rainy days and frivolity

Today was one of those days when you're allowed to buy overpriced coffee rip-offs. I seemed to be at a loss with my casework, have a nagging, crippling knee, and, most importantly, have a Visa gift card. All circumstances pointed to the necessity of making a frivolous purchase, one which would usually go against my principles.

I bought a chocolate stirrer. It was a wooden stick with a dark chocolate cube at the end. Again, everything seemed to point to the necessity of this chocolate aparatus in my life.

These edible stirrers were by the register, and so I picked it out last minute when I was paying for my cappuccino, which in and of itself is too wild of a purchase for me. The chocolate cube at the end of the stick immediately started melting away, till my cappuccino tasted like thick hot chocolate and I was holding a wooden stick with brown putty on it.

I threw out the remains of the stirrer and indulged in the hot drink. The weather is still gloomy, the knee still throbs, and New Yorkers still suffer the rising costs of their own existence, but I'm hoping everything just melts away, and becomes a de facto hot chocolate.

buddies

So as I step off the E train headed in the direction of Third Ave (where I work) I bump into the Deputy Director who was heading in the other direction. He looked puzzled and I told him it was quicker to walk the other way. And then as we made small talk on the elevator, we turned to see the State Director on the escalator right next to us.

And then the three of us skipped to work holding hands.

AM blues

It was one of those mornings when you heave a sigh, ruffle your bangs, and say with a scowl, "It's just one of those mornings." I woke up more exhausted than when I hit the pillow the previous night; I had waited 2 hours in Port Authority the evening before, nestled comfortably between a pack of Korean tourists and a middle aged commuter who smelled heavily of white-out and cigarettes.

The aftermath of my moving back home as my cousin moved in finally hit me, and in the morning I was scouring through piles and piles of my clothing on the floor, trying to look for a decent shirt. I had no time for breakfast--I was too busy cursing my room, my family, and the gods which rendered me helpless to the clutches of disorganization and lethargy. As usual, I took everything out on my parents, who in turn brandished their most lethal weapon of mass destruction: kindness. Loyal to their origins, the state from which Gandhi hailed, they never reacted violently to my tantrums, choosing instead a path of peace that rendered obsolete any of my concerns. They passively accepted everything I said, and even felt bad for me, before promising that they would build my dresser over the weekend. Their kindness angered me more and I told them I didn't want a dresser. I just wanted conditions to stay miserable for some time so that I was justified in lashing out at the world.

NJTransit proved to be a reliable factor in creating cruel and unusual conditions. The bus was late, and as it started raining, we found ourselves stuck in traffic. The woman in front of me was yelling about her local car dealership. My Sherlock Holmes mystery conceded to the complexities of this woman's life, detailed so clearly for anyone on the bus who had the slightest interest.

I rapidly limped to the E train, only to find the doors close in front of my face. My knee throbbed under my own weight, only reminding me that my new job was a sad excuse to stop working out. The E train arrived 10 minutes later, and, like cattle, we were herded onto the train by the forces of responsibility, obligation, and habit.

Many of the side streets by my office have been closed off for the United Nations Millenium Development conferences, and so as I stepped out of the Subway, I was again shuffled through arbitrary matrices crafted by the NYPD.

I finally neared my building. I stopped at the cart by my building, run by an old Italian man who always says "thank you" to me in Hindi. Instead of the usual small, I ordered a medium coffee with milk, and could barely manage a smile from my immobile lips. The wrinkles around his eyes creased with concern. "One muffin for you, my darling. Just for you." For the first time since I awoke, I felt my own heart beat. I was suddenly conscious of myself, of my own breath, and the slowness of the persistent sunlight, which parted the clouds that had hung heavy during my morning endeavors. I sipped my hot coffee and clutched my muffin as I waved to the security guard inside the building.

The first email I got in the morning was from an agency contact informing me of a favorable decision for a constituent. There was a resolution, some hope, for an economically and physically disabled woman with whom I had been working all summer. I immediately called the constituent to relay the good news, and I could hardly comprehend her words of gratitude as she heaved sobs of happiness.

I felt pretty accomplished. Before 10:00 AM, I got a corn muffin from an old man and blessings from an estranged lady, her face anonymous but her life familiar.

When I got home, I ate Lebanese food with my family. The fattouche was stellar, and the falafel was pretty subpar. I kept staring at all of them. My grandfather read aloud the menu for the entire restaurant to hear; my grandmother and mother sat in fits of giggles; my father was trying to compare all the dishes to Gujarati dishes for easier access. My sister was there in spirit--she kept texting me her misery in SAT class. No one made any sense. I forgot about the morning's fuss, mainly because of the chaos of dinner. I smiled again, as I smiled with my free muffin and my favorable case.

It was one of those days when you heave a sigh, ruffle your bangs, and say with a smile, "Life isn't half bad."

no drama, just life.

I secretly want to be a Bollywood actress, and dance in the rain and fall in love and fight bad guys. In fact, sometimes I listen to songs, English or Hindi, and create makeshift music videos in my head. Pain, confusion, loss--it all seems bearable when it is accompanied by a background score. But then the song is over, the iPod runs out of battery, or we just grow up, and the beautiful tragedies we have woven are dispelled, rendered obsolete by the cold reality of life, which happens backstage. There is no drama. There is no poetry. Pain isn't beautiful. It hurts. And as much as we have made ourselves out to be the tragic heroes of our Romantic histories, we're just people, without a background score or a rain machine or any hint as to what will happen next. We just are, life just is, and everything else follows.

Woes of a Working Woman

I oscillate between two different worlds 5 days a week. Every morning, I sit at the cold granite counter in my kitchen and eat plain oatmeal with fruits and nuts, while my grandmother laments about the seeming lack of milk in my diet, and my parents discuss office politics and Tuesday night free movies. I make my lunch, I aimlessly search for shoes before deciding to wear the same black flats once again, and then my mother drops me off to the bus station. I used to pretend to read on the bus, but I have now come to accept the inevitable, and just keep extra tissues to wipe off the drool once I reach Port Authority.

The earth shakes once the bus makes its final stop. There is a thundering of footsteps, of wheels, of a sudden tension and speed. The walk to my office is only about 25 minutes, but my 65 year old knee usually prefers the Subway. Like cattle, we all cram into one train; the really experienced travelers manage to read the newspaper above everyone’s heads and rest their Starbucks coffee comfortably on someone’s elbow. The 5 minute walk from the Subway to work is filled with very distinct types—middle aged workers from Jersey; unattractive and skinny European models; tourists with fanny packs and an illusion that Third Avenue is the place to be.

My work is wonderful. I get to interact with all kinds of people—the sad, the grateful, the crazies, the powerful. My day revolves around service, but is colorfully peppered with death threats and free cupcakes. As wild as my job might seem (the cupcakes are insanely delicious), it is the actual time I spend outside the office and outside my home, in a lingo, where I find myself in a suspension of reality.

Two weeks ago, as I was walking through Port Authority to catch the E train, and someone aggressively taps me on the shoulder. A lady with copper curls started walking in step with me, and in a deep southern drawl said, “Seriously, though, this country is just so obese! I mean, I just look around and see all these fatties. You know what I mean? I guess I could say I am one of them but seriously, what is with this country? I mean, that is why everyone has diabetes!" She laughed and then walked ahead of me. The woman was not fat, and that was our conversation in its entirety.

Since my grandmother is here, my family has been more active and involved with each other than usual. My grandmother yells about the termination of naptime after I graduated Kindergarten (ideally I should be bringing my sleeping bag to the office); my mother simultaneously asks about my pending marriage (I should settle down at some point relatively soon) and my future ambitions (I should not be domesticated and strive for excellence in my career); my father barks about my tangled hair and agrees with my mother on her contradictory advice (I won’t go far with this marital bliss stuff if I don’t brush my hair). My sister is the only seemingly normal one, but the very fact of her functional existence thoroughly perturbs us, so she gets scolded by default. In the midst of all of this chaos, I try to find some peace on the bus. Unfortunately, NJ Transit seems to have also gotten the memo to wreak havoc in my life.

There was one day when I was particularly tired. A plague had ravaged the office, and 5 or 6 people were out with various mystery illnesses. My left eye had been burning and secreting mysterious clear liquid all week, and my knee was reliably acting up. I assumed I was dying, or at least coming down with a cold. My family was in Virginia Beach, so I walked to and from the bus station. Coupled with phone calls reassuring my family that I was alive, filled to the brim with calcium, and taking naps during staff meetings, I was mentally and physically exhausted.

The one day I left work slightly early, for fear of catching some Bubonic strain of yellow fever mixed with pink eye mixed with sun rashes, I came home exceedingly late. The subway was crowded until someone farted and inadvertently kicked off 30 people at the next stop. While this was convenient for my nonexistent personal bubble (which continues to burst as I commute to work with toothless singers and greasy wife beaters), it aggravated my left eye even more. My contact was dangerously sliding up, and my vision kept blurring. I was to meet a friend for dinner in Ridgewood, and desperately needed to get home to pee, take out my contacts, and wash off the stench of underground bodily gas.

I raced to Gate 163, where the bus had stalled for some time. I let out a sigh of relief as soon as I dropped into my seat. A few minutes after the bus left Port Authority, the driver pulled over and parked on the shoulder. She got out of the bus and spoke on her cell phone for about ten minutes. She got back on and told us we had a flat tire, the second one today, and that we would be shuffled to an arbitrary parking lot where we would get on to the next bus. “And I don’t think that bus will be air-conditioned.”

I wanted to call my friend to tell her I would be late, but my phone had died. I didn’t have her number in my work Blackberry, so I tried to email her. The screen went blank about five times before I could finally send her a miserable one-liner: “Bus has flat tire. FML.” My iPod also died before Bruno could finish telling me about the beautiful girls all over the world. My left eye continued to break down, and so reading was out of the question. I stared out in silence until I finally fell asleep.

I was woken up in Paramus. An old Russian man with bad breath was sitting next to me, incessantly poking me. He asked me if the bus was express. We had been on the road for 45 minutes; Port Authority was far behind us. I said yes. And then as I attempted to doze off again, he sustained a conversation with me until I got off at my stop. Then I walked home, ate a handful of wheat crackers that tasted like the box, washed my face, and ate Thai food with my friends.

Yesterday, my iPod was quite functional, but the passengers who elected to sit next to me were not. The first man had just caught the bus about 30 seconds before it left. He was sweating heavily, and sat down right next to me—right on top of my open purse. He said excuse me after he sat down, but continued to deform my purse. With some difficulty, I pulled it out from under him. His cologne was overpowering. My face broke out in rashes and I pressed my face against the dirty glass. He got off after about thirty minutes. I was then alone, and listened to music in peace, thinking of nothing. The bus emptied as it neared my house. When we were about 15 minutes away, someone came down and slammed onto the seat next to me. The person was incredibly close, and I turned to see an old, fat, sleeping man to my left. A strong beer lingered in his breath, which blew out hot and heavy into my face. His legs were sprawled and his hairy arm effectively disintegrated any shred of personal bubble I thought I had left. I was squished into the glass; my headphones knocked uncomfortably into the window as he kept leaning into me. With one final snore, the man fell asleep into my lap. I was too stunned to be disgusted, and then too afraid that I would miss my stop. I sat there in silence, and sent incredulous text messages to all my friends. I held the phone over his head as to not disturb his slumber.

Though I seem to be in a constant state of transit, running from mode of transport to mode of transport, hurriedly shoving slow walkers (seniors included) aside, cursing MTA and NJTransit, I find myself at a complete standstill as I leave Manhattan. I always take a window seat on the right side of the bus, so that when we drive along the river, New York transforms into a frieze. The world pauses, I pause, and together we stop and stare at the dynamicy and vibrancy of grey steel. And every day I close my eyes and smile to whomever is watching, happy that I am still very much a part of such a beautiful city.

DATED JULY 26: Mandawa, Rajasthan

It pains me that in just four days (I am writing this on the 29th) I have already begun losing any sense of clarity, of orderly memory of each day’s events. Instead, I remember the small details, the feelings, the faces. This account attempts to describe day 2.

We were awoken at the crack of dawn. Some of us were jetlagged, some of us were cold from the excessive air conditioning, and some of us answered early wake up calls. We dragged ourselves to breakfast, still barely knowing each other, and then set off on our first of many adventures.

Our first educational experience was in an educational institution. We visited a school for physically challenged children. We were initially hesitant, scared of being sad, scared of being scared, and generally unsure of ourselves. But the students themselves welcomed us into their lives. In shrill voices, all of the children bowed down in an unsynchronized “Namaste” before they started to show off their skills.

One girl stood up and sang. One boy recited his numbers. Upstairs, in a classroom for deaf and mute children, two boys recited the alphabet in sign language, which was different in Hindi than in English, and then one proceeded to describe in sign language kids in our group as tall and skinny, or too fat. The school was a bit rundown, small, and the classrooms were dingy. But the students were incredibly excited, and the teachers, who didn’t get paid, were incredibly impassioned.

The institution is funded primarily by private donors, with supplemental government assistance. (Any human or monetary contributions would be greatly appreciated. Go volunteer your time!) As we were about to leave the school, we saw that the students in one classroom downstairs started to dance. The organizers of group were in a tearing hurry (a sensation that one feels immediately upon stepping on Indian soil) but we were all drawn by the music and started dancing, too. Forgetting where we were or who we were supposed to be, all of us, regardless of age, size, disability, or any other characteristics listed on the back of an NJTransit ticket, threw up our hands in delight.

After our workout, we visited some bricklayers beside a farm. While we watched, they systematically, without pause, hauled large red bricks into a truck. They made 50 rupees each for every thousand bricks in the truck. Per day they managed to load 5 or 6 trucks. Their practice of laying bricks had been used for generations. Nothing had changed. Life was completely static. The same sect of people, the same location, the same tools. The efficacy of the methods used denied any need for reform. The timelessness of it all rendered our concerns, our reforms, our ideals, and ourselves obsolete. We just stood watching.

The infamous havelis of Mandawa were next on our Yatra. They were splattered with fading frescoes, missing gems, and dusty halls. We felt estranged from a glorious era, from a past we would never know. Cracks in the walls split the frescoes into distorted images, denying us access to any sort of comprehension. An old man was crouched down by the entrance of one of the havelis repainting the thin vines across the wall. He was retouching the walls, history, and promised us with the soft strokes of his brush the potential of the future.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped to visit a potter. Unlike some of the farmers and bricklayers we had met, this family spoke no English or Hindi, and preferred animated gestures supplemented with Marwadi murmurs. The potter, an old man with a wrinkly face, thin voice, and clear eyes, took a lump of clay, water, and smashed it all down onto a pottery wheel, a perfectly round slab of cement and a rock. Out of one shapeless lump of clay, he managed to make vase, a piggy bank, a tea cup, and a diya. There was absolutely no wastage, and he effortlessly molded the obscure pile of dirt into delicately crafted, functional pieces of art. It was another timeless work—his father was a potter, this man had been a potter all his life, his son was a potter, and his grandson, the little boy running around the place without his underwear, would soon learn the trade.

We got back to the hotel exhausted, sweaty, and grimy, and ready to finally become friends.

The Sound and the Curry

DISCLAIMER: These aren't generalizations. They are observations, some substantial enough to formulate scientific theory.

1. Gum Thriftiness. My father has always taught me the art of saving. I print on old paper, I rarely wash my jeans, and I use Tupperware. I also only eat half-pieces of gum. Unless it is Diwali, a birthday, or New Year's, no one gets a full piece. My father thinks I waste a lot by eating half-pieces; I have been a bit spoiled by my American upbringing. When there is a strong need, he distributes one-fourth to each of us.


2. Animals. There have been times in my life when a potentially fun night has been ruined by the flu, by train delays, by last minute papers. The second night we spent in Rajasthan, on the Bharat Yatra trip, could have been a crazy night of reckless youths were it not for the herd of stampeding buffalo that ran us out of the streets. We had had enough of the wild evening and after some time (during which we conversed with locals and got out hearts beating at a normal pace) we retired to our hotel.

3. More Animals. At one point in Rajasthan we were stopped at an intersection. Quite frankly, I am not sure if it were actually a designated intersection or traffic was just going in all four directions. I looked out the window only to find the epitome of biodiversity waiting patiently beside our tour bus. There was a camel, a stray dog, and a cow, all among the scooters, the rickshaws, the buses, and the people riding bicycles barefoot. Of course, the cow had the right of way.

4. Bowel movements. No matter where in the world he's settled, the Indian will freely, without moral or social compunction, engage in discussion, deliberation, debate of his digestive system. Diarrhea has the potential to bond or to break. It is not uncommon for relationships to form from a shared bout of constipation--one thing leads to another, and while you're busy not shitting, you make some beautiful friends. My grandmother has crafted philosophies based upon daily fecal patterns. If a person doesn't do his business every morning, he creates heat in the body, which in turn affects his mental state, and thus leads to high blood pressure, short tempers, and obscurity of thought.

Indians can be very real, very authentic; everyone knows shit happens, and there's no need to hide it.

5. The Sound and the Curry. Meals are events. There are pots clanging, flames raging, people yelling. Always people yelling. We yell so that people eat, so that they take seconds, so that they don't be shy; they yell to convince everyone of their small appetites, to encourage others to take seconds, to then dispel the lies spread of their minimal appetites by inquiring about dessert. There is a desperation to share, to make sure the visiting relatives have tried the ingenius foods of the New World (i.e., Pinkberry, Taco Bell); and in the midst of this desperation and excitement, the actual food is forgotten, and everyone concludes that the cuisine in America pales in comparison to the wealth of spices, colors, textures of cuisine in India.

6. Frindles. If it sounds right, it probably is a word. Phrases are made up for people with big noses, small cheekbones, skinny arms, fat ankles. Everything in Gujarati, especially, is rooted in an onomatopoeia. Sometimes, even if it phonetically is inconsistent with reality, if it is fun to say, it will pass. Monkeys say "hookla" and frogs say "chow chow." I say nothing, staring at the ceiling in silence for answers.

More to come.