Happy days!

Now for the good news, especially for me. I am taking a well-earned vacation from work and will not be able to access this blog for a couple of weeks. Which means I will see you - whoever reads this - on January 2, 2007. So have a fabulously merry Christmas, a great (and SAFE) end of year celebration and a wonderfully happy, healthy and hilarious 2007. And don't forget them resolutions..you only have to make them, not keep them!

Booked for reading

I am told that Barnes and Noble will soon be in India. The first time I went into one was in New York, a small branch in the mall very close to where I went to college. It soon became a source of comfort, nourishment and oblivion for me, as I browsed through shelves, debated whether I could afford some volume or the other I coveted and sat curled into a chair reading everything from bodice-ripper romances to blood-soaked mysteries to deep pontifications on life, the universe and the syntax of Fino-Ugric (that was not voluntary, it was for a class paper I had to write for a teacher I actually liked and responded well to).

Bookstores have always been a must-go destination for me. This morning I was at one, trying to use up the time between appointments at the in-house café (no, they were not social gigs, but business dates). But it was hardly a time and situation conducive to doing the browsing that any bookshop deserves. I had one eye on my watch, one finger on the keys of my mobile phone texting people who were supposed to have been there ages earlier, and one ear out for the darn gizmo to start its ringing to signal arrivals. So in the melee I missed out on the leisurely troll along the shelves that I revel in.

These days my book buying seems to be all on email. I find a book on an Internet site, or someone tells me about one on the phone or via email, or I read about it in a magazine somewhere, some time. Then I follow up on it online, try and see if I want it, and then go looking for it. In a bookstore? Nah, not today. What I do is email my friendly neighbourhood bookseller, who does occasionally write back to me, and then we negotiate the wheres and whens and I may have the book to hold a few weeks from then. It is satisfying in that I am not wasting time getting to the store and I do get the book eventually. But it is not the same as actually holding in your hand before you buy it, leafing through its pages, feeling the paper, reading the blurbs, seeing the cover…all those things that make buying books so much pleasure.

But just to keep honours even, this morning I managed to buy a book. Two, in fact. I did it simply and fairly painlessly, in the bookstore I was in. I stood in front of the selection that had attracted my attention, called my father to find out what he already had, got a response over sms and then chose what I wanted, all in about ten minutes flat, total, though spread over a couple of hours between meetings. I also got another that I had earlier but that someone had ruthlessly appropriated without so much as a by your leave (actually, I lent it to her, she asked if she could keep it and I agreed, more fool me), because we both liked it so much. And I did some minor prowling around for more, but the boss was demanding my presence back at work and I had to scurry out too soon.

One day I will take time off and go book shopping. Until then, my email account will be kept busy and buzzing with book-knowledge!

All about the self

An old friend was asking me this morning whether I wrote self indulgent fluff in my blog and I had to confess that a lot of the time I did. But there were times when I tried to make some kind of point, talking about what mattered not just to me, but to a lot of people like me and whom I know. On the other hand, isn’t a blog all about self expression? For me, it is.

But what he said started me off on the introspection route. I had been working too hard and worrying too much over the last year and needed time out. But when, where and doing what? After much cogitation, I made my decision. It would be all about self-indulgence, self-satisfaction, self-evaluation. I would take a small holiday in a place that needed no adjusting to, no exploring, no distractions. So it would be home, where I am most comfortable, where I can wander about in the rattiest of clothes (that even my boss and my father would not approve of), with no jewellery, no makeup, no frills, furbelows or pretences. I would have father and kitten to talk to and fight with, to yell at – or bite – me, to love me and to sit with in quiet. And no thoughts of work, of deadlines, of page making or office politics to stress about.

That decided on, I started making a list of what I would do, first off, catch up with sleep. I am not a balanced sleeper at all – sometimes I crash out too early and wake up long before I should; oftentimes I go to bed late and get up before I need to, tossing, turning and generally being miserable about myself and my state of peace and rest. And sometimes I would sit up on my bedroom window and stare blankly out at the traffic, at the cloud-obscured moon, at the cat who prowled through the plants downstairs in the parking lot of our apartment block. And once in a rare while I would seriously consider calling a friend who guarantees me a soothing lullaby and some easy, affectionate chatter that never fails to put my scattered mind in order enough to rest.

But more, it will be a few days of pure sybaritic luxury for me, I promise myself, never mind that I seem to have forgotten how to do nothing. I have a pile of books I want to read and a huge mess of clothes that I have to sort through and take decisions about the fate of, if I may split an infinitive or two (hey, boss, I am learning something from you!)! I have toenails to paint in outrageous colours and those outrageous colours to buy before I can do so. And I have a kitten to play with, a father to discuss matters of seriousness with and some cooking to do that is not subsistence food. A cake, perhaps, some cookies, a Christmas pudding, maybe even a nice fat capon?

More than all this, the true self indulgence will come with time out from routine. No rushing through mail to get to editing content for the pages I work on. No sitting in editorial meetings trying to keep awake and aware and responsive. No wondering why traffic is slower and heavier than usual driving to or from work. And no battling to maintain the always-precarious balance between what I do for a living, what I do to keep alive and what keeps me alive – which are three different aspects of life, if you really think about it.

So, yes, a blog for me is indeed self-indulgent. It lets me talk about what is in my head, what I am about perhaps. And if people read it, maybe someone somewhere will know something about me. Which could be more than I know about myself.

Santa season

It’s getting cooler in Mumbai these days and the nights are a lovely time to sit on the window and watch the lights. Once upon a time it may have been pinpoints of starlight that people could count; today, it is the varicoloured sparkle of traffic, zipping past on the roads that inevitably wind around and through residential areas of the city. There are the flashing lights of the ambulances, way too many for my comfort, their passage orchestrated by the whine of their alarm sirens. There are the streamers of fluorescence from the lines of small lights along the bridge and the trailing tendrils of brightness that show the wakes of large trucks with larger headlamps. At this time of year, these glint and glow through the faint mist that comes with darkness and dawn, settling like a light sheet over the roads and green spaces.

In Delhi, where I lived for a while, you knew that winter had arrived when you couldn’t feel your toes and you couldn’t see your front gate from your living room window (that is presuming you could normally see it from that perspective, of course!). I always have cold feet – literally, not metaphorically speaking – and so knew well when the weather was turning frosty; my toes would be froze even as my upper lip beaded with tiny droplets of sweat during a brisk walk or a romp with the cat. Before the sweaters, the jackets and the warm woolly underwear, I would root through the stored clothes and find socks, the heavier and warmer the better. And there would almost always be an extra blanket or throw over my feet when I snuggled under my quilts. Perhaps one of the most traumatic experiences I ever had in college was during a Halloween evening out, when my boots were soaking wet and my feet were dead blocks of ice, even though the rest of me was fairly warmly clad in miniskirt, sweatshirt and tights.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this time of year in Mumbai is Christmas. Amusing, because it is not an Indian festival, but we, as good Indians, have adopted it with the excuse that any reason to party is a good one. So we have Christmas balls, Christmas dinners, Christmas puddings and even Christmas goose – one of which my boss hopes to cook for himself, his own, one presumes! Funniest of all are the Santa Clauses parked all over the city, in stores, in large and fancy hotels, in schools and college campuses, in the friendly neighbourhood bookstore…and I almost squeaked as I jumped to find one of those behind me as I browsed through the crime section! At every major traffic junction I find sad-eyed but smiling vendors trying to sell me cotton-bordered and pom-pom-bedecked Santa hats, or a small figure of the jolly fat man on a bouncy elastic string to hang from my rear-view mirror.

For me, Christmas has always been a special time of year. From the hot apple cider to the fragrance of pine needles, from the succulent home-cooked ham to the veggies and sour-cream-onion dip, from the presents to the midnight mass, everything is a memory that is almost all good and bright and beautiful. While I may have worked out the truth that Santa is not a real person, but someone pretending to be one, I still believe in the Saviour, joy to the world and seeing the star light up the centre of truth and the future. After all, I watch for that star almost every night!

Sting operation

Some years ago, my mother sat on a wasp. The reactions of the rather startled insect notwithstanding, she was shocked out of her seat (in more ways than one) and exited the cane lounger she was trying to settle into post haste. She did get stung, but was mercifully dressed to minimise the effects – the wasp couldn’t get too far through her sari and petticoat and managed only to leave its sting in her skirts without touching her skin too much. The bug, of course, flew shakily away, muttering direly, out the window, to where it would not be sat on, one presumes.

But getting stung is not a joke. I once got attacked on – of all places – the toe. It’s a long story, so settle in and read…

I was living in my small but charming flatlet in Delhi. It was on the ground floor, a tiny apartment carved out of part of the main house. It had its own entrance and a small garden attached, where I would lounge, cat draped in attendance over my ankles, music plugged into ears, iced herbal tea at hand, basking in the afternoon sunshine, especially during the winter. The garden tended to grow fast, and was either a cool carpet of lush green or a soggy morass of monsoon-soaked turf. I would trot barefoot over it every morning as dawn cracked the day open, headed to get to the newspaper before the morning walkers could catch sight of me in my skimpy nightwear and sleep-frizzed hair. And I would wearily tramp across it to my front door every evening after a long day at work, cat dogging my steps, tripping me up as he told me about his day, the birds he chased, the cats he fought with and the dinner he was being so cruelly deprived of.

That same cat was the one responsible – sort of – for my insect adventure. He played outside much of the day and came in with me in the evening for his snack, cuddle and caterwaul. Then, as I had dinner, he would wander about in the park beyond the cul-de-sac and come back when he was called at about 7:30 at night, when it was dark and the cold got too much for him during the winter or when he was tired and wanted to be fussed over in the summertime. When my parents came to visit, his schedule had to change to adjust to two more people who spoiled him silly, and he wandered longer outside during the evening, being sure enough of constant attention even if he didn’t obey me.

Thus it was one night. Cat had done his affectionate duty by me, eaten his dinner and scampered out to play a little more. But it was time to go to bed for us humans and he had to be indoors before I could lock up for the night. The garden had just been watered and it was cool and refreshing. So cat lay there at the edge of the lawn, his head resting comfortably on a half-empty sack of cut grass, his long legs stretched across the just-planted rose beds. I called, he looked languidly up and lay back down. I yelled, and he merely shifted position to peek at me and then yawn as wide as only a cat can. Then, impatient and getting fed up, I tramped barefoot over the lawn to grab him. As he squeaked and patted my face with his paw, sniffing at my hair and going boneless in the way felines do when they are totally at ease, I felt a very sharp pain in one toe. I couldn’t drop the cat, or he would run away to play somewhere unfindable. I could not do more than say a sharp OW and then totter back into the house clutching cat and thinking very rude words.

There, the cat was dumped unceremoniously on the dining table, the door was slammed and locked shut and I was finally able to hop gingerly to the couch, twittering madly in distress and amazingly intense pain. Collapsing on the couch, I lifted my foot and examined my toe. There, embedded neatly in my second digit, was a small bee, its sting nicely jammed into the front of my toe. Closing my eyes, I pulled it out and flung it out of the small window, through the grill and opened mesh screen. Then I carefully plucked out the sting and looked at it – it resembled a small tack, and was sharp and hard enough to actually be one. My toe hurt so much I couldn’t feel it, and my whole foot was starting to throb violently. But nothing showed there – no redness, no swelling, none of the agony that I knew I was feeling. Ice did help, but only a little. So I was fed an antihistamine and slept through until morning. Mercifully it was not winter, so I did not need to wear socks and boots. I hobbled to work the next morning, trying hard to avoid putting any pressure on the toe as I walked into the office.

The pain subsided in a few days, lasting longer than I would have believed. But the tip of my toe went numb and then gradually, about a month later, shed a thick cap of skin that was an interesting patchwork of blue, black and a more normal brown. It was as if it had an identity crisis – to bee or not to be!

Ill attempts

I stayed home yesterday because I was not feeling my usual perky, happy, healthy self. The previous day, I got home with a horrendous headache and a fever that kept coming and going, leaving me sweaty and shivery in parts (did the curate and his egg figure recently?) and either dizzy or not sure whether my feet still existed. So I was bundled into bed and lectured steadily at intervals through the day, which I listened to patiently and smilingly, knowing that I would do what I wanted to do, nonetheless. But after a rather wobbly trip to the grocery store and an even more wobbly navigation back home, I decided to sit down and be quiet for a while. Which, as always, inevitably, made me think….

I had tried everything, but nothing worked. Over the past week or so, I have gone progressively off shoes, off food, even cheese, and, more important and dire, off chocolate. That last has been bothering my friend Stinky most of all – he knows how much chocolate means to me and how much going off it signifies. So since I mentioned to him my current aversion to the sweet brown stuff, he has been looking at me worriedly over messenger and asking me probingly about my dietary inclinations. I still have not re-found the passion I normally have for the stuff, and until I do, Stinky will continue to be concerned, I bet.

But whenever I feel not quite the thing, I tend to go off something that would otherwise be a habit. Like food. For me, eating is usually a matter of joy, with creating the food even more so. I may not shovel in the grub, but I love the occasional nibbles I take of the various bits and pieces that are in the house, from cold, fresh iceberg lettuce in the vegetable tray to crisp, sweet oatmeal cookies in the jar on the counter. For the past few days, the idea of putting anything beyond regular mealtime food into my mouth has been vaguely repellent. And the taste…ew! Everything, from the dangerously sharp mustard I sweet-talk a five-star hotel restaurant into giving me, to the cement-violet blackcurrent ice cream in the freezer has made me shudder with a certain disgust, while tasting amazingly unlike its normal delicious self.

And then there is the shoe thing. I love shoes, as anyone reading this blog would know. But for a while now I have not responded to anything vaguely resembling footwear, thus worrying everyone from my father to my friends, all of whom know my need to acquire – or at least gaze longingly at – heels with the general configuration of nicely sharpened pencils, straps with the fragility of Murano glass and colours with all the hues of a Zandra Rhodes hairdo. The last time I went to the mall with a friend, I found stuff for her and turned up my little snub nose at the mere suggestion of a scarlet stiletto sandal, which had her crinkling her brow and suggesting that perhaps I need a month at a spa or a new interest in life, like wicked lingerie or a man with a brand new Mercedes that I could drive.

Nothing works right now. So maybe I need to just go forth homewards and sleep it off. There is life after a virus leaves. And there will be shoes, too. And chocolate.

Happy day, BRA!

And that is not a cheery greeting to my lingerie drawer, I promise. What it is, is the 50th death anniversary of BR Ambedkar, the man who is said to have been part of the drafting of the Indian Constitution. We in Mumbai take him very seriously, especially those who are part of or are sympathetic to the great horde of masses commonly known as Dalits, part of the class conscious population that is Indian society. For years now, Ambedkar has been glorified, made a hero, almost deified for his role in promoting the rights of the poor, the downtrodden, the millions of people who are considered somehow lower than “us”, the “us” being the small stratum of elitist “Brahmins” who are allowed privilege because of the accident of their birth rather than their deeds. Be that as it may, this is not a tirade against class inequality or equal rights, trust me.

This is actually about today, the day that it is, what it means to the average resident of (well, almost, since I actually live outside the island city) Mumbai. It all began for us a few days ago, when a mini-uprising shook the general calm that prevails in our burg. There was arson and looting and stone throwing and assorted other violence, all of which resulted in an atmosphere of stressed wariness. But the story actually started a while ago in a small town, where a small group of Dalits was brutally killed. Foment simmered, as it tends to do, and then finally burst into rage with parts of our city being badly shaken by it. And the fallout – over the past two days, there has been extra vigilance and a wee bit more paranoia than Mumbai actually engenders or deserves. Today, Mumbaikars are almost manic in their watchfulness – it is the day when millions gather to pay homage, as the Indians love to say, to the man who fought for their rights. They have been arriving in the city on foot, in buses, in trucks…any which way they can get here and any which way their can be got here by the politicos who are stage-managing the affair.

I am one of the lucky ones who lived on the wrong side of town and thus manages to avoid this time of the year quite neatly. The crowds and confusion tends to teem in the West of the city. Which means that since there is little depth to our metropolis, traffic zips – or tries to – from one end to another in a nicely linear fashion, with few cross-linkages that can add to the chaos. But when we do chaos, we do it very nicely indeed. Yesterday, for instance, there was all the traffic from the western suburbs filtering through a narrow stretch to the eastern side, bogging up both the connecting road and the main highway I take to go home. So instead of zipping along at our normal 70 kmph, the driver, car and myself, accompanied by what seemed to be a ton of just-bought cat litter and a few kilos of biscuits for the feline devil, chugged solemnly along as if we were part of a funeral procession, making slow albeit steady progress all the way home. My boss, who is curmudgeonly at the best of times, was positively nasty-minded by the time he got to work, his normal journey of about 40 minutes taking him two-plus hours as he sluggishly navigated the crowds, the arrangements to cater to them and the police to control them.

But traffic is the least of the problems that Mumbai is facing today. There is the influx of people who don’t belong to the city and so do not have any idea how to function in it. There is the debris that will collect as they exist in a comparatively confined space. There is the flashpoint beyond which tempers will erupt and violence burst through the veneer of peace. And there is the over-preparedness of the police, who have advised the people to take a day off, to stay home, to avoid the centre of the activities like the proverbial plague. Are we perhaps going a little overboard here? Do we need to be so careful? Is the warning to stay indoors not in itself a means to unrest? Is this what BR Ambedkar had in mind when he demanded rights for those who didn’t have them? I wonder…

White washing

I am not talking about the lies people tell, the stories they make up to get into or out of various uncomfortable situations. I am talking about going white, not in clothing, but hair. The issue is not about it happening, but what to do when it has happened.

My mother went white – silver, actually – very late in her life. And I started going the same silver, in a less distinguished way, when my mother went, in the permanent manner that she rather startled us by. While she greyed (for lack of a more elegant term) gently and prettily at the temples, my few white hairs insist on springing straight up from the middle of my hairline, refusing to be subdued into the rest of my carefully groomed mane. When I talk to people, particularly strangers, their eyes tend to wander directly to those errant strands, so violently contrasted to the rest of my very black locks (the part that is natural, not the purple and dark red that is slowly growing out).

The question is, what should I do about those silver streaks? My father and I staunchly vetoed every attempt my mother made to colour her white hair to a less ageing dark brown or black. At the time, though carcinogenic hair dyes were no longer commonly available, the fear lingered, and Mom was forbidden to even think about trying to change what was, to us and much of the rest of the world who ever met her, her amazing beauty, grey hair and all, in any way. For me, my silver is a badge of honour, a memory of a time I would rather forget, incredibly painful, but needed in a strangely comforting way – just like when you pick a scab or poke a bruise and actually like the pain that results. It is, my dermatologist tells me, a sign of trauma and shock. In my mind, a reminder of something that I should have in some way prevented if I had only tried harder, a constant memory of a guilt that I can never rid myself of.

My friends have been dyeing for ages now. They go different colours at various times in their lives. Most of them do it to cover the grey; only a few do it for fun. I coloured my hair about a year ago for a more strange reason – I had it straightened a couple of years ago, then defrizzed at regular intervals since. But all this tinkering involves chemicals, which effectively strip the hair of its natural colour. And my very black hair was slowly turning an anaemic albeit dark brown. The first time the correction was done, I had it laminated, which sounded rather better than it actually was – each strand was nicely coated in a high gloss layer of translucent black that, for some strange reason, dripped darkly onto my neck and shoulders whenever it was wet. The second time, I was more savvy, as was my hairdresser and we opted for a glaze, which left no colour on parts of me when it was dampened. But the glaze I chose was deep purple, which looked divinely Hispanic when I was in sunshine, vaguely fluorescent when I stood under a tubelight and gradually orange as it was exposed to the sun and shampoo.

Finally, a couple of months ago, I did my final colour correction, giggling along with my hairdresser as we turned the orange striped mop that was mine into a uniformly deep red, one that was guaranteed not to morph into something less savoury. It worked and so far I look like I have fairly naturally shaded hair, even with a high water mark of dark red fading into black. And my potentially raccoon-strip of stark silver, of course!

Egg-zackly!

I like eggs. Or do I like eggs? The jury is still out on them. Why? Very simply because I am not sure that eggs like me. It could be like the old avocado story – I love avocado, I would scarf down every one I ever met, but for one small problem: avocados do not like me. They go into my avid tummy and cause it to do an almost instant and astonishingly painful reject, depriving me not only of my will to continue to live, but also of any avocado I may have ingested in the bargain. Eggs do that, too, but not as severely and, puzzlingly, not as often. I am still trying to work that one out.

I don’t remember if I ate eggs when I was very young. Perhaps my fond parents, grandmother and ayah fed them to me, along with other infant delights such as mashed banana and Farex, on which I was brought up for many moons. But the first real memory I have of eating eggs is sitting perched on the kitchen counter just before a dinner party and watching my mother make devilled eggs. She boiled the lot, split them, neatly scooped out the yolks and then mixed them up with mustard, salt and pepper and then refilled the egg-hollows with a piping tube. Seeing me look longingly at the whole process, she handed things over to me and went to check on the table setting. And came back to find me licking the mixing fork, very little devilling in the whites and a blissfully happy smile on my eggy face.

A few years later I was shown how to make French toast. It was a gloriously messy process, from beating the eggs to soaking the bread, and I loved doing it. Until I ate French toast in an American pancake restaurant, that is, where even the egginess of the fried bread was drowned in the sickly sweetness of the maple syrup that bathed it. So I came up with my own version, which we downed by the loaf, as it were. It was basically a sandwich that was dipped liberally in egg and then grilled or pan fried. Made of two slices of thick-cut multi-grain bread (which has a nicer bite when cooked up) with fresh ham, sharp cheese and a couple of slices of tomato stuck in between, with some mustard or tomato chutney for zing. This is gently coated in egg beaten up with a little salt and pepper and finely chopped kothmir and then pan-fried in olive oil with a tiny splodge of butter added to it for flavour. Cut in half and eat with mayonnaise and good company!

Some years later, I was in Khandala on a weekend break with my parents. In between walking miles through the hills and watching the resident golden cobra winding through the rocks in the wall around the house where we were staying, we did our collective best to teach Panduranga the cook how to make boiled eggs – for which I had just then developed a passion. Whether it was altitude of the cold, boiling for even half an hour did nothing to cook the egg beyond very lightly boiled, if at all. After many arguments with the man, we gave up. For the rest of our stay there, if I had to eat breakfast, it was on semi-toasted bread and raw egg yolk – since the glutinous white was too much for my stomach to contemplate. And, after that, whenever I met an egg cooked to that degree of imperfection, it was called the “Panduranga egg”.

Since then, I have stayed away, for the most part, from eggs, except when used in cakes, mayonnaise and an occasional salad inclusion. Like the curate, my tummy and I reserve comment on what they can do for us.

Shoo in, shoe out

I have a reason to worry today, something that has my father and my close friends in a bit of a dither. For the past week or so, every time I think about what was once and for many years my favourite activity, I have felt seriously bilious, vaguely angry and extremely fed up. That in itself is worrying enough, but to add the gravity of the situation, even if there has been provocation of the most delightful kind, I have been unresponsive and even repelled.

I speak of what has always been something that cheered me up through my darkest, direst moods, something that always made my eyes light up and my ears wiggle in delight. Shoes. Footwear. Sandals. Chappals. You know - that species of object that fits neatly on the feet. The pleasure these accessories gave me has waned, faded, passed into oblivion, gone. But for ever more? I am not sure. I have no clue. I do not know. Maybe I never will.

I suspected that this was happening when my friend who makes shoes for me called a couple of weeks ago. Your sandals are ready, he announced with a certain pride of creative ownership. Come and get them from the shop. These are a delightful pair of red and black heels that I have had duplicated from a favourite pair I once bought in Delhi, and I would use every opportunity I could to slip into them and swan around. But I still have not collected the new pair. I don’t, frankly, feel like.

Today I went with a friend to the mall. She hopped in and out of three shoe stores. I followed dutifully behind, found her a gorgeous pair that she fell in love with, tried and bought, while I stood by, bored and wanting nothing more than to go home. I had none of my usual covetousness as I watched her acquire the open toed, kitten heeled black and grey pair. She pointed out an interesting set of heels in brilliant fire-engine red, with the sharply perilous height I so like, and I shrugged and refused to even try them on. You are seriously not well, she said, a glint of worry in her nicely lined eyes. We left the store, taking the pair she had bought but none for me.

I am still trying to figure out why this is happening to me. Could it be because I am tired? Could it be because I have another interest for now – lingerie, clothes, jewellery, food, even mugs? Or could it just be a bad case of ennui, of seeing to much and having too much for anything to spark that gleam in my eyes that say loud and clear that I WANT! And I WILL GET!?

What is wrong with me? I am seriously worried. Any clues, anyone?