VIBGYOR

Online Reading

I normally hate reading online. Colors has linked to two sites which can keep me busy. Most of the stories from Indian Mythology that I remember are the ones I have read on Amar Chithra Katha. Imagine my delight when I saw the link on Colors blog about the weekly story. When I clicked on this one I even remembered the expressions on the pages before I turned to them. Like colors I wish many of them were online.

WOWIO is another interesting site. I am still wondering when I can figure out the time for all this but perhaps one day. Today I just wanted to make sure I capture the links for later use.

Thank you Colors for sharing.

All about Wannabe and her tag again

It's her again! Tagged by Wannabe my .......

She knows me well enough to dare me… She knows I cannot resist her charms… wonder why she wants to know. Let me make is very clear – I am “straight” – though I know there were rumours about the two of us in college ;) and perhaps she did have some ideas.

If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?
Uh! It must be all because of me and my relationship with Wannabe

If you can have a dream come true, what would it be.
He holds my hands, looks into my eyes and announces to the whole world – well I woke up at that time – so I do not know what he announced.

Whose butt would you like to kick?
Right now Wannabe’s because she tagged me knowing everything…

What would do with a billion dollars?
I think A380 with its crew is more than billion dollars…

Will you fall in love with your best friend?
I did… Wannabe knows how and why

Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
Same as Wannabe – being loved – loving someone is a complete curse

How long do you intend to wait for someone you love?
Wait? I wish I was patient…

If the person you secretly like is attached, what will you do?
Well… his loss - not mine – he must be missing something… - “Like” is not enough for me to do anything about it. When it was not like but something more - … he is currently washing vessels in the kitchen.

If you could root for one social cause, what would it be?
Education.

What takes you down the fastest?
“Falling” in love

Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
This reminds me of the questions in my MBA application forms – can I skip this one?

What’s your fear?
That I will hurt someone.

What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
Right now it is better I do not put my thoughts in paper…. I am a Scorpio – passionate and intense in ALL my feelings

Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
Single and Rich please….

If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who will you pick?
Well… two would be because I am not able to pick – can I have more?

Would you give all in a relationship?
I always do…. Love only multiplies (in reference to the above question)

Would you forgive and forget someone no matter how horrible a thing he has done?
I am a Scorpio (does that explain it?)

Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?
Single in a relationship

The people I am curious about will not respond to this. So I shall skip tagging but if you think I am curious about you and want to respond you can - now I am curious to know who thinks I am curious about them.

Distances and curiousities

I opened my mails this morning while dealing with insomnia.

I glared at a mail which said “80 Euros Flight gift certificate” from Opodo. I click on the link ....

....and there was the next one “New York for €299”….

I looked at it and looked at it and then sighed. I had just booked my tickets to New York at a much higher price a couple of weeks back for Parmanu’s and my first holiday together at my parent’s place since 2003.

……………….

Yep… It is 5 years since my husband and I went together to visit my parents. All my parents friends think that my parents are hiding something with respect to my marital status since they never see the two of us together.

My parent’s friends are not the only ones – a couple of weeks back:

A friend: “How are you?”

Me: “I am fine…”

(You know the usual pleasantries..)

She: “How about a movie this weekend?”

Me: “Oh… Parmanu is here this weekend – so I think I would prefer to spend my time with him. We get so less time together”.

She: “How about next weekend?”

Me: “I am off to Germany – looking forward to it so much”.

(You see a justification pattern here… but that is not what I was talking about).

She: “Oh… that is so nice. If you had not been looking forward to these visits I would have wondered about the two of you – whether you were separated or thinking about it”.

Uh Uh Uh… I am glad she mentioned it out loud. Perhaps many think that and not mention it.

In anycase, Parmanu visited my parents last year in between an official trip. My parents use his availability to fix all their technical computer related problems. Nevermind that in Germany we have about 3 PCs and one monitor that are not working and he is trying out his 100-th Wifi modem with no success since we have a really special internet provider. So there he was on a Saturday morning in front of their PC in the basement on the telephone with the Sony call center trying to fix my parents problems.

A friend of my mother’s from her school days had dropped in.

Auntyji: “R…, so what about Colours and Parmanu?”

Mummyji: “They are fine” (always cryptic and knowing how much Parmanu loves his solitude).

Auntyji with the dreaded question: “Don’t they want any children?”

Mummyji – a little untruthfully – “Oh H…, I do not really ask them. You know the children these days”.

Auntyji, who has children with minds of their own having grown up in the Unites States, different from her own when she was young, empathized – “ Of course, but they are also staying apart for so long. Should she not move back?”

Uh! WHY SHOULD I MOVE BACK? Can they not ask the other way round?

Mummyji: “All in due time” – with a patience she never exhibits with me (uh.. I must say she has been most supportive of my living in Brussels).

Auntyji: “Parmanu never comes here….”

Mummyji – jumping at the chance: “He is downstairs now – I think he is doing something on the computer”.

Auntyji: “Oh..”

Later my mom was in the kitchen Auntyji walked down the cellar stairs – something she has never done before. Parmanu looked up from the telephone to see an unexpected apparition walking down.

Auntyji: “Oh.. Hello Parmanu”.

Parmanu, who hates multitasking, with the telephone in hand half the sentence through “Hello”

And pointed to the telephone….

Auntyji ran back up – in my mother’s words “After having ensured there really exists a son-in-law. Never mind that he also was completely engrossed in the computer strangely non-communicative in her terms”.

Auntyji: "... They never come together?".

- So my mother has planned huge party for all her friends this time when we are there. As you see it is a sensitive topic on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

………

Another one from Katie Melua

The tango is even better - it reminded me so much of the evenings in Buenos Aires watching the Tango - the ones we saw were of a different kinds though...

A new life

It is late night. I am returning from Leuven. I have just entered the city and the strains of "Kabhi Kabhi Aditi" has just started. There are not many cars on the street - the winter night has already set in - it is dark outside and the lights come from the street lamps, the windows of the apartments lining the main street and casting their yellow glow onto the pavement, the red car tail-lights and the alternating red, yellow, green lights from the traffic signals. There is a cool bounce in the air outside the car - the air inside has a steady warmth in it.

 

I see a stray bluish silver glow in the cigarette holder below my music system. Oh no! I just got the inside of the car cleaned a couple of weeks back.

 

....

 

I had pulled into the car wash one afternoon when my laptop was being configured at work. A face with familiar characteristics walked up to me.

 

"Aap Urdu bolte hain?" (Do you speak Urdu?) - the young face asked me.

 

"Nahin, mein Hindi thodi bahuth bolti hoon" - I said conscious, in front of the typical north Indian accent, of the fact that I can make many gender related mistakes in a full sentence. A smile spread on his face on knowing that we had a different "own" language to converse in than French. We continued to arrange the time to pick up the car and the activities to be performed on the car in Hindi - both happy to revert to pseudo native tongues. As we spoke, another person came and took the key from my hand.

 

"Aap CD mein gaana sun sakthey hain" - I said. He looked at me blankly and I repeated in Hindi.

 

"He is from Morocco and he does not understand Hindi". I blanched with embarrassment at thinking that everyone with same colour and featuers must be from the subcontinent.

 

"You can listen to the songs from the CD if you want" - I repeated in English and he nodded. 

 

About 45 minutes later I left with a gleaming car, and the mobile numbers of 4 people working in the car wash and their families.

 

"We stay in Molenbeek and we have a large family - all our families live there and we get Hindi film DVDs. You must visit us and eat with us". It is Ramadan now - a good time to take them up on their offer. I should call them one day.

 

....

 

She is an older Greek lady. My refrigerator and washing machine had just arrived. I had gone downstairs to give instructions on how they could bring it up. She was at the doorbell waiting for someone. She said Hello first.

 

"I am buying an apartment here" - she said. "Do you live here?".

 

"I just moved in. I am getting my refrigerator now".

 

She looked outside at the truck and at the refrigerator. She helped me give instructions to the delivery people.

 

"I have to show my future studio apartment to some possible tenants. Which place do you stay? - I can come up and see you before I leave".

 

I indicated to her the floor where I stayed and gave her my name. She came up later, looked through my apartment completely and complimented me on my new refrigerator. She took my mobile number and left. I wrote hers down in my red diary which I had carried from Walldorf to Lausanne and back to Brussels. In the months that followed I got embroiled in my troubled life, lost the rest diary and forgot the old Greek lady.

 

About a month back, I was really down with no friend in Brussels and feeling completely lonely after a very difficult day. I was off on a business trip to US the next day, not at all motivated about going to another place, living in hotel for a week (very unusually for me) and so on. I opened the front door to the building and there she stood.

 

"I am buying one more apartment" - she said - "I lost your mobile number and so I could not reach you and never found you at home".

 

She said she would accompany me while I went to a nearby internet center for me to take printout of my ticket. Later, after I packed, we went out for a drink together and promised to meet up after I was back.

.....

 

So there I was in the car this winter night, feeling positive about the new people I was meeting from outside work. I picked up a leaf next to the bluish silver paper of Mentos cover and rolled down the window to throw the leaf out. A wave of natural street air filled me. As a small child, we did not have A/C in the car. My father and grandfather had cars where we had to drive with windows rolled down - as was normal in India. The air was not pollution free - it had the fumes of the vehicles. The music was punctuated by sounds of stalling engines, accentuated by a couple of horns here and there. The sounds of the street combined with the air lifted my already positive spirits - this was reality. A reality of connecting with life outside the car, of being one with the people outside who were leading different lives - one that I had felt shut off from when the windows were rolled up and I was encoused in my own cocoon.

 

I now leave my window down when I drive within the city - it is a completely different world altogether that I drive though....

Tag reply - quirks

I keep promising Wannabe that I will reply to her tag. So here goes (many of them are supplied by her since I thought I was absolutely normal):

Step 1: Link to the Tagger: Wannabe - my closest friend who probably knows all my secrets... well... almost all (this will atleast keep her guessing).

Step 2:

The Rules are as follows..
1. Link the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them.
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs, letting them know that they have been tagged.

Step 3:

1. Talking even when sleeping in completely coherent way - ask me a question and you will normally get any answer - so to those couple of friends to whom I talk quite late in the evenings - I was/am probably sleeping and you would not even have realized.

2. I still love to fold up my pyjama, jeans (anything that should normally come to my ankle) until my knee and walk around everywhere (except at work and when shopping) irrespective of who is around and when. I realized I still do this only when Wannabe asked me whether I still do this

3. A typical lunch on most weekdays unless I have company (which is not too often now) - mango pieces with mango lassi followed by mango juice followed by dinner of fish curry cooked with raw mango pieces with mango juice. Eric recently suggested mango sorbet to finish off as dessert - should try that.

4. Talking to my mother who is 6 hours behind for more than 1 hour daily much to the chagrin of Parmanu.

5. planning planning planning planning .... cancelling cancelling cancelling cancelling - only one that does not get cancelled - trip to US to visit my parents

6. Blogging with nothing to blog about - and in such situations being happy to respond to tags.

All the ones who are linked on the left of this blog can feel free to be quirky. - any reader of this blog is welcome to try to see whether they are normal.

It's only pain

I wish the pain would come out more.... perhaps there was a mismatch in what I expected would be reflected from the lyrics vs the level of pain in her expression.

Swades - my country

One of my favourite movies is Swades. I can watch it million times and still not get bored with it. Though there are some reviews which talk of it being like a documentary, it is precisely this slow pace and the depiction of the village life that attract me to this movie. I specially love the song "Saawariya" for the scenes where the rural Indian life is shown - the part that always made me want to spend long time in the "real" rural part of India.

 

We have a house in a village in Kerala. We used to go to this house when we were small children. My parents belong to a huge family with close ties and we were the nuclear family living in cities and towns visiting our great-grandmothers in the village during the holidays. We looked forward to these visits. Every visit meant a confluence of all cousins around the sametime - it was also the time when the families working for my great-grandmothers in the house used to make different special dishes (which I have not seen since - like Madakkusaan). They used to make huge biscuit tins full of sweets , bananachips, murukku, mango pickles and so on. These used to be kept in dark rooms around the kitchens.

 

All the families around there had children of our age. These children used to get together in one wing at the south end of the house - not used much nowadays. There was a small stage on top of which we used to pray all together in the evenings. In the mornings, these used to be summer school for all the children around. We used to join these classes to learn numbers, mathematics and malayalam. We had slates on which we wrote with a slate pencil (chalk was a luxury) and we used to wipe the slates clean with a weed which we picked before the classes.

 

When we were not in these classes, we used to run around the place fishing in one of the three ponds, climbing the haystacks, going to the fields and sometimes escaping the eyes of the elders and running to the houses of one of the families working in the house. They used to be small houses like the ones in Swades and dark inside. They invited us inside and treated us to some eatables, gave us a chair to sit. The families lived on of one the plots next to the house and all their families, had small houses around the house. All these relatives used to come to see these city bred aliens and to talk to us. We were absolutely thrilled to have the attention and always looking for small children we could run around with.

 

In the evenings, we used to go to the family temple about a kilometer walk away. We crossed fields and reached the temple. There were distant relatives living there and all wanted to talk to us and invited us into their homes. We had some festivals in this temple - each one had a special feeling and a colourful unique atmosphere to it. As you might watch in the movie Manichithrathaazhu ( remade in Hindi as Bhool Bhulayya), ghost figures locked into rooms closed by chants filled locks were normal life - the family temple also had shrines which were locked not to be opened. We had rituals in the temples which were to make sure that the spirits were at rest. We had small vans, autorickshaws which used to announce movies that were running in the nearby town. The fairs and the festivities from the temples which visited the different houses with elephants and the dieties.

 

Many images in Swades remind me of these trips to the house which now waits for the family to come back and claim it (though I have not been to a panchayat and many other things). When we go there now, the house stands forelorn, the families which took care of us have lost some of the last people who took care of us when we were young (Leelamma who passed away when I was at IMD was one of them). Their next generation had to search for other jobs as the family scattered and as my grandfather was the only one who remained and subsequently his illness made him leave for the city as well. Now when we go there we go for an evening, visit the temple, look at the house, hope to come back and renovate it and live back there. It is a dream - a dream combined with the dreams I saw falling apart when I left India - of taking vacations to travel around rural India visiting villages, visiting festivals in the villages celebrated as they should be celebrated.

 

A different version of the dream lives now - we visit rural Europe - as in Kerala (in comparison to other parts in India), the difference between a town and village is quite blur. One day, I would like to live my real dream - I know I do not need to shift back to India - I just need to spend my vacations at the right place.

 

 

What is it?

"Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude."

--Colleen C. Barrett,
president emeritus of Southwest Airlines