In Memory

My father-in-law passed away yesterday after about ten days in intensive care. He was quite critical, and all of us were preparing ourselves for this for those ten days. What we were not prepared for was him going from walking about and talking almost normally to being unable to breathe on his own in a single day.

It was less than a year ago that my father-in-law told me that his father-in-law had passed away. I lost my grandfather a few months later. I thought we were at the age when we would have to deal with the loss of grandparents.

I saw my husband off yesterday as he took a flight to India. I would give anything to be with him right now. I cannot travel internationally right now because of visa hassles. I have been trying my level best to console and comfort him over the last few days but I hate that I can't do all that when he really needs me to. Today was the first day in a long time when I ate all three meals by myself. I'm not too happy about that either.

When I was a kid, I had all four grandparents. My maternal grandmother was paralyzed, wheelchair ridden and unable to speak intelligibly, but she still had a presence that could not be denied or ignored. We lost her when I was only eight, and then my maternal grandfather went to be with her only a few months later. But I still have memories of all four grandparents. I can visualize their faces. I can hear their voices in my head. In the case of my other grandmother, I can hear still her voice on the phone. I am sad at the thought that any kids I will have will never get to see and know their other grandfather. As a matter of fact, even I didn't really get to know him all that well, in the limited time we spent together and the weekly phone conversations we had.

Life has its way of reminding us, every so often, that we cannot take anything for granted and that our time with our loved ones is limited and we should do what we can to make the best of it. My heart goes out to my mother-in-law in this moment of sorrow.

Perspective

For lack of a better title, I put what I put in the title box. This is about my perspective on my little brother's engagement, who, I am beginning to see, is not so little any more.

I was a little taken by surprise when my mother first told me that my brother was getting engaged in June and then they would set a date for the wedding. The first thought that came to my mind was, isn't he too young? I know he's financially stable now and doing pretty well for himself, but, you know, even though I am only a little over two years older than he is, he has always been the little one. When we argued and fought, my mom always told me that I ought to know better since I was the older one. I guess that's true for pretty much every mom. Every Indian mom, at least. My husband had the same sort of experience with his not-so-little-any-more brother.

When I had had a chance to think about it, after they had set a date for the wedding, I calculated that he would be a few months older on his wedding day than I was on mine. Which is, I'll admit now, not too young to get married, although at the time I was constantly telling my family that I wasn't quite ready yet. It's about the right time and the right age. But of course, what is more important is finding the right person. And that piece of the puzzle is in place.

In Memory

My paternal grandfather was the one grandparent of all four whom I was the most attached to. I did spend a lot of time with my other grandfather too, until he passed away back in 1991, but somehow never developed the kind of attachment, the kind of fondness, the same sort of relationship.

My grandfather took my brother and me out to the neighbourhood park in the evenings. Sometimes it was my grandmother who did that, sometimes it was both of them. He went with us to the PTA meetings at school when my dad could not take time off from work. My mom could hardly ever make it to those meetings because she was a schoolteacher herself and often had a PTA meeting at her own school on the same days.

My grandfather would often secretly give us extra pocket money without telling my grandmother. He would play with us inside and outside the house to the extent that he could. He was a talented athlete in his day, but weighed down by arthritis in all the years that I knew him. He would sit in the veranda of the house, sipping his tea, reading his paper, and talking to us in the mornings before school.

In recent years, he had been in and out of hospital for serious health issues often enough for us to be kind of mentally prepared for the impending eventuality. But you never know how well prepared you are until it actually happens. It hasn't really sunk in for me, even though it has been four days now. Because I'm so far away from my family. I haven't seen what the house is like without him. I haven't attended a family gathering when he was not there. I haven't really had a chance to say goodbye.

Memories

When I was coming from India to the States with my then new husband, some of my friends from my workplace came to the airport to see me off. It was there that Aman gave me a CD of videos and pictures of my farewell from that job, which had happened a few weeks earlier.

That day, at the airport, they had a bunch of technical difficulties and their X-ray scanners were replaced by staff members manually checking every passenger's carry-on baggage. After I got home and unpacked over the course of the next few days while recovering from jet lag (Actually, I don't think I was ever really jet lagged. But I was kind of in a trance from weeks of sleep deprivation during the wedding planning, the actual wedding, and everything that needed to be done in the meagre, and now extremely blurry, ten days between the wedding and the flight to the States.) and adjusting to a whole new environment, I never saw that CD and thought I had lost it in all the commotion at the airport.

Then, a few days ago, I was cleaning out some stuff and I found it. I'm not sure where it was for the last fifteen months or so, but it was obviously somewhere in the house.

So, on Sunday, my husband and I watched the videos which showed me laughing and talking with my friends and then colleagues, accepting gifts from them, singing and laughing with them and threatening to beat them up at the slightest provocation.

My husband tells me that I was very lucky to find a group of friends like that in my workplace. The work culture here is drastically different, of course, but he never experienced that sort of thing in India either. It's a different industry, and perhaps that makes things different.

I had some really beautiful times at my old job. The team I worked with has since undergone a whole lot of changes, including reorganizations, new hires, and people leaving the company for bigger and better things. And, luckily for me, I left at a time when they were just reorganizing things in a big way. So I remember things for the way they always were - totally fabulous. I would never have wanted to work for a different boss or with a different set of coworkers after being in that setting. I would not trade the teammates who routinely made fun of me and passed all sorts of comments about me for anything else. Because they made the job worth doing.

Friends, Marriage and Other Such Things

A few of my friends from college (and I) keep in touch with each other through a regular exchange of e-mail messages. That's been a significant mode of communication for a while now. It helps get things across to everyone at the same time.

When we started out, none of us were formally engaged or married. In the last twelve months, five out of the six of us have taken the pheras and the sixth is now about to exchange rings. What struck me as interesting is that everyone now signs their e-mails with a "Avantika & Mrinal" (both fictitious names) type of sign-off, rather than just their own name. The thing is, it's not just about the signature, is it? It's about just about everything under the sun. What you do, what you eat, when you sleep, when you get up, where you go, where you don't go, what you buy, what you don't buy... just about every decision is now made together. Sometimes that makes the decision easier, sometimes that makes it more difficult. Sometimes it makes life more interesting, sometimes it makes it duller. Either way, it is what constitutes the essence of marriage. Togetherness. Doing things together. Having dinner together. Going out together on weekends. Being together. That's what it's all about.

Random Musings on 2009

Those who know me personally or through my blog will probably agree with me if I say that it would be an understatement to say that this has been an eventful year for me. Getting married, moving to a different country, quitting my job, learning to cook, learning to do a lot of things for myself. This has also been an almost equally eventful year for a number of close friends who got married or engaged, quit work to get another degree and/or moved to a different city or country.

Five things I did this year that I didn't think I would do quite so soon:

1. Got married
2. Moved to the States
3. Learnt to cook for myself
4. Quit my job
5. Spent time pursuing my real interests - reading and writing

Eight movies I watched this year (I watched them this year, some of them are older ones) that I liked a lot more than I expected to:

1. Barah Aana
2. Mumbai Meri Jaan
3. Welcome To Sajjanpur
4. Aagey Se Right (I'm gradually becoming a big fan of Shreyas Talpade.)
5. He's Just Not That Into You
6. Dr Seuss' Horton Hears A Who!
7. Oh, My God
8. Avatar

Twenty favourite Bollywood songs from 2009 (roughly in chronological order):

1. Rehna Tu - Delhi 6
2. Dil Gira Dafatan - Delhi 6
3. Genda Phool - Delhi 6
4. Paayaliya - Dev D
5. Emosanal Attyachaar - Dev D
6. Ranaji - Gulaal
7. Tune Jo Na Kaha - New York
8. Khudaya Ve - Luck
9. Ajj Din Chadeya - Love Aaj Kal
10. Chor Bazaari - Love Aaj Kal
11. Ore Sawariya - Aladin
12. Sapne Bhaye Hain - Dekh Bhai Dekh
13. Pehli Baar Mohobbat - Kaminey
14. Rabba - Main Aur Mrs Khanna
15. Meherbaan - Ada (I'm not sure if this counts as a song from 2009, but anyway)
16. Iktara - Wake Up Sid
17. Tu Jaane Na - Ajab Prem Ki Gazab Kahani
18. Mere Paa - Paa
19. All Izz Well - 3 Idiots (and all the other tracks from the movie too)
20. Gadbadi Hadbadi - Rocket Singh

Okay, this was a fairly random post. But life is just so - fairly random. Happy New Year everyone!

White Christmas

When we were in primary school, we would always decorate the classrooms for Christmas and deck up small bushes to look like Christmas trees, using cotton to give them a snowy look. This was the first time I saw the real thing. Real conifers with real snow. Baubles, tinsel, and an array of ornaments. My aunt actually likes collecting bird ornaments. She has a separate, smaller tree where she puts up ornaments in the shapes of parrots, pheasants and peacocks. I helped her find a little bird's nest to add to the collection this year.

The weather was rather kind to us on our trip to my uncle's place. It was only cloudy on Friday when we were going there, and bright and sunny on Sunday when we were coming back. Saturday, on the other hand, was a dreary day of non stop rain which melted out all the snow.

It was a great Christmas with some nice family time and great food. And making use of the after Christmas sales. Good times.

Tourist Season

Birds fly south for the winter. Bhatti flies north for the winter.

I mean, this is really not the time that someone would normally want to be touring Boston. Yesterday's high was 27 F (that's -3 C) and that's a fairly accurate representation of the weather patterns over the last few weeks. And we were out touring Boston and Cambridge in the lovely weather. We happened to go down to the banks of the Charles river and saw that even the river was frozen over. I mean, I know lakes and ponds do that, and I've been looking at them the last few days. They have a layer of ice all over them and snow accumulation on top of the ice. So you can't exactly tell that there's water underneath instead of land unless you've seen it in the summer. But I thought the river would be different because it flows. Not really, as it turns out.

Anyway, too much rambling about the weather. It was fun to see an old friend after a long while. It was fun to see bits and pieces of the city I haven't seen before. I'm hoping he will write a post on his own blog about his adventures and misadventures here in the Boston area some time in the near future.

With Best Wishes

This is for all those friends of mine who are getting married this season. I have seven wedding invitations and counting for the next two weeks, and I am not going to be able to attend any of them. Because they are all in India. And, in case you didn’t know, I am not.

I remember, when we went to Tanu’s place for her mehendi function in February this year, we knew that Kavita and Anuradha were getting married within a week of each other in November. Ruchi mentioned that we would then be able to apply mehendi only once for the two weddings. Nobody knew then that Ruchi would be the one to get married first!

Ruchi’s been a close friend for nine years now, being classmates in college, in the postgraduate years, and also, briefly, a colleague. We’ve been out together to watch movies that nobody else wanted to see, and shop when nobody else wanted to shop. Hers is one wedding I never would have liked to miss.

Kavita, Ruchi and I had some wonderful times together because we lived close to each other’s houses and travelled together by bus in our college days. We talked of everything under the sun on those journeys. On a rare occasion when our bus was practically empty, we passed the time in a traffic jam by playing antakshari and singing at the top of our voices, unworried about the few but existent co-passengers staring at us. The company of friends makes even the DTC buses you travel by and the subway you use to cross the road, memorable, doesn’t it?

And Aman, who, as most of my former colleagues are only too familiar with, has been like an elder brother to me. Teasing me, pulling my leg, and also watching out for me and being protective.

This is for all of you, Ruchi, Kavita, Aman, Anuradha, Pavitra, Surbhi and Manoj. Don’t let the geographic distance fool you. My heartfelt wishes are with all you people. On your special day and forever after.

Foliage and Flora

When I was a kid, my mother had a collection of about two hundred potted plants. She would spend quite a lot of time with them, adding fertilizer, trimming them, planting new lily bulbs. But watering them was my job. For as long back as I can remember. It was my own special time, when I would be out in the courtyard, all alone, spraying water on the plants and also on the warm cement floor, cooling off in the summer evenings.

My mother had a special affection for plants with colored leaves. Purple leaves, red leaves, multicolored leaves. She still does. She says she would love to see an autumn like what I’m getting to see this year.

We had to give up those plants when we moved into our own apartment, because there was no room for them in our single, tiny balcony. They went to the village with my grandmother, and wilted away soon afterwards because her health did not allow her to take good care of them.

But they still live on in my memories. That garden has always been and will always be a part of my childhood memories. It will always be the place where we took pictures of my brother and me when he was just starting primary school, and had put on his new uniform for the first time. The place where we sprayed each other with the watering hose. The place where we played with kittens that the alley cat had in my mother’s closet. Where we learnt to ride our tricycles. Where we were children.

Memory Lane

It's interesting how, sometimes, just listening to a song or watching a movie again can take you into a world of memories. I was exploring YouTube and trying to seek out songs that I haven't heard in a while. I happened to land upon Zehreeley and it reminded me of Bhatti's hilarious rendition of the song on our Manali trip and then again at his farewell from our team.

Then I landed upon Morni Baaga Ma from Lamhe. This is the first Hindi movie I remember watching end to end multiple times and enjoying. There weren't too many children's films in Hindi that held me interest at that time. Come to think of it, there aren't many of them now either, are there?

So anyway, this song takes me back to the time I was ten years old and, when I didn't have much homework, enjoyed long, carefree afternoons by myself, because my mom and my brother would always nap in the afternoons and my dad would be at work. Well, I do still enjoy my afternoons by myself, but life isn't quite so carefree any more, is it?

When I hear a song from a movie I watched with some friends, it always reminds me of the good times I had with those friends. Of how some of them got annoyed when I sang along with the songs. How some annoyed me by laughing too much or just making too much hullabaloo for no apparent reason. Good times, good memories.

Paper Or Plastic?

I was just thinking about the couple of occasions when I went shopping in India and the store's credit card machine refused to work because of network issues or something of the sort. On one occasion, we took Akash shopping for a birthday gift and we had at least five credit and debit cards between us, but not enough cash. The birthday boy was the only one carrying cash, and he had to pay for it himself.

I just asked my husband what he thought would happen if that happened here. Well, the store would be empty in just a few minutes. People here don't carry more than ten or twenty dollars in cash. They pay for everything with their credit cards. They'd go off to the next nearest store to buy whatever it was that they needed.

So I was slightly surprised when the checkout counter guy at a particular grocery store asked, "Paper or plastic?" Now this was not our regular grocery store, so I wasn't too sure about anything. Turns out, he meant to ask if we wanted paper bags or plastic bags to take our stuff home in!

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.

On Teacher's Day

Okay, I know this post got a little delayed but, well, these days, my weekends are reserved for my husband and my household chores.

I was just thinking about some of the teachers I've had. I wrote a post about my college lecturers and professors a while age and there's not much I want to add about them. But there are some other people I want to talk about.

My mother. She taught me to read, got me into the habit of reading on an almost daily basis. I was a bit of a brat who refused to go to school and she would patiently take me to school and wait around and make sure I was okay.

My grandmother. I don't think I would have been able to scrape through my Hindi and Sanskrit exams if it wasn't for her. Or be good at Mathematics. She helped me out with all the subjects that she was capable of teaching, and she did it every day after school.

My class eight Mathematics teacher, Mrs Renuka Mahani. She was the one who ignited the spark in me that took me all the way to an undergraduate degree in Mathematics. She had her own ways of teaching, different from the rest of the teachers I'd come across. She got all her ideas through, and made me want to study.

My class eight English teacher, Mrs Sonia Chhabra. She did the same things with English Literature. We had our own English textbooks, which Mr Lewis compiled, but she taught them in a way that I liked. I still remember her reciting Mark Antony's speech to us and getting us all excited about Sherlock Holmes mysteries. It was lovely.

There are actually others I may want to write about as well, but I will save them for a future post.

Birthday 2005

I was just watching Bunty Aur Babli on DVD today and it reminded me of the time I first watched it - on my birthday in 2005. It was the time when my classmates and I were readying ourselves for our campus placements and I was hassled with the task of balancing my duties as placement coordinator with my own study time. In the middle of all that, I had a birthday and I told everyone that I would take the whole day off. I would not study, I would not check the e-mail accounts where we got mail from recruiters and potential recruiters. I went out for a movie with my friend Aditi, who was the only one in town among all the friends from school I am still in touch with.

So we decided to go to PVR Vikaspuri (our then favourite hangout) for a movie. Now when I was at the ticket counter, I told the guy that I wanted two tickets for the current show. Now I thought that he'd understand I wanted tickets for the show that was to begin in an hour and a half. But he gave me tickets for a show that had already begun half an hour ago. Now I didn't check the tickets. And I didn't give them to Aditi. (Those who know her don't do that. Long story. Separate post.)

We thought we had an hour and a half, and we could grab a bite at McDonald's. We took our own sweet time doing just that, and it was only after we'd finished that I checked the tickets and realised what had happened. We went back to the box office to receive a standard "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do." They suggested that we go in and catch whatever was left of the movie. We asked to speak to the manager but they wouldn't let us. Now keep in mind that this came at a time when I had not yet started working and Aditi was between jobs, so a couple of hundred bucks were a big deal. We persisted, and eventually they gave in and let us speak to the manager. My friend, I learnt that day, has a way with people. She convinced the manager that what was going on was unjust and we should be allowed to see the next show. He did. Thankfully, it was a weekday afternoon and the hall was not too full. The guy changed our tickets by hand and signed them. By then, we had been around the entire complex, asking the entire staff if they knew where we could find the manager. So the guards and ushers all knew the story.

But do you know what we gained in all this? The early morning shows were fifty bucks cheaper than the others. The one we originally bought tickets for fell into that category, and the other one didn't. I wished I had chosen to treat more people that day, as did some others.

I was receiving calls from friends all day long. In between, I also got a call or two from people who did not know that it was my birthday and insisted that I should act like their placement coordinator. But the best one was a call I got at about half past eight in the evening. This is an old friend of mine who has known me for, like, forever. He was in another city, and we talked about once in a couple of months. The conversation went something like this:

"So, what are you doing?"
"Nothing much. Went out with Aditi in the afternoon for a movie. Been relaxing since I got back home."
"Oh. I thought you were really busy preparing for your placement."
"I am."
"So how come you decided to take the day off?"
"Excuse me, do you know what the date is?"
"The date? Oh, oh no, I forgot!"

I still burst out laughing each time I think about it.

I've had a bunch of very special birthdays. Maybe I can do a series of posts on them.

Stuff I Like About Having My Mother-in-law Around

• I don't have to eat my own cooking all the time. (No, it's not bad at all. But it does get boring.)
• On days when I don't feel like going to the gym and just want to go downstairs for a walk, I have company.
• I get to hear all kinds of stories about my husband's childhood.
• I get to learn new tips and tricks to use in the kitchen.
• I have someone to talk to in the daytime.

Reminiscence

This time, when I was in New York, I met an old friend of mine from college. Kavita and I used to live at about a fifteen minute walk from each other's place. We have travelled together in DTC buses, hopping on and off the buses, waiting for indiscriminately long durations, just so we could use our bus pass, instead of taking a blue line bus where we'd need to buy a ticket.

And one fine day, I found myself taking a six lane interstate highway in a foreign land (with a very impressive highway system, by the way). It's definitely been a long journey. A journey that has seen us through different phases of life - post graduate degrees, jobs, marriage. Well, in my case. Kavita is soon to be married as well. I've gone from hopping on DTC buses to the Delhi metro to using the office bus (during my internship) to chartered buses to buying my own car to this. I've driven a Chevrolet and our Toyota Corolla, after my beloved Hyundai Santro.

Life changes so fast sometimes. So unexpectedly. Can you ever tell what's going to happen next?

Stereotypes

I was talking to an old friend today and I told him that my husband's parents were coming over next week to stay with us for a while. He was excited about the fact that it would give me an opportunity to squabble with my mother-in-law.

I remember my grandmother telling me, just before my wedding, that, just because they are my in-laws and the media has given a certain image to mothers-in-law, I don't have to dislike them.

We build all these stereotypes in our minds about a lot of things. We think that things work a certain way. Well, even if that is the rule, there are always exceptions to the rule. My mother-in-law has such a calm temperament, I cannot imagine her arguing even with an aggressive person like me. Even I have mellowed down a little lately, by the way.

Life is full of random oddities. The good guys don't always win. Girls don't always like pink. And daughters-in-law don't always detest their mothers-in-law. I quite like mine.

Musings For Today

Some of my friends would recall how, a little over a year ago, when I started my blog, I used to write only on weekends. Gradually I moved on to writing a post a day, seven days a week. And now the tide has turned in the other direction. I write only on weekdays. Because weekends are for spending time with my husband. This blog has become more of an account of whatever has been going on in my life, rather than a record of thoughts. But I don't think anybody minds. I think most of my friends are quite happy that I keep them updated on the latest happenings in my life. Those who have the patience to read all those long-winded posts, that is!

There are very few things I am missing about my life in India. Being able to drive around on my own is one. There are still a few small issues that should be resolved in a week or so and I should be able to get my learner's permit, for starters. Regular access to things like bhelpuri is another. We went to a small carnival last evening, and that's when I discovered that street food in this country comprises of candied apples (which are really yummy, by the way), popcorn and nacho chips. I mean, you do get all the ingredients for bhelpuri or golgappe at Indian stores, but it's not the same as eating that stuff standing out on the street, now, is it?

In spite of the miles, I feel pretty well-connected to my family and friends. It's pretty easy and economical to talk to them all the time, you know. And there's always e-mail, orkut, facebook, and, of course, blogs.

On the other hand, there will certainly be some adjustment problems when I go back to India. For one, I have always been pretty intolerant to heat. I have become even more so now. And who knows what will happen after one snowy winter here. I have become used to organised traffic that almost always obeys the rules. This will be all the more so after I start driving. Where we live, it rains about once every three days. Life and traffic continues smoothly, as it also does when it snows, I have been made to understand. In Delhi and Noida, I have experienced insane traffic jams almost every time it rains slightly heavily, as, I'm sure, have most of us.

Well, you know, life in every part of the world has its own good side and its own flip side. One thing's for sure - you have to experience it for yourself in order to fully understand both sides. Every such experience leaves you enriched, wiser, more mature, and hopefully, more adaptable and open minded.