinner.
• Sometimes, when I'm feeling sleepy towards the evening and I debate whether or not to get some coffee, I miss having friends and colleagues around me who would get it for me without even asking me.
• This doesn't get said enough. I miss the Hindi radio channels that make you listen to all sorts of useless bantering about movies and movie stars, and songs that you love and songs that you hate.
• Easily available chaat and other things savoury that you don't have to put together yourself.

And the stuff I think I will miss when I go back to India:

• Low fat versions of just about every food item. Low fat salad dressing, reduced fat Oreo's, reduced fat muffins and doughnuts and what not. And the milk that comes with exactly as much fat as you want - skim, 1% fat, 2% fat, or whole.
• Easy access to Mexican food.
• Snow outside my window.
• Easy access to original DVD rentals from Netflix.
• The huge bookstores.

The Other Side of the Coin

I have a beautiful view outside my window that looks like a Christmas card. We had about five inches of fresh snow accumulation this morning. I also drove in the snow storm a little. That's the not so beautiful side of it.

As it happened, the apartment complex's and the state's snow ploughs and trucks were rather late this morning and my husband had to pull his car out of a parking spot surrounded by five inch deep snow. And drive through slippery roads whose metalled surface showed only where other cars had tread before. I actually accidentally drove on to the wrong side of a smaller road because I couldn't see where the road actually was!

But well, once you're home and dry, it's all still very beautiful.

Snowing Away

Saturday evening saw a lot of snow for Boston and the surrounding areas. It's Monday afternoon, and the view from my window still looks like a Christmas card with snow covered pine trees and a sheet of white where the grass used to be. Saturday evening was something of a storm and was rather unexpected, being a little early in the winter season for something like this.

I've been to places where it snows, and I've been in snowstorms before. But those were short vacations where the hotel was in a warmer place and we visited a snowy place and came back to a place where the grass was still green. This is the first time that I've woken up in the morning to a snowy scene outside the window. I wanted to take pictures as soon as I got up on Sunday. I didn't know we'd have about three days to do that. Everything is almost intact, except that the roads have been cleared and there are a few footprints of the children who wanted to play in the snow. It's still all so pretty and yesterday was surprisingly warmer than the day before. And not that difficult to drive either. Not like we're snowed in. The little bushes and pine trees look like the ones we would decorate with cotton wool for school plays and Christmas. Only this time, it's the real thing.

Shopping Away

Before I came to the States, I knew what Thanksgiving was all about, and I knew that they have crazy “Black Friday” sales the day after. I knew that people camp outside stores in the night so that they can be first in line. But I didn’t know just how crazy it all gets.

The stores open at about four in the morning for shoppers. (Toys ‘R’ Us actually opened at midnight this Black Friday.) And there are already hundreds of people queued outside, waiting for the doors to open. There’s no parking, the place outside the stores are all lined with Dunkin’ Donuts cups, and people are just crazy. Apparently one of the salespeople who opened the doors to a Wal-Mart died in a stampede last year. Now they have special training for people who open the doors.

By six in the morning, most of the good deals are gone, but people are still trying to find parking spots and waiting for hours in the checkout queues for most of the day. There’s also a “Cyber Monday” sale in most of the larger stores, where they have great online deals for a day. That’s what I’m restricting my shopping to!

Giving Thanks

I went to my uncle’s place for Thanksgiving, which is, in case you didn’t know, a major holiday in the US and an occasion for family get-togethers. The traditional Thanksgiving Day meal includes a whole turkey and pumpkin pie, among other things. I’d never has turkey before, except in a sandwich or two, and they don’t put too much of it in there. I got to see how the whole meal is prepared, how the big bird is marinated overnight and roasted in the oven. My aunt made pumpkin chiffon for dessert, a lighter, fluffier variation of pumpkin pie that I absolutely loved. This was probably the first time in my life that I had dessert that was delicious and did not make me feel over stuffed and heavy in the stomach.

I like the way Americans plan their meal for this day. They start out with the turkey and everything else at about three or four in the afternoon, and eat slowly, for an hour or so, then take a break before dessert. It combines lunch and dinner into one meal and doesn’t leave you feeling heavy at the end of it. It’s a lavish meal with a number of dishes, but none of them use a significant amount of oil or butter or anything of the sort. The turkey is roasted; the mashed potatoes are baked and then mashed, as are the mashed sweet potatoes. I don’t know about traditional pumpkin pie, but the pumpkin chiffon was lighter than air.

The weather is quite cold now. My aunt ran out of space in both of the extra large refrigerators that they have, and she put the turkey and some other stuff outside on the deck overnight. I’m thinking it was cooled better than the stuff that was actually refrigerated.

The point of this holiday is to count your blessings and be thankful for them. I am thankful that, in spite of being so far away from home, I have a place to go home for the holidays.

Holiday Cheer

The Holiday season is visibly approaching now. With Thanksgiving this Thursday and Christmas just over a month away, the whole place is looking different. There are special discounts and sales all over, and people are out shopping with their kids all the time.

One thing I really like about this season is all the great food. The Pumpkin Donuts are just great (They don't beat the double chocolate donuts, but they come quite close.), as are the Peppermint Brownies (They beat the double chocolate brownies.). There are all kinds of pies and cakes and chocolates all over the place. It's the perfect time to ruin your diet.

Daylight Savings Time

I never really experienced jetlag when I first came to the United States. But I did experience a very mild variation of it when they turned off Daylight Savings Time on Sunday. I woke up in the morning to see that it was daylight outside, though not yet bright and sunny. Checked the time on my phone to see that it was only six in the morning. That struck me as strange, because I distinctly remembered that on the morning of Karva Chauth, about three weeks back, it was still dark until a little more than half past six.

I got out of bed to see the clocks that were set automatically, such as the ones on our phones and the one on the cable TV set top box, showed a different time from what the wall clocks showed. Well, what do you know, we have a forty nine hour weekend, don’t we?

It was a little disturbing to see the sky turning completely dark at only a quarter past five in the evening. And it’s not even really winter yet. I remember reading the classic tale A Christmas Carol and the fact that it said that Scrooge was going home at about four in the afternoon and it was beginning to get dark. I thought that kind of thing happened only in stories, just like the leaves turning red and orange and being shed. Now I’ll get to see it with my own eyes. Around Christmas we’ll get only about eight or nine hours of daylight, and none too bright at that too. But of course, things will be nice and bright with all the red and green decorations everywhere.

Advertising In America

One thing that really strikes me when I watch TV here is how people advertise their products and tell you that they are better than their competitors. In India, it's like, "Your favourite detergent can't remove this stain. But Tide can!" Here, it's like this: "People say Honda is America's most fuel efficient car. But the Chevy Malibu is more efficient than the Accord, the Chevy Cobalt does better than the comparable Civic, and model X (some SUV type car from Chevrolet whose name I can't remember) is more fuel efficient than the Honda CRV."

And that's only the beginning. These people insult the competition like anything. The insurance guys, the breakfast cereal guys, the soda guys, everybody. They come with actual figures that represent an actual product from a competitor. They're aggressive advertisers who know just what they're doing. It's a very different style of advertising from what I've been accustomed to. I'm not saying that either is better or worse than the other, but it certainly stands out.

Halloween

I've always held a certain amount of fascination for this festival that I'd seen in so many movies, stories and TV series. On Saturday I got to see for myself all the kids dressed up in costumes, going trick-or-treating all over the place.

We happened to be out, and I was window shopping at a mall. I wasn't too interested in that, because I didn't really need to shop. But I was interested in the adorable little kids dressed like pirates, witches, Darth Vader, Superman, Superwoman, Tinker Bell, Snow White, and whatever else you could think of. Even the little ones, the ones too young to understand what was going on, were dressed up by their parents and taken around in their strollers. There was this baby dressed up like a kangaroo. Another one was a ladybug. The cutest ladybug I ever saw, that's for sure! Chinese and Thai babies are just so cute in general, but they are even cuter when they're dressed up in a Disney Princess costume. And there was a pair of twin babies, in a twin stroller, dressed as identical pink bunnies. I saw another pair of twins in another twin stroller, dressed as pixies.

I watched the kids go from store to store, graciously accepting the candy that was given to them, with excited "Thank you!"s. I was a little surprised to see how disciplined these kids were. They were rushing off from store to store, but not trying to run around and create chaos, and when somebody held out a huge bowl of candy for them, they'd take one or two pieces and make way for the next kid in line. I mean, that's a little more than I expect from a child of four or five.

This celebration is apparently a pretty big deal to parents and children alike. The shops have been selling Halloween stuff - pumpkins, ornamental black cats, costumes, stuff to make costumes out of, hollow plastic pumpkins to collect the candy in - for a little over two months now. I've seen mothers looking around for feathers and beads to decorate their daughters' costumes. I've heard them discussing how they want to dress up their kids for the day. It's a beautiful, large-scale fancy dress party, and everyone seems to be having a good time!

A Home Away From Home

My husband and I were recently talking about how easy or difficult it will be for us if and when we choose to go back home to Delhi. Of course, there are the good things, being near family and friends, feeling more at home in the city, but there are definitely going to be issues.

We can hardly imagine water or electricity being an issue for concern any more. Americans are completely taken by shock if there is a blackout. Tap water adheres to very high sanitation standards and is completely safe for drinking, but these folks still buy bottled water. We drink from the tap, but in Delhi, is there any telling what the bottled water may be contaminated with?

I am now used to cars stopping for me when I want to cross the road. I get a bit of a surprise when we visit the Boston city area or New York City, because those are more disorganized in terms of traffic and pedestrians wait for the traffic to stop. But they are still way more organized than Delhi. Yesterday, my husband had to wait for seven minutes to cross a red light and he was agitated at being stuck in a traffic jam. Both of us have been stuck in Delhi traffic jams for about an hour at time.

It's so clean and cool over here that I find it easy to go without taking a second shower at night or dusting the house for a week. I found those things rather difficult to do in Delhi.

And of course, I will miss the huge Barnes & Noble bookstores (An average store is about the size of an average Shopper's Stop in Delhi. They let you sit right there and read peacefully for as long as you want.), which are something of heaven on earth for a person like me, the huge variety of restaurants with international cuisines - Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Indian - whatever you can ask for.

But, of course, nothing beats buying books off the pavement in Connaught Place, eating roadside chaat and shopping for trinkets at Janpath, does it?

Six Months Of Matrimony

Has it actually been that long? It seems like it was just yesterday that I packed my bags and said goodbye to the life I had and started a new one.

I'm happy to say that life has treated us well in these six months. We've grown to understand each other much better, to appreciate the good in each other, and to be more patient with the bad. We've learnt to anticipate each other's mood swings, and now we know what triggers them and what the antidote is. We love doing little things for each other from time to time. We know that time spent with each other is the best time of the day for both of us. We know each other's needs and wants much better now, and we take good care of those little things.

This was not the kind of person I had in mind for myself, actually. Nor did I want to move away from Delhi. But sometimes, we find happiness in the most unexpected places, don't we?

Diwali In A Foreign Land

Our first Diwali after our wedding was celebrated in a foreign land, which is home to us, at least for the time being. We celebrated in our own way, going out to an Indian place where we ate a lot of chaat and golgappas, which we do get easily around here, but it's all packaged in boxes and you have to mix it all up yourself. But there are a few places around here where you get it served on a plate. We went to one such place. It was just lovely to gorge on all that stuff after, maybe, three or four months.

We also went to a temple nearby. We've been to the same place once before on a weekend, and, relatively, there was a throng of people. But, of course, compared to what we would have found in India, it was still wide, open spaces inside and outside the temple, and just enough parking. People were dressed in saris and kurtas. It felt different. It didn't exactly feel like back home, because this is a South Indian style temple and a lot of the people were South Indians as well, but it did have a greater sense of belonging than whatever else I've seen in the States so far.

We did a small puja at home and lit a few diyas. Now we don't have a balcony, so we did all of it inside our house. I put the diyas in a plate and my husband decided to keep a sheet of paper under them to protect the plate. Unfortunately, the paper caught fire, but fortunately we blew it out when it was only a tiny flame. Even so, it set off the overly sensitive fire alarm and we had to open the windows on a cold night (We had a little snow on the preceding snow and more than a little snow on the following evening.) to let the smoke out. Ironical, isn't it? In Delhi, we keep our windows closed because of the smoke on Diwali night.

We also got some Indian sweets for the first time since we've been here. We had no room left for dinner after all the chaat, so the sweets and the bananas from the temple were all we ate in the evening. A beautiful evening for both of us.

Four Seasons

A fellow blogger recently pointed out to me (in the comments section of one of her blog posts) that in India, we don't get to see four distinct seasons, whereas in places like the United Kingdom and the northern parts of the United States, we do. It's true. In Delhi there was never any significant spring or autumn. Well, of course, if there's no autumn, then spring really doesn't belong in the cycle of things. But that's a separate story.

So here I was, just getting the feel of the fall season (that's what it's called in America) and just beginning to feel the nip in the air, when, out of nowhere, I get up in the morning, and my husband tells me that it's snowing outside. I thought that was just one of the random things he says sometimes for no apparent reason other than to amuse himself and me. But it wasn't. It was actually snowing. Not like a snowstorm or a blizzard, but just a few light snowflakes. Enough to give the grass a whitish touch. It was beautiful. Like one of those Hollywood movies with a story that takes place at Christmas time. It lasted only a very short while, and I did not go out there in my pyjamas, but just looking out of the window was great.

So, what do you know? It's winter already. And a colder winter than any that I've seen in Delhi!

A Different Movie Going Experience

This weekend, I went out for a Hindi movie for the first time since I moved to the States. Not being in the Tri-State area, (For the uninitiated, that's where you'd find the largest number of Indians in the US. Apparently the city of Edison in New Jersey is called 'Little India' and you can find sari shops and chaat waalas and what have you over there. Manhattan is also host to Diwali melas and other such festivities.) it is a big deal for me to find a Hindi movie running in the neighbourhood, one that I would want to watch. I wonder why these folks are so enthusiastic about the likes of Kambakht Ishq, Do Knot Disturb and What's Your Rashee?, but well, never mind.

So I found Wake Up Sid running at a small theatre that's about two miles from home. I think the hall where I watched it had a capacity of about two hundred people, and the other halls in the building seemed to be of comparable sizes. I think it was one of the smallest movie halls I've been to. But I think it makes perfect sense for a sparsely populated suburban residential area like ours. Random fact: The state of Massachusetts has about half the population of Delhi, and about twenty five times the area. You get the idea. Anyway, I know I'm digressing. I was more than surprised to see a relatively empty parking lot and corridors at a movie theatre on a weekend. But well, by now I'm pretty much used to the idea that Americans like to spend their weekends and their evenings in the peace and quiet of their homes, unlike us Delhiites, who take a certain amount of pleasure in adding to the crowd at already overcrowded malls. But even more surprising was the fact that there were no ushers, nobody to check tickets. Well, the box office counter was a position that you couldn't get past without the guy at the counter catching sight of you. But there's nothing to stop you from watching a different movie rather than the one you bought tickets for, or watching both of them one after the other. But it doesn't seem like people do that kind of thing.

Multiplexes that I've seen around here have a much simpler scheduling system than the ones in Delhi. For instance, this one has twelve screens. They will run twelve movies. No more, no less. One screen for one movie, and a small poster of the movie outside the door. It's a much cleaner approach, and it has a certain amount of appeal to it, though, of course, the PVR folks in India are probably optimising things for themselves.

I think this has turned into a rather long rant on a subject of little or no consequence to anyone but myself. But that's why it goes on my blog. So I will save my musings on the actual movie for another post.

My First Karva Chauth

People who know me well know that I've never actually fasted in my whole life, although some would say that my regular lunch is not very different from what people eat during their Thursday all-fruit, no-cereal fasts. But this was the first time I formally observed a fast with religious strings attached.

My mother-in-law told me to eat something before sunrise, which is not too easy for me. I normally don't feel particularly hungry before eight or nine in the morning. It was not rare for me to rush off to work after having had only a glass of milk and a banana, and a few almonds. But I did eat a little in the morning, at about half past five. I think it was the first time that my husband and I had breakfast together on a workday.

Given my normal eating habits, which emphasize on a substantial breakfast and a medium sized dinner, with a light lunch or maybe just fruit in between, it was no surprise to me that I didn't actually feel like I was fasting until about six in the evening. I guess it helped that I wasn't working. Well, maybe if I had been working, it would have been even easier since my mind would have been fully occupied. Actually, as a matter of fact, it was. I was reading an extremely gripping book.

If I had been in India, this would have been a major festival. There would have been an elaborate puja. Here, the nearest temple I know of is about twenty miles away and even that is a South Indian one, and South Indians don't observe this fast, to the best of understanding. So I did everything the way any software engineer (I may not be employed, but I am still a software engineer by qualification and by nature) would do it. I looked up the katha online and read it to myself in the late afternoon.

It helps that the weather here is cool so you don't feel too thirsty. But yesterday it was even cooler than usual, with the wind blowing fiercely. The lawn was strewn with hundreds of leaves and dozens of pine cones this morning. It would also help that the moon was supposed to rise much earlier, at 19:09 hours, than in Delhi, if it hadn't been for the thick, grey clouds. But, as a friend of mine puts it, you're not eating, but you're surviving on love. That makes it easy. Or so I think. And I'd like to continue thinking so.

Food, Family, Fun

This is an approximate transcript of a conversation I had with my family in India recently.

Me: So what are you up to these days?
My brother: I give mom food ideas. I find new and interesting recipes online and make her try them out.
...
Mom: I tried out this recipe for egg paranthas. They turned out really well. You should try it out too. Oh, wait, but you'll have to knead atta for that.
Me: But, mom, I do that all the time. I make decent chapatis. Every day.
(Stunned silence, arising from the fact that I never did anything of the sort while I was in India and she never expected me to try to learn.)

A couple of months earlier, my husband told my mother that I had made aloo paranthas for him. She knew that he was only kidding. But since then, she gets a bit of a shock each time I tell her I tried out something and it turned out well. She finds it all a little difficult to believe. Truth be told, so do I. But I love surprising my husband with all the dishes that he likes. Or with something new and experimental, to which I sometimes add my own touches.

But you know what I miss? I miss the element of surprise in finding out what is on the table for dinner or for lunch. My rajma tastes a lot like my mom's, but it's not the same thing when you know that it's sitting in a bag in one of the cabinets and you can cook it whenever you want. It's entirely different if you come home from work and smell the aroma coming from the kitchen. Some of my friends from the office lunch group would recall how much I enjoyed the fruit custard in the cafeteria. My eyes would light up at the sight of it. It was the only dessert I would always eat. I would hardly eat anything else on the fruit custard days. It's not the same thing when I have custard powder in my kitchen and make it myself every other week.

Planning your meals yourself is good in that you make the things you like, and you make them the way you like them. But it's not the same kind of fun, is it?

Life With A Non-Geek

I've read any number of articles and stories about women who say that their husbands or boyfriends are too geeky and more interested in their gadgets than their women. Well, in our case, it's kind of the other way around. I'm supposedly the geek in the house. Or so my husband claims. He says that I am a bit of a geek. I think he's slightly technologically challenged.

Come to think of it, he's probably the first guy I've known closely who didn't know any programming. All my male friends from school whom I'm in touch with are software engineers, except perhaps Gullu, who was also an engineer to begin with, and then went on to do an MBA. In my tenure as a developer in India, I met some really geeky guys. Of course, by then, it seemed to be the normal thing for guys to be, since I'd been living with the Chairperson of the Geeks' Hall of Fame for a while. In class eleven and twelve, I'd come across some weird science fiction writing guys who would skip all classes other than computer science and go sit in the computer lab in the school.

And now, suddenly, I'm the one who knows more about setting up a wireless router. I'm the one who reads books on Physics and Mathematics and watches The Big Bang Theory. It's a different feeling. It's sometimes fun, sometimes rather odd. It's a new adventure.