Thoughts

I realize I have been away from this blog for way too long this time, and I have also been even less communicative than usual with a lot of people. I have just had a lot going on that has not been easy for me over the last few months. It is not something I would like to talk about on a public blog at this point of time. I am still not in a very happy place, but I believe that time can and will heal most wounds and things will get better. But today I am just feeling very nostalgic for my last workplace, where I had a boss who was genuinely concerned for the well being of his employees, and coworkers whom I could actually be friends with.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

So there was an earthquake centered in Virginia this afternoon. The epicentre was less than 400 miles from Boston, and CNN reports that tremors were felt even across international boundaries in Toronto. I felt nothing. I had gone out for a short walk by the waterfront, as I do on most afternoons that aren't rainy, overly windy, snowy, or overly cold (and there are not a whole lot of those in Boston). When I was walking back to the office, I saw people gathered on the streets. At first I thought they were gathered around the Children's Museum, and that there was probably some special event going on over there. Then I noticed that not a lot of them were accompanied by children. And then I saw that there were people in the streets all the way to the office. Hmm... maybe they have decided to gather around and protest in order to impeach Obama. That's the first thought that came to my mind. A fairly reasonable one for someone who has been following both American and Indian news and reading bumper stickers. But then I noticed that most of these people were just checking their phones or talking on the phones and did not really look predisposed for a protest.

I ran into one of my colleagues as I turned around the corner towards my office, and he asked me, "Were you scared?"
"Huh? What just happened in here?"
And then he told me that there had been an earthquake a few minutes ago, and the security staff had evacuated the building and we were not allowed to go back in until they were finished "checking the architecture of the building."
"Huh?"
This particular colleague hadn't felt anything either, since he had been on the ground as well. But those up on the fourth floor where I usually spend my weekdays had felt quite a shake and had had quite a scare.

Now I take only my phone and my office key card with me on my walks. I leave my wallet behind to avoid giving myself an opportunity to give in to the lure of the aromas of bakeries and ice cream stands. (On a side note, there is a pretty well known bakery one block away from my office which sometimes smells like a cinnamon explosion when I walk past it.) I saw some of my colleagues, who usually leave the office around four, standing outside the office with their bags packed up and ready to take home in case the building inspection took too long. I was a little concerned about how I would kill time if it actually did take that long. I could not go home without my train pass or any money, and I could not read my book. Oh well, we'll see.

Much productivity was lost as many buildings were evacuated throughout the political and financial capitals of the country this afternoon, but I was rather surprised later, when I realized that all of the office buildings in downtown Boston had been evacuated at the same time as each other, and yet the sidewalk was not so crowded that you had to jostle through the crowd to walk across it. There was not an overwhelming amount of noise, no pushing other people around, no panic. I can't help thinking about what it would have been like if this had happened in Delhi (or even if I had been in New York this afternoon). What if all the buildings in Connaught Place were evacuated at the same time? Would I be able to walk around without getting squashed or hurt or maybe having the straps on my handbag torn off?

This is one of the things I like about Boston. It is a city, but not a huge or overly populated city like New York or Delhi where there are people and more people everywhere you look. Just enough people to make if feel like a city and set it apart from the quieter suburbs. I was surprised an confused by the fact that all the buildings were evacuated, but there was not enough surprise and confusion on the streets to impede pedestrian or vehicular traffic. And everything was back to normal in less than half an hour, much to my relief.

The Simpler Things in Life

After being addicted to e-mail, cell phones, blogger and the like for years, I have been trying to teach myself to take it easy and slow down. I barely check e-mail on weekends and in the evening after work these days. It's much nicer to just relax, listen to some music or settle down with a good book or cook something or maybe just enjoy a meal at leisure. I no longer carry my phone everywhere I go. Unless I am driving by myself, in which case I have to be prepared in case I have car trouble (which, thankfully, has not happened to me while driving alone). If I am out in the neighbourhood taking a walk, I don't need a phone. Maybe an iPod, but not necessarily. I sometimes like to walk at a leisurely pace and see which flowers are blooming around the neighbourhood and how many of them I can name. Or, if I am walking near my office at lunch time, I just visit the waterfront and watch the seagulls and the little kids (I work very close to the Boston Children's Museum. There are always a lot of kids around. At least in good weather, which is a prerequisite for me taking a walk outdoors.) as they play around.


And you know what? It may sound like a cliche, but it feels really good to slow down and smell the roses.

An Observation

A few days ago, we were at a food court in a mall and we chose to get some Chicken Teriyaki at a Japanese place. There was a Chinese (or Japanese, Korean, Thai or Vietnamese - I'm afraid I cannot tell them apart) family at the table next to ours eating naan with dal and paneer. I found that pretty interesting. A few days later, on the train, I was reading a random book by an American author whom I had never heard of (but I am enjoying her book so far). The American lady sitting across the aisle from me was reading The God of Small Things (which, I admit, I don't remember much of, but was the only book that, as soon as I finished it, made me think, "I would love to read this again." I haven't actually done that.).

This country has its good and its evil, like any other country, but one thing I like about it is that you can find people of various different cultures and nationalities who enrich the culture with their own contributions and are also, often, willing to take some things from other cultures and adapt it into their lifestyle.

Life in the Suburbs

I was never able to sleep on a moving vehicle while I was in India. Not on a bus, train, metro rail, car, or even a smooth flight on a Sahara Airlines plane, or even the Continental Airlines plane on which I flew to the States, where you couldn't really tell you were sitting in something that was moving. But now, I take a good nap on the local train either in the morning or in the evening or both, depending on how tired I am, at least once or twice a week. It's not a particularly comfortable train, though it is comfortable enough. I don't know if it has to do with the fact that I am getting older and feel the need to rest more. But it definitely has to do with the fact that I feel safe. I can fall asleep with my wallet on my lap, which is where I usually leave it after I take it out to retrieve my rail pass. I'll often have a book and/or an iPod on my lap or in my hands, and nobody will touch it even if I am sound asleep and have to set an alarm on my phone to make sure I don't miss my station.

When my office first decided to move to Boston from the suburban location (which was less than twenty minutes away from my house), I wasn't so sure about how I would respond to the long commute, which is about as long as it used to be when I was in Delhi and travelling to Noida for work. But the good part about it is that there is a mostly reliable train service to get into the city. It lets me endure a long commute since I do not have to put up with the stress of driving or sitting in traffic with someone else driving. It gives me a chance to read a lot of the books I have long wanted to read but never got around to, not because I didn't have the time, but because there were so many other things I could do at home - cook, eat, walk around, or just watch TV, that the reading was often sidelined.

So these days, I am a city mouse by day and a country mouse by evening. During the day, I am in a place where there are lots of people and cars (though a lot less than Delhi or New York City) and there are restaurants and stores of all sorts all over the place. I sometimes go out for a walk after lunch and enjoy the bustling city. In the evening, I take a quiet walk around a quiet neighbourhood where I sometimes don't see anybody pass by at all. Sometimes I do see a car or someone else walking or jogging, but not necessarily. I like the peace and quiet of the outdoors and the feel of the indoors when I come back in to cook something for dinner. I like the wide open spaces in the neighbourhood that I do not see in the city. There are wide open fields all over the place that sometimes seem to stretch out indefinitely. I like the fact that the only sounds I can usually hear are birds and maybe a neighbor's dog. And the ticking of a wall clock. If I am at home by myself and not watching TV, that is. It's kind of the best of both worlds - being surrounded by lively crowds during the day, and getting the peace and quiet you need in the evening.

Of Crushes and Dreams

Remember when you were a teenager and had a crush on the cute guy (or girl) and your world was suddenly centered around that one person? Remember how you thought that it was the truest of true love and that nothing would ever make that love wane? But then, slowly but surely, it did wane. The next time you had a crush on someone, you would think that the last one was just a silly crush, but this time, it's for real.

I was just thinking about the number of times I thought that way. I cannot clearly remember the faces of most of those guys. There were a few on whom I didn't just have a crush, but felt something stronger based on a solid foundation of friendship, and those are the only ones I really remember. But, at that time, it was very hard to say which ones I would remember and which ones I would think back to and laugh at how silly it all seems now.

(Don't get me wrong, I'm happily married, but I do still remember some very good friends for whom I once had feelings. Because those are memories of experiences that have been happy and sad and confusing and have taught me a little bit more about myself and what I actually need in the person I eventually end up with. They all got me one step closer to being able to choose the right kind of guy to settle down with.)

Now think about other kinds of dreams that you had or still have. Maybe you dreamed of being on TV. Flying a plane. Opening your own restaurant. Some of that stuff seems silly now, and some of it, you had to give up because you weren't quite as good at it as you first thought you were. Some of it, you may still be thinking about and may not be completely sure yet. But, once again, you can't quite tell when you're dreaming a dream if it's the one that's quite right for you or if it's one that you'll be laughing to yourself about a few months later. How do you tell them apart?

The only way to be able to tell is to actually go ahead and give it a serious shot. Not once, not twice, but as many times as it takes for you to be completely convinced. This way or that. If this is what you're looking for or if it's just a passing fling. That's the only way to actually find your calling, to be where your heart is.

Winter Blues

I remember the time when I went to Manali with my friends from the office about two years ago. There was a day of travelling to Solang Valley in rain and snow. It was a lot of fun, but it was certainly really cold. Later that evening, I had a little bit of rum to warm myself up.

It's been a crazy winter which makes me think of that rum just about every other day. I arrive at work chilled to the bone, although I've been out in the open only for about ten minutes - that's how long it takes me to walk from the train station to the office. But a significant portion of those ten minutes is spent in an area that's not shielded by buildings on either side. It is actually right where the Charles river meets the sea. So it's open to sea breeze. Breeze is actually a very mild term for winds gusting up to 40mph on an average day, and even 80 mph on a bad day. I have seen the river freeze over in other areas, but even in mid-January, this part wasn't frozen and I figured it wouldn't freeze because it was so close to the sea. But it did. It froze, then thawed, then froze again, and thawed again. The parts of the river farther from the sea, however, stay frozen and accumulate snow and you cannot tell where the river bank ends and the river begins.

I grew up in a place where daytime temperatures hardly ever, if at all, went below 10 C. Out here, if the temperature begins to approach that figure, the weather service announces that we're going to have "mild" weather and people ditch their jackets. Even I felt like doing that this evening, but discovered that it was more comfortable to wear the jacket without zipping up the front than it was to carry it. I actually saw a guy standing right next to the river wearing shorts.

Every four or five days for the last six or so weeks, the weather service has issued a winter storm warning and predicted eighteen or so inches of snow in our area. Pretty accurate predictions most of the time. At one point, I was sure that if we had a little bit more snow, I wouldn't be able to see out of my windows. The snow on the ground had come just a little higher than the window sill and the icicles hanging from the roof had come down as low as the window sill.

But it's not the crazy amounts of snow that really bothers me, though this winter has seen really crazy amounts of snow even by New England standards and people who have lived here a long time are also rather tired of it now. What I find difficult to get used to is the variation in temperature we see from day to day. One day, we have a high of 23 F. The next day, we have a low of 33 F. And the third day is a high of 17. It's crazy. You have to check the weather just about every day to really know how many layers to wear.

But I am relieved to see almost two weeks pass by without any major snowfall, and quite some snow melting. The sidewalks in the city are almost completely clear now. Our driveway is almost dry, though there is still over a foot of snow in the yard. A foot of highly compressed, very heavy snow. But it's slowly melting. And spring is on its way. Fingers crossed.

Of Commutes and Commuting

It has been a long while since I used public transport for my daily commute. Now, when my office moved away from the suburbs into the heart of the city, I am doing just that after almost five years. I am no longer used to it and I worry about forgetting something on the train. I am also not extremely pleased with the idea of being tied down by the train schedule. But it beat driving on the expressway during peak commuting hours any day. Plus, when I settle down with a good book on my way back, I find that I am already quite relaxed by the time I get home. On the other hand, when I was sitting in traffic, sometimes for over two hours, during my commute from work in Delhi, I would get home exhausted. There is no way I could have found the energy to cook dinner in the evening after that kind of thing.

But here's what I totally dislike about this commute. That I have to do it alone. In Delhi, I always had friends living close by whom I could carpool with. People I could talk to on the way. Or maybe not talk (I'm not much of a talker, and there were days when I didn't feel like it at all.), but just look at the familiar, friendly faces. I miss some of those people a lot. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Big City Bustle

The week before last, I was travelling to see my mamaji's family for Thanksgiving. I took a bus from Boston to New York and another from New York to Allentown. I was in New York City for about half an hour on both days, going over there and coming back.

It's been a while since I've been into a big city like that. And at a bus terminal, no less. There are just so many people everywhere. People, buses, trains, lots of available options for public transport including the subway - we don't have any of that in the suburbs. It reminds me of Delhi. Delhi is a place where you will find people from all over the country, trying to achieve something or the other that they believe they can achieve by being in the city. New York is just so, except that it attracts people from all over the world.

My bus into New York, against all odds, seemed to be entering the city about half an hour early. I looked out of the window and kind of thought we were nearly there, but I didn't really believe it. (Thanksgiving is a time when everyone travels to see their families, so there's a lot of traffic. Plus, there's the big Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City, because of which there are a lot of street closures. I'd read that traffic is rather crazy in or near the city because of all that. But it wasn't quite as crazy as I'd thought, though the bus terminal was quite crowded.) But then I saw a billboard. McDonald's McCafe coffee, $1.99 for a small cup. That coffee is $1 for any size out here. Then I knew I was in the city, because that's the kind of price you'd find only in a place like New York.

There's just something about a city like that which draws me to it. It's the kind of place I've lived in for the first almost twenty seven years of my life. I am big fan of the wide open spaces and the green leaves that we see around here where we live, but a city like that is just something else.

Thoughts For Today

Happy Diwali, people. Belated for those of you in India. Here it's still the fifth of November.

I know I've been away for too long when I start typing blo... and Internet Explorer no longer shows blogger.com in drop-down list. I don't think that's ever happened before.

Life's been keeping me busy. I come home from work and it's time to get down to other kinds of work. Which is, on most days, either cooking or exercise or both.

So anyway, I was reading this article on CNN news today about how modern brides are coming around to wearing colors other than white on their wedding days. Ivory is quite popular, but the article featured someone who wore lime green and blue.

This particular woman said that a wedding day, being as significant as it is, is a day to look your best and hence you should wear the colors that best complement your skin tone. I was thinking back to the time I was in the CTC Plaza picking my wedding lehenga. I picked the pink that I totally love. Pink with silver sequins and trims. Everyone who knows me knows I love that pink. I picked it because my mom and I both thought it complemented my skin tone beautifully. She and I don't agree on anything all that easily.

What that led me to think was, isn't it slightly strange that in India, where people are so much more reluctant to let go of traditional beliefs and rituals, especially when it comes to important occasions like weddings, we have been so much more flexible about which colors a bride can wear for her wedding in recent times? In my mother's day, it was usually restricted to red or pink. With gold trims. But these days we have all kinds of colors, ranging from the traditional reds and pinks to the less traditional baby pink, green, orange, purple, gold, silver-grey, and various combinations of these. I haven't seen anyone wear blue, but I'm sure people wear that too. Just a random thought that came to my mind.

Out in the Open

In Delhi, I used to work out in the gym because, more often than not, it was too hot and too dusty to go outside. Here, I like going out in the open for a walk or a jog or, usually, a combination of the two. It's a lovely 64 F (18 C) outside. But it's been raining almost non stop for five days now.

Remember the bit in Pyaar Ke Side Effects where Mallika and Rahul Bose run into each other at the mall and he tells her that he came there for a walk, because in Mumbai there's more room for walking about in malls than in parks? It's also true for Delhi, I think. I used to go out to malls on weekends all the time. But it's certainly not true for suburban Massachusetts. I have a beautiful water reservoir (like a lake, not like a tank) about a mile away from here and I love taking a walk along its banks. But there is such a thing as too much rain.

Bloodsuckers

We’ve had a major bed bug infestation in our apartment. I'd never really heard too much about this kind of thing, because it's not very common in India. They can't survive above 45 C and they don't like dusty places. Ha. You would think you were less likely to have bugs if your apartment was clean.

Apparently these little vampires spread over from neighboring apartments - that's one of the many ways in which they spread - and they reproduce so fast you really can't imagine it. A female can lays about 5 eggs a day. Plus, they can live for 18 months without food.

The building management has had the exterminators come in and treat the apartment twice and we did it once ourselves. But it doesn't really help too much. Strong pesticides like DDT are illegal here. The others don't really kill them, because they can go and hide in the neighbors’ apartment and then come back once the pesticide wears off. Now you have an infested apartment and infested neighboring apartments. There’s also some rubbing alcohol that can be sprayed on them, but you have to spray it on the bug to kill it. It’s just not humanly possible to spray every single bug, given the rate at which they multiply.

They can nest in anything wooden, paper, or fabric. Now we're going to move and discard everything that might be infected and cannot be treated. Clothes can be treated by running them in the dryer on high heat. But that's about all. Clothes, kitchen utensils. That’s it. We can't take anything else with us. We have to part with almost brand new furniture that we spent thousands of dollars on. Plus we have to part with bed linen, some of which was a gift, and stuffed toys, greeting cards, picture frames - just about everything of sentimental value. We’re not even sure how safe it is going to be if we take our passports, academic certificates and other papers with us, but that is a risk we have to take.

Anyway, we have been apartment hunting and we have found a couple of places we like. We’re just trying to get out of here as soon as we can.

Anyway, I know I'm rambling on too much about this, but that’s how life is these days. But hey, what has happened has happened. Can’t do anything about it, can we? Just trying to accept it and move on with life.

Very Indian

Why are Indians so overly eager to deem things to be Indian or to classify them to be made by Indians? I just read something on one of the Indian news websites about how Couples Retreat is a movie with a soundtrack by A. R. Rahman. Really? Two songs out of fifteen make it his soundtrack, do they? Much as I like his music, this is just not true.

I'm sure everybody recalls how Slumdog Millionaire was plastered all over the Indian press as an Indian movie that got recognized internationally. The producers, screenplay writer, and director were all English. True, they did have an Indian assistant director, and a number of Indians in the cast, but you know, that doesn't make it Indian?

Being a country that's well on its way to becoming the most populous nation in the world, don't we have enough things that are actually ours? And if we don't, what does that say for the country?

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.

A Thought

You know how, when someone lives in a foreign country like the States or England for a while, they pick up the local accent? The younger they are, the faster and more apparent the transition is.

And then there are the African Americans who have lived here for generations and still have a distinctive accent. Why are we Indians trying so very hard to fit in?

Life Lessons From A Diet And Exercise Plan

It takes a lot of courage, persistence and willpower to follow through with a diet and exercise plan and achieve your goals. But then, doesn’t one need all these things to get through just about anything in life? There are some things that I learnt as I went about my own weight loss regime. Things which are equally valid and applicable to other things in life.

1. If you really want something in life, you have to sacrifice something else. You can’t have everything. You have to choose. You cannot eat all the foods you like and still be the weight that you want to be.
   
   In life, you can’t have a high powered, extremely successful career and an extremely fulfilling family life. You can’t have all the money you want and all the leisure time you want. You have to learn to strike a balance between the things that make you feel good in the short run, and the ones that are good for you in the longer run.
   
   
2. If you put your heart into doing something, you achieve a lot more than what you first set out to achieve. When you work out a healthy diet and exercise plan and stick to it, you don’t just lose weight, you develop a healthier, happier way of life.
   
   If you find a job that makes you happy, if you like what you are doing, you don’t just make a living out of it, you make a life. If, on the other hand, you like being a mother and choose to do that full time, that can turn out to be more fulfilling than any job that you have ever held.
   
   
3. If you feel like you don’t have the energy to go on and just want to stop and give up, don’t stop. Slow down, but keep moving towards your goal, slowly and steadily. Working towards a goal requires you to be persistent and regular in your efforts. If you think you don’t have the energy to complete your usual thirty minutes on the treadmill and are feeling tired after just fifteen, don’t stop at fifteen. Decrease your speed to a more comfortable level, catch your breath and go on. Even if you didn’t burn your usual three hundred calories, burning two hundred is better than just one hundred and fifty, right?
   
   When you feel that the stress of your job is getting to you and you want to just throw it all away and quit, just slow down. Discipline yourself to adhere to strict limits on working hours. Know how much work load you can take on, and politely but firmly refuse any more than you can handle.
   
   
4. Achieving something significant does not have to be about depriving yourself of all pleasure. It is about making sensible, better choices which lead to a better output in the long term. You don’t have to stop eating all the things you like if you want to lose weight. You don’t have to give up chocolate and fried food all together. But make it a point to choose grilled meat over fried as often as you can, and to reduce your portion size when you have dessert.
   
   If you want to go back to college and get an advanced degree, that doesn’t mean that you will need to live on a tight budget and have very little social life. Eliminate unnecessary expenditures, such as designer labels. Choose the more economical places to buy your clothes, stationery and breakfast cereal. Watch movies on DVD at home. Cook for yourself as often as you can instead of picking up frozen dinners or takeouts. Make a few small sacrifices now and reap great benefits in the future.
   
   
5. If you slip up once, that doesn’t mean that all is lost. If you gorge on pizza and chocolate pie one day, that doesn’t mean that your diet is ruined. Just don’t let that thought take control of your mind and pick up from where you left off.
   
   If you betray a friend’s trust once, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person and a terrible friend. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Even the people we trust the most will let us down once in a while. Just don’t let it get to you, apologize and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
   
   
6. Weekends are for fun, relaxation, for being yourself and for doing the things you love doing. When on a diet, eat normally on weekends. It prevents you from putting the weight back on when you go back to normal eating. Plus, it ensures you don’t feel deprived.
   
   Spend weekends with family and friends, watching movies you like, going out to places you like, and generally doing things that you like. Don’t ever work on weekends or worry about what you’re going to be facing on Monday. This is your time. Enjoy it.

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 Gadget For This And A Gadget For That

How many gadgets does one need? Particularly, in the kitchen. This weekend, I saw a salad mixing contraption while shopping at Walmart (I think that even my Indian friends will have heard of it, but, if not, that's to America what Big Bazaar is to India). It's a bowl that you put your lettuce and things into, and it mixes it all up with a spin or two. I mean, really? Do you really need a gadget for mixing salad? Is it really that hard to do that by hand? It doesn't seem to be, when I do it, or when I see the folks at all those sandwich and salad shops do it.

There was this lady I met at the hairdresser's a while back, in Delhi, who had been experiencing some trouble with her back and shoulders. Her physiotherapist had her knead dough by hand, which she had been doing with a gadget all this while. To me, that signals that we may be becoming too lazy for our own good.

Of course, there are lots of appliances that we do need. You need a blender and an oven and a can opener. Well, you may want to debate those too, but I could probably handle that debate. But there is such a thing as going overboard with these things, isn't there? You should certainly not buy so many of them as to clutter your house and kitchen. Or so that you don't leave much for yourself to do by hand. That's for your own good.

Policing Styles

I finally took up reading Vikas Swarup's Q & A. This is not about the book. I will write about it once I finish it. The author says at one point that arrests in Dharavi are as common as pickpockets on the local train. It's obviously not a good thing for either of them to be common, is it? I don't know about the local trains in Mumbai but I certainly know about the local buses in Delhi. I've been pick pocketed twice myself, in the six years I spent at the University. Once it was my wallet, which, very luckily for me, contained only money, no IDs. My friend who was with me was not that lucky. She was running around the next day lodging FIRs for her college ID and her bus pass and then getting new ones made. The other time it was my cellphone. My first phone, which I'd bought with my saved up pocket money and birthday money. It felt really bad that time round.

I've had encounters with cops in Delhi, for registering an FIR for my phone (The Idea folks need a copy before they'll let you have a new SIM card.), for skipping a red light, for being in a car with a friend skipping a red light. I am sorry to say that I never got the feeling that the cops are out there to actually do something for the citizens. Most of them went easy on me because I was a girl, and I was a Jat and so were they, but that's not my point. My point is that they didn't seem genuinely concerned about the traffic conditions or the crime rates, but mostly about what was in it for them.

My only encounter with a cop here was my road test for my license. I was a little nervous because I wasn't sure what he would be like, but he turned out to be a rather nice guy. I'm not saying that all Indian cops are bad guys and all American policeman are good guys, but I'm just saying that the average patrol guy behaves differently in these two countries. The whole system works differently. If you get a ticket which you don't think you deserve, you can contest it in court, and my husband has actually done it and won the case. But if you do actually get the ticket, it goes on to your permanent record and your driver's insurance rate changes accordingly. So the total cost of a ticket adds up to about the cost of groceries for one person for a little over a year. Such regulations ensure that people are afraid of breaking the rules. I think Delhi could do very well with a few such rules.

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!