I and my socially-challenged friend

I and my socially-challenged old school friend decided to have an evening out.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Although I am the narrator here, I did not bestow this obnoxious epithet on her. The credit to that solely goes to my friend herself. But, being a mother of two immensely adorable but nevertheless extremely vulnerable children with age-appropriate naughtiness, her social challenge can be considered more circumstantial than temperamental. Housework and motherhood did not leave her much time and perhaps inclination, though subtly so, to mingle. And wise women that we are, we felt there was no social crisis that could not be solved with an evening out.

So a fine evening – or so we thought – we took off, leaving our children under the able care of our husbands. She drove while I listened to jazz music, her choice, and enjoyed the newness of the music and the landscape. The plan, as we had meticulously discussed and finalized, was thus – drive to West Falls Church, take the metro rail from there to Smithsonian, take a tour of the Lincoln Memorial, which my friend’s sight-seeing-driven hospitality considered a must-see, then walk around Georgetown, maybe go to a club, drink a little, laugh a lot (which I am quite notorious for after a whiff of vodka), relax, gossip, get nostalgic, and get back home socially de-challenged.

We didn’t predict the rain – which came in torrents. With all my navigation and my friend’s driving skills, the route map, and a husband on the phone giving verbal instructions, we still managed to lose our way, which was quite unplanned too. We almost crashed into a car stopped at a light, missing all that excitement by less than an inch. Finally, we did reach the West Falls Church station and got ourselves a couple of tickets from an unimaginably complicated and willfully hostile machine, shaken and a wee bit stirred, but certainly not deterred from our original idea of having an evening out.

Lincoln Memorial was, well, lofty. The huge statue of Lincoln looked on impassive while the dwarfed tourists crowded to read the Gettysburg address engraved on the wall. I read it too. “At this second appearing to take the oath of Presidential office…….,” a speech that apparently was long and did not resemble the rather iconic Gettysburg address. Seeing perplexity in my eyes, my friend, who might have muttered “you dummy,” led me to the opposite wall where I saw engraved the quite familiar words of “Four score and seven years ago…..” – a fitting tribute to martyrdom, freedom and equality, carved majestically on stone.

Later, walking down Georgetown’s M Street, we took in the quaintness and richness of the town in equal measures. Our intention was to find a club although admittedly both of us panicked a little. The questions we bandied were “have you ever been to a club?” “do you enjoy drinking that much?” “do you really know the etiquettes of a club?” “are we even dressed properly?” “Isn’t it too early?” The answers were mostly firm “nos” and a couple of equivocal “yes’s,” which did not make the matter anymore clearer. Maybe for an instant or two, we were eighth graders once more, daring to be different, confident of being special, but still aching to run back to our comfort zones. Luckily, we didn’t spot a club and didn’t have to make a decision on that. What we ended up spotting was an Indian restaurant, and that made our choice easier. Tearing out our buttered nans and munching our succulent paneers, we were gloriously happy in our comfort zone.

On our way back, we got into a wrong train – which was again unexpected because we were quite sober. Although we had become a bit heady by then with all the talking. We talked a lot that day – oh, there was no dearth of topics – husbands, children, life, husbands, children, life, husbands……

And that ended our special evening out. An evening where we realized that we are no longer different, that we will never get back our girlhood again, that we might be a little inept at ticket vending machines, but we still can be special in our own little ways.

And no, my dear friend, you are not socially challenged.

Of a canyon and a sun

It was worth the wait. This overwhelming of senses was corroboration enough that my trip was worthwhile. I was standing at Yavapai Point of the Grand Canyon waiting for the sun to set. And beyond the ledge on which I stood, and beyond hundreds of tourists gathered around the breadth of the observation station, the canyon unfolded in all its timelessness. “As old as time” – that was the phrase that kept flitting to my mind. I was gazing at maybe a billion years of natural history. I was witnessing the power of nature that can etch a landmark so pristine in its starkness. It was enigmatically beautiful, yes. But what was arresting was the very austerity in its wilderness – earth brown as opposed to fecund green, chiseled layers as opposed to smooth contours. And then, the unimaginable size of it all. I was almost a proselyte – from confused monotheistic idolatry to primeval pantheism.

The jagged edges of the canyon rim were turning golden under the setting sun. Wind had picked up while we waited as the sun came inevitably closer to the horizon. I whimsically wished for wings while I pulled my jacket closer. I mused on inevitability – of Colorado River flowing on, of sun sets, of life, of time ticking away.

I felt a tug and looked down to see my 3-year-old prancing around.

“I want to pee pee, I want to pee pee,” she chanted.

“Can it wait?” I asked miserably; I already knew the answer.

“Noooooooooooo,” came the plaintive cry.

“Now walk fast. I don’t want to miss the sunset,” I said half dragging and half carrying her to the rest room I had spotted near the car park, which to my impatient mind seemed to take forever to reach.

“You are not happy with me.” She pouted on the way back.

I hugged her tight and explained to her that I am of course happy with her. I was only unhappy with the inevitability factor that seems to rule our lives. “The inevitability of your pee pee,” I said, snuggling her. “But let us hurry, the sun has not yet set,” I squinted at the golden glow in the horizon.

“Why sunset again again?” She was quizzical, as she burrowed her head deeper into my neck. She too resigned to the inevitability of her mom’s quirkiness.

And thus we watched the sun set – the canyons becoming golden, then red, then brown, and finally a rusty silhouette against a darkening sky. We went back to the hotel, unsated still, but somehow at peace.

...........................................

Sunrise was at 5:15 AM. We reached Mather’s point at 5, a crispy morning, cold by my standards although my warm blanket of a husband termed it as pleasant. My three-year-old was up too and thanks to some curious turnaround in her mental makeup, she was actually keen to see the sunrise. Mather’s point was crowded. There were two bus loads of Japanese tourists and a convoy of Harley Davidsons, and of course a bunch of photography enthusiasts. Thanks to a Harley Davidson couple’s magnanimity and probably due to my daughter’s rather audible announcement that she can’t see anything, we were given a spot right at the edge of the safety railing.

“Mr. Sun, sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me,” I sang my daughter’s favorite ditty under breath.

That was all the encouragement my little songbird needed to erupt into the full song.

“Mr. Sun, sun, Mr. Golden Sun, hiding behind the tree…” she echoed.

“Is the sun hiding behind the tree?” I asked her.

“No, behind the Grand Canyon.” She immediately chirped and broke out into a revised rendition “….Mr. Golden sun, hiding behind the Grand Canyon.” Everybody around us laughed, either politeness or actual amusement, while I silently blamed my husband’s genes for my daughter’s propensity for unrhythmic parodies.

A Japanese tourist beside me enquired whether we were from India. I prudently did not get into the nitty-gritty of the issue but just said yes. He beamed at me and spoke of Taj Mahal. The heaviness of his accent made it almost impossible to understand him, but the fervor in his voice was unmistakable. I nodded quite proudly.

The sun did start to rise at that time and an expectant hush fell on the crowd. We all watched another spellbinding show of sheer gold spreading over one of the most recognizable landscapes on earth, and many among us were speechless – except my little songbird of course who sang on uninterrupted.

The show over, we parted ways, the Harley Davidson couple with a wave and the Japanese tourist with a nod. We hung back for a little while more, memorizing, recapturing, reminiscing. I thought of Keats and his slavishness to beauty. I thought of Wordsworth and his emotions recollected in tranquility. I thought of the transcendentalists – Thoreau and Emerson. I thought I understood them more, standing there on the edge of a chasm so deep and so beauteous.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever – be it a Grecian urn, the Taj Mahal, or the Grand Canyon.

May days!

This is a whirlwind month for me. My entire drab routine has gone topsy-turvy. Not a good month by my austere misoneistic standards.

First, there is this whole American dream vacation to plan for. After procrastinations and put-offs, after never-ending debates and discussions, we have finally zeroed in on June to be the month of travel. There are still interminable deliberations on what to take, what not to take, what to do, what not to do, how to do, how not to do, where to go, where not to go, where to stay, where not to stay – the whole nitty-gritty of the trip has left me cursing insomnolence at night as my overworked brain does exorbitant and probably misguided calculations on clothes and gifts to carry. That said, the entire onus of planning rests on the able shoulders of my brother-in-law who not only has to pick his way through the jumble of abbreviations that binds America together – JFK, MCO, EWR, IAD, BWI, LAS, IAH, to state a few – but also decide on hotel reservations and car rentals outside of Orlando (where he thankfully has his home) and then wait for a whimsical sister-in-law to approve or reject. Add to it the whole confusion on the practicality of carrying around car seats and strollers, and this whole dream vacation takes on nightmarish attributes.

A bigger hurdle I face is shopping. Realization dawned on me on a hot and sticky May morning that my three-year-old has somehow outgrown everything she has without growing an inch (!!!). I have never done so much shopping my entire life! It is not helped in the least by the very picky toddler who wants a jacket “with a hood amma,” no long sleeves because “they are so itchy,” and pink in color because “blue is for boys.” She does not want sturdy sneakers but a pink and white Disney contraption with a glass heel with colored beads inside. She does not listen to my futile protests and bravely hobbles the entire breadth of the shop just to show me she can walk in them. I give in as I watch my practically-oriented shopping go berserk. After six hours of intense shopping, I still have over a dozen items in my list to cover. If I haven’t said it before, I say it now – I hate shopping.

My husband dearest was in charge of buying gifts for our relatives and friends in the US. He is the knight-errant in our household and he is the one best suited to collect authentic handicrafts from the heart of our country – or so we thought. When our house started resembling an ill-sorted museum with gift rejects (rejected by me of course because of their broken, soiled, or ugly characteristics), we gave up our idea of being too authentic with the gifts. This issue still remains unresolved.

My three-year-old’s school life has gone into a theatrical overdrive this month. With their annual show approaching, there are innumerable dance practice sessions, dress rehearsals, and stage rehearsals on her calendar. As she has the all-important role of a table napkin in their production of The Beauty and The Beast, she is predictably excited and proud. And I, as a mother, have the dubious honor of assuaging her emotional outbursts when the boy behind her kicks her or when the girl next to her gets the costume and she does not.

Then my husband decides that he has to go to Dubai. “Not Dubai, we are going to the US,” I calmly explain to him. “No, I have a sugar meet in Dubai, don’t worry, I will be back in time for our US trip.” He consoles me. I rave and rant on the shopping to do, the plans to finalize, the presents to buy, the rehearsals I have to take our daughter to, my work that is pending, my dance classes, a grooming day that I had set apart for myself, and I tell him that he is leaving me on the lurch. He tells me that I am overreacting, as I always do.

To cap it all, the cook decides to go off to her village for a few days to tend to her ill mother-in-law.

I rest my case. May is simply not my month.

To mom, with love

She was a college lecturer. Our father says she was the most popular of them all. He recalls how there would be a flock of students and friends to see her off when he went to pick her up during weekends. We sketch a mental picture of his old Ambassador car parked under the trees, he waiting a bit impatiently for his newly-wedded wife, she arriving a wee bit late with her coterie, saree with an unmatched blouse, hair swept up in a becoming coiffure – that was how the old sepia-toned photographs showed her to be. Our mother, who is the protagonist of this little piece of writing, does not comment. She has never been the one to blow her own trumpet. So finally, I thought we would do the toots for her today.

We never truly understood why she gave up her career. Of course we are familiar with the circumstances that led to it because we were primarily the cause, although passive and oblivious (please regard how I don’t use the word “silent” – rumor has it that we had quite lusty cries). We were premature born and had gotten ourselves entangled in each other’s umbilical cords (forever it might seem) – another rumor has it that at least one of us resembled our arboreal kinsman rather than a human baby. The hastened delivery is, by the way, attributed to a train ride where our ever-solicitous father got down from a first class cabin in a lungi with two rupees in his shirt pocket searching for boiled drinking water to give to his pronouncedly pregnant wife and the train left the station without him. Because of timely intervention of two attentive and conscientious station masters, our mother and her luggage, both internal and external, could be safely disembarked at the next station, where she reunited with her lungi-clad husband after a not-too-long wait in a not-too-comfortable waiting room. Perhaps due to the virtue of our mother’s equanimity in dealing with the situation, we didn’t pop out immediately, but the stress might have had an effect on our premature birth.

Anyway, she never went back to teaching. She had an ever-getting-transferred husband, two needy children who always wanted the same thing at the same time (even the same breast to suckle on!), and loving but dependent parents-in-law. Her saga of motherhood started there and – well, motherhood never ends.

From a daughter’s point of view, she is a dream mother to have – a patient listener to woes real or imaginary, a healer of wounds, a firm hand while meting out justice, with a mind as broad as the skies above, there was nothing that we couldn’t tell her when we were growing up. She believed in our fantasies, had faith in our dreams, and never wanted us to be anything that we were not. She taught us everything – from nursery rhymes to table manners, from solar system to malayalam poems, honesty to discipline. She taught us that this world would be a more beautiful place if we believed in the goodness of people. She taught us how to love.

Now, she is our best friend – a great sodoku partner, a wonderful walking buddy, the most huggable person in our world. We are still needy. We still run to her for real or imaginary woes, and she dries our tears. As I said, motherhood never ends.

Attraction is a curious thing

A young man said he was attracted to me.

Let me analyze attraction. It can be ephemeral, a fleeting quickening of heartbeat, a vague rush of adrenaline, which can fade away in an hour, a day, a week. It can be a deeper, long-lasting physical yearning, that overpowering tension in your sinews to touch, feel, and experience. It can be emotional, an intangible impulse of closeness that you feel, courtesy your limbic system. It can be intellectual, where your ideas meet and hobnob, where arguments pave way to ecstasy. It can be all of this, none of this, or some more than the others.

I didn’t know how to analyze his attraction. He was a stranger, a maverick. Yes, I have talked to him many times, and I have enjoyed every minute of talking to him, but I still did not know who he was, just that he said he was attracted to me.

Still, my heart went aflutter. Rationality is a curious thing. It surmises situations, passes judgments, motivates action, but is not a custodian enough to control hearts. And my stupid heart (that same limbic system which we conversationally call “heart”) went aflutter.

Rationality asked him what his intention was. His answer was straight enough. Consummation. Rationality did not leave it at that. It questioned him on morality, scruples, integrity, commitment, respect. It warned him of the scarlet letter that would scorch not the bosom but the conscience forever. Oh! It was a prude, my rationality.

In the end, I gave him up. Not because of my rationality – or not wholly because of it. A fluttering heart was not an excuse to undo what I have built with exquisite care – my beautiful life as I know it and my unending love affair with it. I have mixed the right amount of love, lust, happiness, excitement, yearning, frustration, sadness, even boredom – all the ingredients the way I wanted them, I didn’t want to upset it now, not by my choice. I give leeway only to time and its unstoppable flow of circumstances.

And so, presumably, he gave up on me too.

Attraction, like rationality, is a curious thing.

Birds that fly – and birds that don’t

That winter is etched in my memory (to adopt a cliché). I don’t know whether I can call it winter, Palghat doesn’t have winters. It was those windy months of November, December, and January. There is an exhilaration in the air during those months of the year – a hum, a dynamic bustle, as if life cannot stop, it cannot just be. We locals endearingly call the wind “palakkadan kaattu,” in spite of our scaling skins and chapped lips. My Shelleyan mind calls it my very own West Wind.

I and Dee used to wake up to the sound of discordant loudspeaker music coming from a nearby temple. The sky would be still gray with just an inkling of red in the eastern horizon. We would gather our books – Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, et al. – and troop up to our terrace to read, reminisce, imagine, and dream. A sleepy-headed Appukuttan (our spaniel, our little partner in crime) would sometimes follow us up, burrow himself between us, and go right back to sleep. We didn’t have any choice in that matter. It was our final year MA and we had tons to read.

With the first rays of the sun, a tenacious magpie would come and sit on the lopsided TV antenna and sing for us. After about four days of listening to the same song, we realized that it was the same magpie. A bond grew between us with each passing day. He would come, sit on the antenna, sing his twoo-twoo-twi-ti-twi-ti-too-woo with the exact same lilt and modulation every day. He was a fixture during those windy mornings – our lucky magpie.

Within fifteen minutes, the other birds would pick up their own songs, from where they left off the previous day. The laughing thrushes, the seven sisters we called them, would sit on the low parapet wall and start their babble. They sure were a cantankerous lot. We would give up all pretense of reading and listen to them. On certain mornings, there would be a crow pheasant (chembothu) adding to the din with his incessant hiccups.

Our Casuarina archway and hedges were a welcome refuge to little tailor birds and bulbuls. There was a bulbul nest in our arch, much to our and our four-legged partner’s delight. His was a more selfish pleasure though. With every little chirp coming from the nest, he would be down below waiting for something or somebody to fall down. The wind was almost an unwitting accomplice. Fortunately, that bulbul family escaped our little predator’s artless tactics.

The evenings were spent looking skyward and watching the migrating storks fly in a V formation. They might be from Siberia, we thought, a trifle too enthusiastically. One windy evening, a white feather fluttered down. Dee caught it, placed it in a velvet jewelry box, and labeled it “a gift from the heavens.” We somehow felt blessed that day.

Those windy months, we identified ourselves with birds. We watched them, heard them, loved them. We were getting ready to fly.

Years later (and totally unconnected)-
We – a group of friends, colleagues – were sitting together during our coffee break, chatting away, willing our break to last a little while longer, when my handsome friend commented that his hobby was bird watching. I was excited and immediately began to wax eloquent on ornithology and offered to lend him my copy of Salim Ali’s “The Book of Indian Birds,” when I sensed a hush around the table. A three-second pause and the whole table exploded with laughter and the usual ribbings. How could I ever think that my friend would have a hobby of watching birds that flew up in the sky when there were prettier ones walking on the streets of Bangalore? Well, I can be unimaginably dumb sometimes – and that is not just confined to the topic of bird watching.

Hair-raising, literally!

I had all the temerity of walking into a lion’s den. I poked my head in, I sniffed, I blinked. Half a dozen heads turned and a dozen eyes stared at me. I almost retreated but I willed myself to step in.

A heavily mascara-ed pair of eyes questioned me from behind the desk.

“Mau gunting – rambut,” my stammer is quite pronounced when I speak Indonesian.

“Oh, cut hair,” she asked me back, her heavy accent making it almost unintelligible.

My first hurdle over, I heaved a sigh of relief. The relief was short lived because she passed me a card and asked me to choose my hairdresser.

“Expert – Rp 200000 designer – Rp 150000, professional – Rp 100000, specialist – Rp 80000.”

In the inexplicable hierarchy of hairdressers, a specialist has the lowest rung? I couldn’t make sense of that. Or maybe their English was flawed. I made a rough calculation to our user-friendly rupees. 100000 rupiah would convert to 500 rupees. I squinted. I coaxed my gray cells to make a decision. Was my hair really worth paying so much? Reading impatience through her mascara, I hastily opted for professional.

The one thing I like about Indonesian salons is that men with magic in their hands wash your hair. There is a never-before-sensed bliss in that fifteen minutes of trickling warm water and soft lather and patiently massaging fingers. I fought an impulse to drift away to a rose-bed of dreams.

Soon enough, I was transported back to reality. My destiny was waiting for me in purple-highlighted hair (!!), a pony tail, and a menacing-looking tool belt. My destiny smiled. I resigned to it.

“Layer,” I muttered. I meant that I wanted my hair cut in a layered style. He apparently understood me. He started it with a smile. They all start with smiles, but the smile would disappear soon, I clairvoyantly mused.

Let me briefly interrupt a sapless guy’s story of misfortune to enlighten my readers that my hair is resistant to anything done to it – shampooing, conditioning, combing, tying, cutting – the list goes on. It revolts and fights back. I know it, the hair stylists don’t; hence my reluctance at approaching one. They all start in earnest, tut-tut about it midway through, and start their silent curses at about three-quarters of the way. I sit through it like my hair doesn’t belong to me. Then I pay and slink back to my home.

My purple man was no different. He said something which sounded very much like swear words. His co-stylist who was hobnobbing with his petite, straight-haired client, laughed. I stared at the mirror with a stone face.

The blow dry was taking an even longer time. He tried the long metal brush and then the short round brush. He fiddled around with the hair dryer. He was trying to coax each of my hair to its assigned position. I just wanted to run out. Finally, he stood back. He was visibly tired. I said thank you.

I paid. I beat a hasty retreat. I couldn’t read the expression behind that heavy mascara. Or maybe I didn’t want to read it.

I reached home. “Ha ha, amma, you look so funny,” my little one chirped.

“What is so funny about it?” I defended my hair.

“You look like Fluffy,” she said.

“Who is Fluffy?” I asked. I had forgotten.

She rushed to her room and brought out her pink and yellow, very curly, very frizzy, extremely unkempt looking poodle soft toy.

“Ha ha, see.”

“Woof woof,” I intoned.