A stitch in time

I don't know why, but good tailors, like maids, are very difficult to find. For some months now, even a couple of years, I have been looking for someone to make my fashion statements a reality, be they straight and simple salwar kameez - the best thing you can wear in the heat of Mumbai's October - or more complex tunic tops that have to be a perfect fit whatever you wear them with. And every time I go through the aggravation of a getting a new person to make clothes for me to conform to schedules, I swear that I will wear readymades from that day forth. And then I find some wonderful fabric that I just have to own in that ideal style...

When I was little, I had someone to make my clothes for me - these people were meticulous, fast, creative, up-to-date and very very good. They were easily accessible, threw only the very occasional tantrum and sourced all the fabric and the accoutrements that were required without being specifically asked to. Overnight deliveries were also the norm. I still call them my favourite in-house designers - my parents made pretty, unusual and exclusive little frocks for me using an antiquated sewing machine, novel ideas and lots of love.

Then we outsourced. A tailor in a tiny shop in the garage of a building down the road made me clothes to my mother's design. That worked out pretty well, except for one instance that I can remember when we arrived at the hole in the wall place and found it firmly shut and my parents were understandably annoyed. Another of the same ilk was found closer to home at a later time in my life and he did a decent job too...until I found one in a shop that rubbed shoulders with the circulating library I temped with - that made getting clothes made the easiest thing in the world. And I could throw a fit when something was not ready as planned and still take it home with me, finished to my needs, when I was ready to leave work for the day. I used the same tailor for many years, from my school uniform days to when I started wearing saris to work, and he was allowed to make personal comments about my changing dimensions and sartorial tastes without my being too offended.

Then we moved house and I had to find someone closer to home. This, my mother did for me when I was away, and she more or less 'adopted' a newbie 'designer' to source fabric and make her designs reality. So I acquired a larger wardrobe than I had ever had in my life, with clothes for all occasions, from ratting about at home to attending the toniest dos in town. But soon, with familiarity and time, the lady started acting up, as they all do. Mistakes had to be forgiven as if they had never been made. Promised delivery dates were taken as a joke rather than a commitment and changes were made arbitrarily, as if I had no say in what I wanted to wear. When I started losing fabric that I had found after exhaustive searching and was given more excuses than clothes promised, I gave up. And have never gone back.

Now I use a tailor in town who works with a small boutique that I frequent (yes, the one I fall up the stairs of). He is unreliable with his timings, vanishes for days together and has no idea that it takes a lot of effort and time to drop by the store to collect stuff he had vowed he would have ready. Of course, he is rarely there for me to tell him. But it seems as if I will soon need to find someone new to make my wardrobe bloom the way it always has.

In poor taste

This is a buzz that has been slowly building, starting with a tiny mushroom cloud of objection in India and growing to a louder noise overseas. Vogue India, which launched a year ago with a great deal of fanfare and many large expectations, has given itself a good helping of egg on its own face. How? Simply by publishing fashion photographs that, while gorgeous as images, are in crashing bad taste as far as the concept and sensibility is concerned. Some people consider it no really big deal - to show the rural poor ornamented (that is really the only word that seems right here) with accessories that only the urban very rich can consider acquiring seems most inappropriate and the kind of statement that would make almost anyone with any sensitivity screw up their noses (well-bred, urban, rich and otherwise) with a certain touch of delicate disgust. It certainly made my schnoz lift a little higher and crinkle a bit. If I had been at home when I first saw the fashion spread that was published, I may have been have been rather more vocal in my feelings about it.

It is not that the pictures were not fabulous; like almost every image I have ever seen in Vogue from anywhere in the world, they were. Stunning. But, when you think about the huge gulf between the haves and the have-nots, the spread was singularly insensitive, never mind that the editor (a lovely woman I slightly know) justified it by saying that everyone everywhere enjoys beauty, never mind which economic stratum they belong to. The people in the photos may have been well recompensed for their smiles and pride in wearing (a Fendi bib on a child) or using (a Burberry umbrella carried by a gnarled old man) products that they would probably never have access to under normal circumstances. But they would obviously have to return them at the end of the shoot, and any damage caused inadvertantly to the objects would have been paid for in some degree of angry outburst or nasty sniping. The whole thing smacked painfully of a patronising attitude and a lack of any consideration for the people and their reality. The international media has been severe in its criticism of the spread. The Indian media has jumped on the castigation bandwagon with a certain relish that is often the lot of those who have what is envied. I waited to find out what the whole story was before I decided to write this. In the meanwhile, this noise has faded somewhat and the next has probably been fuelled by something else that someone else did.

But there is another aspect to the whole thing, the one that has made me write this, in fact. As a wonderful and wise gentleman pointed out to me. India is one of the world's largest hubs for the recycling business. Everything from old computers to clothes to ships to food finds a market here. It is mended, refurbished and resold, more than enough of a business for many to find their livelihood in it. It may well be that the Fendi bib and the Burberry umbrella find a home here, with these same people who could never think of buying it, at some stage in the life of the object. And they would probably carry it or wear it or use it with the same pride that their beaming faces showed in the pictures that have generated so much controversy.

Communication gaps

Funny how we are all so dependent on connections. Once upon a time this used to mean the people we knew or the people our parents and friends knew, but today it is all about telephone links, be they for private conversations, office intercom systems, mobile telephones, fax machines, email and, of course, the Internet. This is about as useful as the people who know people that we need to know, but in a way it is a huge handicap to not be able to get in touch in the good old-fashioned way. In some ways, of course.

Why am I on this track today? After many weeks of being completely in touch with the outside world - I am really not sure whether that is a blessing or the proverbial curse, since instead of my online messengers popping up and people spitting angst at me via the Web, I get text messages from people who need help of some kind or the other, along with the occasional actual telephone call on one of the landlines that feed into our house. Like I said, curse or blessing - the jury is still out on that one.

I know and fully well agree that to be so connected is a good thing. I remember when I was writing a column along with the occasional article for publications overseas and had to run around to find stamps, mailboxes or, at the very least, a post office. Today, having very recently seen the mail piled up in the local post office near where we live, I shudder to think that I was once so dependent on a system that is, on the whole, extraordinarily efficient, but slow and tedious and troublesome. Today, all I need to do is get online, talk to whoever editor needs whatever written and send it off with the click of a key or two and very little effort or hassle.

Ok, so there is a point to this little rant. The Net is not working here. Both broadband connections are phut, kaput, not functioning, and I am using a dial-up connection that could do the same at any time. Which makes me write frantically faster just to make sure that I get this over with before I get bumped off the line. Which means that I better stop right now or risk having to do this all over again!

Happy happy happy!

Today I turn a year older - but not much wiser - and have spent most of the day smiling, laughing, being happy. Calls, text messages and emails from friends from all over the world have made the day a joyous one, with the constant and loving presence of my small family making it, as always, that little bit extra-special. Chocolate has been the theme of the day (if there were more days like this one, I would be horizontal rather than vertical as a bodily presence!) and from cake to cookies to candy, the bon mot has been the semisweet brown stuff of which dreams can be made.

But today is also a good excuse not to write anything meaningful, beyond a happy burble, in this blog. After all, it is my birthday and I am allowed to be sort-of-incoherent, giggly and rather pleased with my life. Over the past year, freed from interruptions and disturbances, it has been good. No unnecessary incursions, no unbalancing presences, no unwanted invasions of my privacy, personality or psyche. And that, methinks, is the best present a girl can ask for, diamonds, chocolate and Jimmy Choo sandals best relegated to the back shelf of an already overloaded closet!

Happy day, all ye folks wherever thou may be!

View matrimony

(And another...)

Essentially, everyone is a closet Bridget Jones. That is what someone said to me recently. By this logic, all women – though I would prefer to say ‘most’, or even ‘many’ – see the ultimate destination for themselves to be the state of holy, happy matrimony. Which means happily ever after with someone who is as close to the man of their dreams as it has been possible for them to find. Add to that a balanced family of two children, one of each kind, a supportive set of relations by blood and marriage and a stable home with no landlord demanding rent increases, a stable bank account with no EMIs demanding instant payment and a stable professional set-up with no irascible bosses demanding unreasonable satisfaction and there you have it: nirvana for the woman of this world. Isn’t that what someone like Anita, in the hotly haute fiction release Marrying Anita by Anita Jain is trying to find? Or even the far younger Arshi, in You Are Here, from blogger-author Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, who, with all that youthful adventuring and postcoital musings, seems to want?

But – and this is always a big but – there is one big fly in this particular soup, especially for the modern urban woman. Even as she longs for marital bliss (in a manner of speaking, of course), and even though she will never tell Mother, who is lifetime-guaranteed to utter her favourite phrase of ‘I told you so’, she will only settle for the man she believes to be ‘right’. Ah, and there lies the nub. With our cited population statistics and the hoo-ha about sex selection being given such importance in, unexpectedly, upmarket areas of major metropolises like Mumbai, one question never gets a satisfactory answer: Where are all the men?

Like so many Indian women, I traveled the whole route when it came to the husband-hunting scenario. Ever since I turned legally eligible, or even perhaps before that, I was trotted out to various dos to be ‘met’ and to ‘meet’ the families of young men who satisfied all the mandates of becoming one half of the to-be ‘us’. I rarely came across the men themselves, since most were away studying to become green card holders or were waiting for that significant visa change in, usually, some small town in the United States. With typical Tam-Bram snobbery, nicely blended with Mills and Boon aspirations, I wanted more and never hesitated to announce that to my own family, often with the fallout echoing loud, clear and tearfully through a locked bathroom door. As I got older, of course, I got more assertive and, mercifully, less valuable in the marriage market and I finally got the space I wanted. Before that, I had to go through a number of sessions of desperately searching for something, anything, to say to fond mothers who stared piercingly at me and tsked about my academic ambitions and vaguely uneasy fathers who smiled tentatively at me and wondered what books I read.

Those were the days I wanted to find my own man, my dreams techni-coloured by romance novels, The Princess Bride and my own parents’ story. Today, much older and rather wiser, I find that men have not changed, except to slide a little lower on the evolutionary scale. They put out their charm, which never fails to put up my defenses, and the lines that they come up with have me on the verge of giggles at a moment when I should be smiling idiotically, starlight glimmering in my carefully shadowed eyes. Or else they are paranoid about maintaining their own privacy, never even telling you if they are married, never mind that they want to invade every aspect of your own – from the colour of your undies to the last time you were sexually active – all via sms, email or some other disembodied form of modern communication. And, what is really funny is that they have no idea what your own intentions (if indeed you have any beyond mere friendship) are, with regards to them!

Seriously speaking, being single, by choice or by fate, is not a pleasant route to travel in the real world. Not in this country, not in this context, not even in this metropolis we call modern, liberated and accepting. Not even if it is what you have chosen for yourself. Apart from public opinion, which can be fairly painful if you let it bother you, there is an overwhelming feeling of sadness when you contemplate the simple – and single most important – fact that when your door closes at night, you are alone, never mind the cat who shares your pillow. As the youngest in your family, it is inescapable, inevitable, that you are the only person left as everyone else slowly gets done with their lives. And then what happens? Do you keep yourself company in the mirror like an ageing movie star long after her sell-by date? Does someone from your vast and intimate circle of friends find you dead on the floor of your apartment days after you are gone, your body slowly rotting and reeking? It is a frightening prospect. One that makes it well worth the trouble to find a man (or woman, if you prefer) that you can spend the rest of your life with, thali strung around your neck and your vows to love, cherish and belong until the death or a new love do you part forever etched in your psyche.

Never say sari!

(Again, I cheat a little. This was published Sunday...)

I first wore my grandmother’s wedding sari when I was 15, to a wedding reception. The gold threads checked over the heavy emerald green silk glimmered under the bright lights and the almost-solid gold work on the red border was more brilliant than any jewellery worn that evening. It weighed me down to the point of exhaustion; the zari work on it was gorgeous, heavy, enduring. It was stored in my mother’s closet, cuddled in soft silk and gently scented with sandalwood. And when I took it out a few days ago to look at it, admire it, treasure it, I found that it had not aged well at all. The green of the body had faded to an unsightly patchy paleness and the gold had weighed down the fabric so that it was shredding and, in fact, tore wit a dreadful sound even as I lifted it delicately to check how badly it was damaged. Many self-recriminations and some tears later, I had to conclude that there was little that could be done to save it. But what could be done with it?

The saris my mother left behind will probably last some years longer, but the few that she inherited from her family need urgent attention, never mind that they have been babied and protected from bugs and the elements alike with more care than the family itself perhaps got. There are a number of small streetside shops in Kalbadevi who have a solution to this problem, one that many women today must face when they consider their own sartorial heritage. One that I have been to on occasion is run by a gentleman who is very careful with not just the garment, but also the feelings of those who bring it in to him. He sits on a soft cotton gadda in a small shop set into the wall of a building just across the way from the famous silver bazaar behind Mumba Devi temple, and hordes hundreds of rolls of silk strips in specially built drawers lining the space. And he shows off his treasures – this border came from a wedding sari from a royal family, he says, as he unrolls a dazzling length of gem-studded silk. And this, it shows a whole army – see, here are soldiers and elephants and even guns!

As he speaks, he evaluates the sari you have brought him. He is gentle, understanding that the piece is woven through with memories and some sadness. But see, the silk is shredding, so it is no use keeping that. But the border is still lovely; this is not real gold, it is silver that had been plated or washed – he holds a match to a single thread he pulls out of the zari. He weighs the sari, makes elaborate and mysterious calculations keeping the day’s gold and silver prices in mind, and then suggests a price. He will save the border for someone – and many come to buy, fashion designers, sari shops, people who want something special to use on their clothes, even foreigners who will add these touches of ‘exotica’ to their sofa cushions or curtains – not to long ago, Bloomingdales in New York had a sellout line of organza, crepe and tissue curtains edges with antique sari borders. Or else he will melt down the precious metal in unusable saris to form a small lump of silver, perhaps even gold, to be sold to jewelers in the same loop.

Many of these sari borders are the mainstay of small shops in Kalbadevi, Chor Bazaar and the various fabric markets in the city. Yusuf Sareewala runs one such store, which stocks thousands of borders typical of various cultures – from the old Parsi garas, Maharashtrian, Gujarati, South Indian, Orissa and so many other forms of weaving and embellishment. This is where many of the big-name designers find treasures that they use in their own work – Neeta Lulla and Manish Malhotra, for instance.

But a heritage sari does not always have to be cut up and reused or its border sold and used by someone else to create new fashion. Designers suggest keeping the vintage drape, but updating it with a more ‘today’ blouse - Gaurav Bhatia, for one, who with his wife Pratima works on creating exquisitely ornate garments, says, “We never encourage a wedding sari being cut up — that would almost be sacrilege! There are ways to drape it that will make it re-usable. And you can always give it a twist with unique blouses.”

A new blouse will not save my grandmother’s wedding sari. But maybe the gentle-man in Kalbadevi can help keep some of my heritage alive.

Exploring taste

Father calls me a sucker and always says that shopkeepers rejoice to see me coming, since they can sell me almost anything. While I have to admit that I do buy things that perhaps many would not, this is not arbitrary shopping. I do pick and choose from the array that I am shown and I generally know what I am getting, or what I want to try and do with what I take away with me. And, don't forget, in me are the genes of that redoubtable woman who bought everything from feminine hygiene products to cocoa powder to plastic brooms from women who came to our door selling these products, more because "Poor things, they looked as if they needed the money!" than because any of these purchases were required in our house. Mother passed these qualities - to call them 'virtues' would be perhaps inappropriate - on to me, her daughter, and though I do not entertain door-to-door salespeople, I am, admittedly, rather a sucker for a sob story. But, as I never fail to stress, especially to those who would make fun of my shopping habits, what I buy almost always is useful. And when they remind me about the kurta that melted in the wash, the pillow cases that never fit anything and the jam that was more synthetic than a nylon sari, I quickly change the subject. No, I am not looking furtive, let me assure you.

Today I spent some time at the market, going through what they had at one of my favourite stores. 'Favourite' because it stocks stuff that I have little use for and have rarely ever come across, mostly because it is all hardcore traditional South Indian, which is a genre that is unfamiliar, exotic and very interesting indeed. Like puttu mix, for one - I often joke that I like being half Malayali, but that is mainly for the food and the saris, I insist. Never having been to Kerala and not having eaten much of the region's cuisine - apart from standards like adai, avial and beef chilli fry - to me it seems like the land to explore, to enjoy. And the closest I can get is the food. But, as I always tell the man who serves customers at this particular shop in the heart of the South Indian enclave in the city, I cannot make it unless I know what it should be like in its authentic version. Puttu has been described to me as a kind of polenta, or a dirty grey goo that can be used to seal tiles in a bathroom, by different people, of course, but neither gives me an idea of what the stuff tastes like. So while I eye the packet of puttu powder carefully from a distance and wonder aloud to my friend at the store, I have never yet found the courage to buy it and try it. Anyway it takes a special contraption to cook it in, Father tells me.

There is so much more at just this shop that has caught my fancy. From string hoppers to stuff made with ragi (our equivalent of rye, I think), dried fry-ables to fresh sweets with a ghee-coconut aura, interesting little packets of powders and other perishables...I am slowly working my way through the stock. Today I got some puliinchi, a spicy pickle-like sauce that I have been wondering about for a few years now. What it will taste like will determine what I do with it. AT best, I can store it to use every now and then in various avatars; at worst, some friend who likes culinary exotica will inherit it.

And so the story goes with all that is new and acquired...

Bare necessities

It's funny how much you can pare down all those things you always thought were so vital to life and living it. When I decided to take a break from working full time, one of the main aspects of my life I wanted to focus on was to get completely well - my sugar levels tended to go ff kilter very easily, I was gaining weight for no discernible reason and my foot (one or the other, occasionally both) was giving more trouble than all my wonderful collection of shoes was worth. My doctor said most of it was stress related and somehow I had to agree, since I had more or less eliminated all the other factors involved and saw how on the days I did not go in to work, I felt so much better. So, after much thought and some agonising, I made up my mind, shocked a few friends and many who knew me only casually and walked out of a life that had become a painful routine and into one that is, in many ways, so much happier and healthier.

Not too long ago, a lot of people I know did not believe in stress as a genuine health unbalancer, if I may make up my own wonderful word. Today, almost everyone blames some part of their mental, physical or emotional disturbances on stress, taking occasional time out to fix the problem, instead of - like me - waiting until it gets to a point where it becomes a choice between going on or falling flat on your face. And it is so necessary to stop, think, sort things out and then go back to what you are doing, feeling newer and more improved than ever. In the process of doing this for myself, I have found that so much of what I once believed to be essential is actually trivia that can very easily be left behind without too much heartburn.

Like make-up, fancy clothes and jewellery, snob value shoes and bags and whatever else goes on you rather than into you. While I still love all that, I do not miss it beyond the very basic elements of the feel of luxe fabric, the beauty of an exclusive jewel or the exquisite vamp of a stiletto sandal. It is external, a kind of take it or leave it sort of situation that I can have fun with now that I do not feel constrained to be part of it. I know that when I do decide to go back to working full time outside my own home, I will go back into the cycle of putting on my face, choosing my clothes carefully and sliding into pretty heels before going out and about, but for now, casual pajamas, flip-flops and a clean and shiny face are fine by me, thank you!

But there is more to time out than these accessories. There is the attitude that matters. Even though you, like me, will always want to know what people you care about feel and think about you and your work and more, spending a little time thinking about what you really are and want makes you realise that realistic, honest, critical self-image is far more important than how others see you. Can you look at yourself in the mirror and approve, not from a vain and conceited perspective, but with truth and detatchment, and like what you see? Today, two months after I quit working, I do. I know that what I am may not be what I have always wanted to be, but it is a far more balanced, interesting and, most and best of all, happy soul that looks back at me.

Just for that, everything that I have given up for now is well worth it.

Well bread

(Ok, so I am being lazy. Again, a just-published piece...)

A long time ago, I decided I no longer wanted to eat packaged white bread. Perhaps it came after an encounter with the famed Wonder Bread, that marvel of American culinary engineering – a whole large loaf can easily be compressed into a think slice of not-too-dense dough, with lots of additives, preservatives and goodness knows what else added to give it the texture, taste and never-say-die character it has. And while the resilience and immortality of the stuff made it manna from bakery heaven for the average college student living in a dorm, it did not appeal to me. Then gradually exploring and learning my own city of Mumbai, I found lots of small family-run bakeries that produced bread that was, to say the least, interesting. Some of them I still drop in to sniff today, the fragrance of cinnamon and candied peel blending nicely with the aroma of fresh-rising dough and the hot metal of the pans the bread and cakes are baked in.

A few days ago I went to Yazdani, in a small lane behind Flora Fountain. My goal was their well-known seven-grain bread, something that has an ever-evolving taste and texture and, in its round-loaf form, looks astonishingly like a large cow pat. It is not seven-grain any more, the chap in charge told me, as I waited for my order to be packed up. It now has nine grains. And he proceeded to list them – dalia, sunflower seeds, ulsi, bajri, jowar….I lost count and may even have got some wrong. The bread also comes in smaller buns and regular sliced loaves and is lauded even by the nutritionists at Bombay Hospital, my friend told me proudly. It tastes best fresh and toasted crisp around the edges, with lashings of salted butter melting into its grain – all nine of them.

Comparable but about twice the cost is the multi-grain ‘jumbo’ bread at the delicatessen at the Oberoi hotel (now the Trident?). It is enormous and sliced not too thin, ideal for a sandwich with the fairly mild flavours of celery-spiked chicken salad or just cream cheese and a few leaves. It has a solid bite, with a nutty chuck as punctuation, refrigerates well and makes good French toast when it gets older. There is a more-ish-ness to it and, I am told, the fibre content and the proteins from the various seeds and grains making it as healthy as it is delicious.

The multi-grain loaf at Banyan Tree in Worli is dark and earthy. While most of the grains – at least the seeds – seem to be on the outside and tend to fall off when you slice through the uncut loaf, it tastes of good health and freshness, with an odd oiliness to the outside which makes for nicely crunchy toast. Eaten with unsalted butter, it is perfect, but made into a sandwich with gentle flavoured fillings, it makes you look forward to lunch.

A number of bakeries big and small are now producing wonderful multi-grain breads. The shop at the Orchid does it pretty well, while chains like Bread Talk and Oven Fresh are not bad. It is not difficult to make at home either, easiest by just adding various whole or cracked grains and seeds to the basic whole wheat bread mix. And it is a delicious way to keep your body – and your conscience – in great shape!


Great fillings for multi-grain bread:
Smoked salmon
Chicken salad with mild mustard and chopped celery
Cream cheese
Unsalted butter with a tangy mango chutney
A slice of grilled tofu with a little balsamic vinegar

Science and smuggling

(Sometimes you just like how a story you wrote for a newspaper turns out. Like this one. With all the hype and hullaballoo about the new machine at CERN and figuring out how the universe was created, people seem to have forgotten the human aspect, the gentle joys and laughter that went into the process. These are some of my memories of a time when life was simpler and softer...)

Arriving in a suburb of Geneva on Mayday was a kind of foretaste of what was to come for us in the time that we lived in the city. Everything was closed as tight as only the Swiss could do it, except for a tiny branch of a chain department store, where we found a couple of cans of petit pois and the last crusty loaf of bread that we grabbed from under the outstretched hand of a browsing housewife. We had just landed in the city – in the country, in fact – that was to be home to us for a while on a total holiday and had no idea what to find where and how, but we went about looking for it anyway, undaunted. Father was doing a stint at CERN, working on the cross-border SPS (the Super Proton Synchrotron) – the hot haute machine at the time – and we soon learned what life as a CERN family was all about.

Enmeshed in a gently strict but intense Baccalaureate programme at the local international school, I had little time to absorb or even understand that ethos of belonging to the scientific community, but various terms soon entered my vocabulary. SPS, of course, was one, the ring-shaped facility where Father did experiments studying the quark-gluon plasma and various other nuclear physics delights. The instant high level of respect we got in contrast to the way gastarbeiters or immigrants were treated was another. What was more fascinating to watch from a youngster’s perspective was the family’s varied biorhythms. Father was often asleep when I left for school or had gone out to work long before dawn cracked, since the tests were done around the clock and the team worked on a shift system. He told us stories of the people he worked with, like the Portuguese who admired a pretty girl’s behind with typical physicist jargon: “What an oscillator!”

Every now and then he had a full day off and we would all go grocery shopping. Meat in France was far better than that available in Switzerland; there was also Evian to be bought in carton-loads, since the water in Geneva ran right off the Saleve, limestone and all, and was hideous to drink, and then there were the wonderful potato chips that only the vast store just across the border had… Going through customs was a cinch for us. The car had a small round sticker on it that identified it was belonging to a CERN-ite and we waved and smiled as the bar lifted and allowed us to coast through from one country to the other. Perhaps the only time that the customs stopped us was when we were smuggling meat on one of our trips – it was rationed then, to half a kilo per adult, and we had about three kilos in the boot. But no, no danger, they waved us through after admiring Mum’s sari. The sticker was essential for Father, since he worked in France but lived in Switzerland and had to navigate the Duane many times a day in a long tunnel that was a special entrance to the research centre. It was almost Bond-ish, or even something out of Le Carre, with hidden eyes watching every move and monitoring each trip.

The SPS, which now feeds the brand new LHC (Large Hadron Collider) for the just-started experiment to recreate the Big Bang, was also where I did the main experiment for my biology lab for the Bacc. A few select mung beans were put into the ring and subjected to high-level magnetism, after which the beleagured seeds were coaxed to grow – which they did, dutifully pointing in the direction I had said they would when influenced neo-germinally by magnetic forces. I got a decent grade for it, too. And as he took me for a little permitted tour into the facility so I could see just where my seeds would be placed, Father explained how the new and hugely larger ring would be built, deep under the place we called home a long time ago.

Into the past

I had lunch with an old friend yesterday, someone I had not seen in ages, but have always been in touch with. As we sipped cold water, munched pizza and pushed our hair, blowing in the sea breeze, off our foreheads, we laughed and talked and generally caught up with each other. IT was a fun time, one that we promised each other we would repeat, and as we parted, smelling gently of fresh air and a little garlic, it was with a smile, a hug and a knowledge that we were on the same wavelength. Even though we had known each other for a long time, this was the first time we met on a 'social' basis, apart from long chats over the phone and the occasional meeting on the stairs of the office building or at her desk to which I would bounce to say a cheery hello, usually en route to somewhere else.

But there was another person at the lunch table, too, someone I had known a long time ago and not met since. She was in closer touch with this person, and knew more about what had happened to all of us in the interim. He was a journalist at one point in time, and we worked at the same newspaper for a short while before our paths diverged, travelling routes fairly distant from each other, I would say. He had the same wild hair, the same smiling look in his eyes and the same laid back way of sitting, talking and reacting, as well as the same way of staring penetratingly at me (and her, I presume), as if to try and figure out what I was about after all these years. He is now a scriptwriter for television and is doing very well for himself, my friend told me, and seemingly happy with his life.

Well, perhaps our lives have not diverged that drastically. I also write for a living, more or less, and have a great deal of fun doing it. I think the difference is, apart from my being female and from a different kind of life in many ways, that I do not care as much for what I do. What matters to me, I think, is why I do it and how I feel in doing it, whatever 'it' may be. To me it is more important to be happy, satisfied and changing something in your life for the better, than the paycheck at the end of the assignment or even the name on the article. Does that make sense?

But what I found, in talking with my friend and our companion, was that I do not seem to be very ambitious. I do not want to write a film script or make a television show that is new and different. I do not want to be part of creating a newspaper that is well presented and edited and read - I just got out of that, remember! What I do want to do is enjoy whatever it is I am doing, with the end result, apart from the nice fat check, of course, being a sense of achievement, a sense of pride in having done something worthwhile, a sense of making people who see my work think of me with a certain feeling of joy. And whether it means writing a book or writing fortunes for cookies or even writing a brochure for a lipstick line, that is why I like doing what I do. Because, for me, it all happens.

A little left over

It’s funny how things end up. I had a fridge full of leftovers only this morning and now much of it has been transformed into just a few dishes full of deliciousness. And I do not speak as a conceited cook, but a very practical housekeeper. Since I hate wasting anything, I threw some of that spicy green chutney I got with the kebab takeway into a dressing for a potato salad, chopped the last couple of kebabs themselves into a sort-of-kind-of-maybe version of the famous Delhi speciality, butter chicken and introduced the little bit of potato sabji to the mouth-tinglingly chilli-spotted spinach and corn that lurked in the far corner of the bottom shelf next to the end of the banana bread. Which could probably go into a fruit-filled trifle that we could slurp up with ice cream, don’t you think?

My existence tends to be full of leftovers, of which only the edibles are saved; the rest goes into the trash. For years I have been able to get rid of the unusable bits and pieces that almost always make up a life. Photographs, emails, gifts, even memories are binned as soon as the person involved has made his or her exit from my small world. And while I do not really have any bitterness or even any feeling attached to those relics, I do occasionally pull the time shared out of my mental closet and check to see if those too can be thrown away. If they have some flavour left that will not give me the burps, they are packed carefully back into the box that they were stored in and shoved into the deep dark corners of my mind, where they rightly belong.

What bothers me, however, and prevents the cleaning and storage process of all these experiences is if part of it is left incomplete. Sort of like a box of peanuts all ready for grinding which never makes it to peanut butter. Or a pair of jeans that does not fit right any more, but will still be saved for that time of ‘just in case’ which, of course, never arrives. I hate people vanishing without explanation, however offensive and unwarranted the probable cause may be. I hate the explanations that always begin with “I don’t know why…” and end with “It’s not you, it’s me.” What is worse is a self-pitying, self-righteous silence and inaccessibility. And I hate knowing that all this will bug me, no matter that I know full well that I wanted to get out of something long before it ever ended and just never figured out how to close the book when there were still many chapters to read through. This works with jobs, with relationships, with book contracts, with any kind of agreement.

I wish life was like refrigerated leftovers. Then each phase of it would come to a logical conclusion, to be gently melded into something else that is far more useful or thrown away because it smells a little odd and leers at you when you peer into its container.

ATM blues

I am often teased for being occasionally inept with ATMs. When I worked in town, there was an ATM on the ground floor of the heritage building in which the newspaper office was based. It was all a fairly new concept at the time and many people, not just me, had problems with it. I could manage most of the time, but occasionally failed to get the door open - it had to be swiped with the ATM card and almost always stuck. Of course, that started it. I would surely bog up the ATM, people said, rather nastily I thought. And my reputation as such survived.

But, compared to a lot of people, my record with ATM machines is pretty clean. I left my card in one only once and that was an emergency situation, where I had to deal with a crisis at work after a sudden phone call that pulled me away from the machine when I was just done taking out money. Of course, the bank charged me for a new card, but also upgraded me and never had me pay for that. Which all worked out for the best in the end. And ever since I remember, I have been using one of these facilities for everything from depositing money to taking it out, transferring it across accounts and making sure that all transactions were as they should have been.

So why am I moaning about these things if they work fine for me? Simple because the ATM I went to today misbehaved. I did everything it told me to, from feed in my card and then my password number, to specifying what service I wanted to access and whether it was indeed me. Short of giving the powers-that-be a retinal scan and DNA sample, I did it all right. But then it spat the card back out at me and said the machine was not working. At which point I stormed out of there and stomped away, saying some very rude words to myself.

Of course, the annoyance had a deeper root than the obvious. I knew the teasing, which had faded into almost non-existence after so many years of doing well with ATM machines and cards, would make a comeback that would have anyone sizzling a bit at the gills. And thus is is indeed.

Size doesn't matter

(Who says you need to be working with a newspaper to write for it? I wrote this for the paper I was with before I decided to go on sabbatical, and it was published a little while ago. I was going to delete it, but then I kinda liked it...)

For an audience, Indian art tends to have no format. It is truly free expression, with so many styles and formats that the average critic would be hard-pressed to find words to describe it, briefly and completely. From traditional realistic art to the more modern abstract works of today, from the tiny miniature paintings of the north to the massive installations of contemporary artists, there has been no real unifying thread and no particular trend that can be easily identified. However, with the growing international popularity of new Indian art and ever-increasing exposure to global ideas, many artists in this country have been experimenting with scale, line, form and, of course, style.

And with the growing need to explore and a new freedom that comes from spiraling market prices and a surety of finding a buyer, comes a new way of thinking: BIG. There is space to dream and an awareness that somewhere someone will want to acquire the work, and artists spread themselves, fairly thick on the ground. Consider Jitish Kallat, for one, whose works are self-confessedly ‘monumental. A few months ago he revealed Aquasaurus, a seven-metre-long water tanker made of the same kind of bones that he used for his Autosaurus. It was awe-inspiring in its scale, living up to Kallat’s reputation for enormous works (Artist Making a Local Call, Public Notice II, 365 Lives) created with contemporary issues, social comment and a dash of humour in the thought process behind it. The viewer has options – to try and find perspective from outside the piece, or to stand within it and explore its various aspects.

There have been many others, old and new. Many years ago, MF Husain painted his cavorting horses for a wall of a research institute in Mumbai. Ravinder Reddy’s big-eyed heads take up plenty of room in various corporate houses, while Navjot Altaf’s very large flame-orange sculptures can displace a good-sized truck. Pakistan-based Rashid Rana, who showed at Chemould Prescott Road some months ago, covered huge expanses with his digital print composites – Offshore Accounts, for instance, spread across two walls, angled together. Reena Saini’s Walls of the Womb at Galerie Mirchandani & Steinreucke occupied an entire room, the work spanning the walls, the floor and a verriere.

But even with this immense scale of creative inspiration, artists do rein themselves in, committing to another set of boundaries that, in their own way, test their skills. Ironically, many of those who now need whole galleries to show off their creative talents, have – and still do, on occasion – limited themselves to more practicable spaces. For instance, Kallat has taken part in the Miniature Format Show (Sans Tache gallery), as have many others. From one extreme to another?

Loud and clear

I walked down to the grocery store this morning and noticed that the local Ganpati pandals are getting simpler in external design. There were two of them that I passed, one at the end of a cul-de-sac leading to the neighbourhood garden and the other at the entrance of the shopping complex through which I needed to walk to get to the store I was headed for. Where every year I have seen the path to these little enclosures within which the Elephant god sits for a few days all decorated with buntings and elaborate light arrangements, this time it seemed strangely bare, with bamboo scaffolding, a few advertising banners and some coloured lights. The deity is nice closed off to the public gaze, swathed in curtains and draperies, the entrance concealed behind very heavy fabric. The organisers used to charge for entry, but now I think that is not allowed by law, but who knows what scams people come up with to make money!

But the most annoying thing about these pandals, apart from the traffic around them and the crowds hanging about, is the noise that they make. The large enclosure in the cul-de-sac was oddly quiet - maybe the festivities happened only in the evening, who knows. The one near the plaza was blaring devotional songs with a very filmi flavour, at top volume. The music was not bad, not overly nasty or tacky, but the noise level was all that and more. As I walked past, trying to peek into the curtained space to see what the fuss was all about, I had to plug my ears or else cringe and feel assaulted by the sound. As I was anyway.

Making all that noise as a sign of devotion is peculiarly Indian. Where many rituals from all over the world use music and loud chanting and even yelling to bring worshippers closer to thee, oh Lord, it is perhaps only here that we channel the populist vote and grab attention, eyeballs and eardrums with speakers blaring and no one especially concerned about issues like noise pollution and deafness. Perhaps in this country of so many billion people, all needing divine intervention, we need to make a lot of noise to be 'seen', who knows!

Say a little prayer...

...for me, for you, for the world. Today is Ganesh Chaturthi, one of the most looked-forward-to days in the Hindu calendar. At least, in my part of the world - Maharashtra, where I was born, where I live and where I am rooted, and the south of India, where my heritage lies. We, as a people, believe in the Elephant God as the destroyer of evil, the benefactor of the good and the protector of the innocent. He blesses every new adventure and watches over every old venture. And He appeals to everyone, with His pot belly and His good cheer, His generosity and His childlike humour, His wisdom and His sagacity. His special day is about prayer and food, with all His favourites being dished up at the altar before being eaten by those who worship Him.

For me, Ganpati, Ganesha, Gajanana, whatever name He may have, is all about new beginnings. While I am not a woman of any great faith in any particular deity, I do believe in a higher power, and Ganpati is a good way to visualise him, being round and happy and yet very, very wise. What He advised works well: Leave the old behind, the bitterness, the anger, the hurt and the pain, and move forward into a new day, a new feeling of anticipation, a new start of a brand new adventure. Trust what you are being given, be it love or friendship, feelings or freedom, and go forward with bright eyes, a light heart and a happy state of existence. That is the lesson that we were taught in our school texts and that is the same lesson that the so-called gurus of the modern urban world are teaching us now. Instead of looking to them for direction, look within, I was always told, and you will know what to do, when to do it, how to do it and with whom to do it.

I think for me the 'whom' has always been most important. Because that is the only part that I cannot keep a firm eye on. Who knows who comes into your life and what role they play, until they are actually there, playing it! I find that those who really matter are those who stay with you, no matter what happens to them and to you. And when you discover one of those special people, reach out, hold on to them and treasure them, like a very wise woman I knew told me. If you are willing to let something or someone go without too much of a fight, that thing or person was not too important anyway; they do not matter as much as you believed.

I have found very few people like that in my life. One or two have always been with me, but I never knew them until very recently. And now that I know which is dross and which pure gold, I know which I should, as my friend said, treasure. It is one of the lessons you learn from Ganpati, too, the God of all things bright and beautiful, big and small, wise and wonderful. After all, as the holy book said, "The Lord God made them all".

To write or not?

When people find out I am taking time off from a full time job, they suggest - almost all of them - that I should write a book. So many of my friends and contemporaries have been doing just that for years now and I think they are very brave. As for me, a book is a brilliant idea, but for some reason I have never wanted to write one. It is just not my thing, as I keep telling these people. When would I have the time - now, I am told, now that I do not have to go through the routine of getting set to go out every morning and coming back late every evening, with no energy, even if I had the inspiration, to do more than just wiggle my fingers at Small Cat and wonder if I can stay awake long enough to see at least the start of CSI.

Ok, so I have the time these days. Do I have the inspiration? Well, I could come up with some. May even be fun. I could write about my own life, which I don't find especially unusual or interesting, but could make the stuff of great novels, in parts, sort of like the egg of the curate who, if you ask me, was a rather bad cook - or had one, I don't know which. I could put bits of it, nicely embroidered, into a steamy romance novel, with the hero a tall, dark, handsome and, very unlike reality, intelligent man who satisfies the wish list of any sane woman. But then why would he be single, right? If he was, he would be embittered and nasty, a commitment-phobe, gay, or just plain untenable in some way, be it via bad breath or bad karma. On the other hand, steering far away from my private life, I could write a travel-food book. How I Ate My Way Through Europe, or Eating With Your Fingers In America, or even Cooking In A Campus Apartment.

But today people want to read books that are deep, exploring the psyche and existentialist sensibilities of people. Very few choose - or admit they do - stuff that is fun, that doesn't do more than talk about scenarios with a few corpses, a kiss or two, some chasing through the dark streets of a big city and a couple of dragons, some magic and a love story, all included in the complicated and hilarious plot. That would be my kind of book, one that laughs at itself as much as it makes its readers laugh. One that has something serious to say, but not in any way that is serious or sledgehammer-ish or preachy or even dire. Few people read for the fun of seeing words jump through hoops, to find a new way of saying something old, to explore just what can be said when it is, in any obvious way, unsaid.

Be all that as it may, why don't I write a book? Because, frankly, I don't think I can. It takes a mind that is not trained to edit, to express what needs to be said. When you are more used to cleaning up other people's writing in a newspaper, a magazine, a website, a script or even a book, you see too much, you analyse too much, you dig too deep to just be able to say something simply and easily. You are always correcting yourself and finding hidden meaning in what you write, so you cannot just appreciate the beauty of language without making a special effort to do so by dissociating from your work. Which makes writing a chore, hard work, something that needs attention and some degree of pain. Which makes it no fun, no joy. Which makes it a no-no for me.

Back to the future

It's funny how small things remind you of things you did, wanted to do, or should have done. I was talking to an old friend this morning and he told me that I should make contact with someone who had floated briefly through my life. He saw this former acquaintance recently, but did not speak to him, and wondered why I had cut him out of my life so totally. We had been fairly good friends, he reminded me, with so much in common, so why not just make the first move and get back in touch?

But there are things in life that are just impossible. Once your ego is hurt, once your feelings are hurt, once your physical self is hurt, there is no going back to something that was or was becoming or even might have been. But it is very difficult to explain this one. I did meet someone I liked, someone I may have wanted to know for a long time. we had many common interests, from photography to art to food to writing to travel to people, to asking questions, to.... But, as I got to know him better, I started discovering that I really did not want to know him better. He had a strangely narrow view of life and its denizens and could not see beyond his own point of view. Few other people mattered and he stayed the centre of his own universe. We are all selfish in our own way, but perhaps this was my 'fault' - I wanted more if I wanted involvement. And if I didn't get it, well, I would try to make it work, if it didn't, I would find out what the deal was and if that didn't work for me, then it would not matter any more. I made that resolve many years ago and, this time, I even kept it!

I kept it without any qualms, no regrets and only one fleeting thought: that it could have been great fun. And, as I told my friend who said I should make the move, I am always open to friendships and knowing people, maybe even developing a relationship, whatever it may be. It is exciting, a whole new adventure each time. But if I have to work harder than I can and am willing to, if I have to give up what is important and meaningful to me, and I have to become someone I am not, I cannot do it. No fun, no point. Even though life is not all about fun, it also is about meaning and stimulation and caring and sharing. It cannot be one-way, it cannot be on any one person's terms, it cannot be compromise. Not for me, at least.

Doing? Not much!

Yesterday I dropped by the newspaper office where I worked until fairly recently and found that a lot of people who vowed that they would quit are very much still there and working as hard as ever, as unhappily as ever. They all came to chat and try and find out what I was doing these days and they all got the same answer - nothing much, just taking time off. Whenever I say that, people listen, smile and get that expression when they are thinking 'Oh, yeah, she just doesn't want to tell us!'

But I would tell, really, if I had anything to tell. For now, I am writing and cooking and cleaning and reading and generally finding my feet after over-doing it for too long. Maybe this is what the whole process of 'finding myself' is all about. I have not gone off to the Himalayas to meditate and smoke strange weeds and have not become a hippie or even chosen to live in a village doing good deeds, but I am in a tentative state of discovery, of learning what I want to do and, more importantly, why I want to do 'it', whatever 'it' may be, and not anything else. There is, as I was just telling a close friend, no hurry, no sense of desperation to get something done, to pelase someone, to fit in, to change to suit someone or some situation. At least, if I don't want to, I will not, except for family. Which is the ideal state of existence, don't you think?

But this, I know well, is utopia. And utopia never lasts too long. I know one day, not too long from now, I will be back at work, slaving over a hot keyboard, trying to get something done in too short a time and at too intense a pace. It was what made me what and who I am and it is what I need almost to sustain that self that I have become. But until then, I enjoy every moment of being me...and the journey of finding out just who that is.

Stored in the past

By the way, just for the record, I hate dusting.

That said, I was wandering about town yesterday, with not much to do and plenty of time to do it in. So I drifted into a couple of my favourite stores, looking for something, but looking at everything. I didn't find what I wanted, but found a lot more that was interesting, if I had been looking for it, or even looking to acquire it. Undaunted, I went further, walking down the uneven pavement and exacerbating the pain of a hurt foot, but pleased with the fact that I was out in the fresh (as it may be) air, with no deadlines breathing down my neck and no mobile phone ringing, no text messages coming in and no place to be except where I wanted to be. Being in that Mumbai state of mind, I walked into the age-old Khadi Bhandar on DN Road, still looking for what I had been looking for and not especially hopeful that I would find it, but in the onward-ho mood nevertheless.

The first thing that struck me was the beautiful light. You find it only in places where the building is old and cracking, the sun shining through dirty windows battles the fluorescent light from dingy bulbs, where the lovely old tiled floor is overlaid with peeling linoleum and dust sparkles in the drafts like thousands of tiny diamonds. In fact, it was the dust that grabbed my attention - and my sinuses - as I trotted about the vast store, manned by very sleepy staff and mired in a bog of outdated systems and typically Indian-government-style lethargy. While I didn't find what I was looking for - and still am - I did find some other treasures, from hand-milled soap to fresh honey, gorgeous handloom silks and beautifully printed fine cotton. But all of it was dreary, depressed, from the people behind the counters to the way in which the goods were stacked and displayed. A huge pity, since there is so much that can be done to make what is essentially part of our valuable heritage into quality retail at not very high prices.

In contrast, the Bombay Store (I noticed that the local fanatics who insist that our city should be linguistically at least nativised have spared this place) has learned its sales lessons well. The old, dusty, musty, fusty institution that was once Bombay Swadeshi Stores is now upmarket, smart, globally self-conscious and very very with it. It displays Indian-made clothes, jewellery, furniture, leather and handicrafts of every function for the home and person in a user-friendly, hip, happening and buyable way. The attendants - in spite of their often rather shaky English - are quick and helpful, using training and charm to wangle sales. The customers are tourists, locals and expatriates alike, and there are plenty of them. And though the price tags are a little higher than at the government-run store, they are deserved for the service and presentation - which makes all the difference, when you think about it.

This country is a fabulous one, one that I am proud to belong to, with all its flaws and foibles. But I wish the powers that be would take their responsibilities more seriously. Khadi Bhandar, for instance, is part of our heritage and can be used so effectively and proudly to show off what this country and its people can create. Why not channel some of that pride in 'Incredible India' into making it more a store of today than one that is mired in the dust of the ages? I would be proud to shop there then...once I stopped sneezing, that is!

Calamity Jane, that's me!

It's not that I am especially clumsy or especially inept. Not more than most, at least. But I do have some very strange accidents that, in retrospect, are very funny. This time, it is no better or worse than it normally is. I dropped a pakad, that tong-thing used in every Indian kitchen, right on the most tender part of my foot. It would normally not have been so bad, but for the fact that I had already hurt that foot and had just gone through the arduous and painful process of having it checked and X-rayed and more. So this was, in a way, adding not just insult, but aggravated assault to injury and causing me more anguish than was worth it for me. And when that darn thing fell, it impacted the only unbruised part of a blue-tinged foot with the sharpest part of the metal instrument, pulling an agonised yowl out of me, enough to wake Small Cat from her morning nap, startle the maid who was cleaning under the cabinets in the living room and grab Father's attention away from whatever he was doing. I sat on a chair near the kitchen, holding a piece of ice against my foot and thinking up the most blue-tinged words that I could think of - unfortunately, 'Heck!' was the best that my traumatized mind could come up with at that moment, even though I know lots of far more interesting noises.

My former irascible boss called me Calamity Jane. And, in my own way, I suppose I am. I do things with a certain panache that is not easily beaten. Like the time I cracked a wrist bone while making popcorn - I did it by bashing it against the microwave overn I was using, but that part of the story somehow gets second billing. And once I was put in a splint to support aforementioned wrist bone, I gave myself a mind concussion by bashing myself on the forehead with it as I turned over in bed while waking up the next morning. Don't even go there. The next time I got concussion was in Delhi, when I was leaving to go to work, and the cleaning lady emerged unexpectedly from the bushes to give me a fright and I knocked myself out with a very hard contact between my temple and the corner of the car door...

And, of course, there was the time I hurt my foot - not this one, the other one; like most people, I do have two - by falling up the stairs walking into a boutique I frequently shop at. It was only three steps, but I fell twice, first landing rather hard on my knee and then sliding onto the wrong side of my foot and bending the toe and ankle rather unnaturally. Perhaps the most painful part of that particular story was having to sit at my table in a tony restaurant about an hour later with my rapidly swelling and darkening foot and ankle in a dish of ice.

So the saga of the pakad is not unusual for me. It all goes with the general territory of being ME. I only wish I wasn't such a pain-full person to have around!

Govinda gela re!

Krishna was born and now he has gone off to whatever adventuring he has left to do in today's world. It was Janmashtami over the weekend, the time when the Blue God was born. We celebrate in this country by eating a lot - which we do for almost every festival there is - and making a lot of noise. Strangely, it was quieter here this year than it has been in previous celebrations, making me wonder if I had the day wrong or whether there was something amiss or whether it was just that people are now starting to see sense and tone down public displays of affectation. As they hoist themselves and their teams up the human pyramids to break open the handi tied high above to get the prasad and the money, some triumph, others die trying, but there is a lot of sound and some fury, signifying another event that has given way to crass commercialism.

My native cynicism apart, I do enjoy the ocasional festival. And celebrate in my own way, tweaking the traditional to create something new that will become tradition for Father, Small Cat and myself. So yesterday, instead of the usual festive lunch of shaadam and murukku and seedai and neiyappam, vadai and fresh-churned butter from the home kitchen, we adapted a little. We did have seedai and neiyappam but bought both from the neighbourhood South Indian store, and we did have shaadam, but with some changes. It was fun cooking, as it almost always is for me, and it tastes good, or so the family reviews said.

We ate pongal, a wonderfully squishy blend of dal and rice and spices and veggies all cooked together, with a dash of ghee, accompanied by bonda made of leftover alu-methi wrapped up in a crisp coat of adai maavu - leftovers, but given a new avatar. We crunched through the seedai and chewed on the neiyappam, with homemade javarsi (sabudana) payasam to add interest, with lots of raisins and cashewnuts to make it better. And then there was some raita, some banana chips and some pickles, all to round off the meal. We lay around like anacondas after that, digesting.

The problem with Indian festivals is that they follow each other in over-quick succession. Just when your waistline is normalising after one, the next arrives and you have more adjusting to do of strings and buttons and zippers. For me, I have Ganesh Chaturti mid-next week to think about, with its glorious sweets and savouries and a whole lot of communicating with my favourite god.

Lizzie hunt

A friend of mine is back in the country after some months away and is sorting out her house and her things. Even though her housekeeper was in charge while she was gone, and her room was shut and locked, something did manage to sneak in. And now, even as I write this, about two days after she returned, she has not yet been able to find the intruder and expel it. The creature that invaded her sanctum is a lizard, a messy character who left his scat around for her to find it and panic. For some funny reason she - like many others in her family (are phobias inherited?) - is deadly afraid of lizards; I have known her to shriek and stand on top of a large cedar chest to avoid being in close proximity to the space that one may have inhabited. And I have even been part of a great lizard hunt in her living room - she was on the aforementioned chest, her aunt, who was visiting, was on a sofa, while the housekeeper rushed hither and yon with a broom in one hand and a kitchen towel in the other. I stood there and giggled; not very useful, I know, but the best I could think of to do at that particular moment.

I am not afraid of lizards, but I do draw the line at spiders, worms and other creepy crawlies. the tale of my mother and I slaying a cockroach is almost legend in our family - we stood at one end of a vast living room and threw slippers at it. After we ran out of slippers and anything else that could possibly fling at the poor thing, it rolled over on its back and died, presumably from either boredom or hysterical laughter at our madness. Mother ran screaming away from the smallest cockroaches; I am not afraid of them, but I do not like them at all and would prefer to run rather than stand and shake hands...any one of the many hands it has.

What frightens me are moths and butterflies, most flying insects, in fact. Not because they are nasty in any way, but simply because if I flailed around in trying to avoid them, I could make contact with them, which could damage their fragile wings and bodies, which means that they would need to be killed or I would have to watch them dying. Yuck. I would rather run, screaming or squeaking, take my pick when the event arises.

Today there is a lot to be afraid of in our world. Apart from the obvious fears like earthquakes and bomb blasts, car crashes and murderous attacks, life is all a matter of trust. And trust is so easily betrayed, most often by the people you never expected to be nicknamed Ben, Ben Arnold. The fear really comes in when you become untrusting, when you will not accept, when you do not have the courage to see yourself and those around you for what they really are.

A lizard is a lizard is a lizard. It is what it is. And while my friend hunts to find her little pet, I giggle gently to myself and try and learn another lesson about fear and how to trust yourself not to be afraid.

Pet peeves

We were at the vet's clinic this morning picking up Small Cat's medicines, when we met another small cat who needed medical care. She was younger than ours, just about nine months old, and sitting calmly in her basket, her tummy neatly wrapped in a bandage. She did not say much - ours would have yowled high opera or cowered and shivered - and did not flinch when I patted her gently on the head and gave her a feather I had found for Small Cat to play with. She just looked up at me, and blinked slightly rheumy eyes and lay back. Her family - an older lady with a girl in her maybe early 20s - were obviously very wrapped up in her condition, fussing gently and eagerly absorbing everything we had to say. After all, since we had had Small Cat for two years already, we were the experts, right?

It is only after you go through an experience that you realise how little you actually know, because then, when other people ask you the same questions you had before the experience, you understand the place you once came from. The lady's big concern was what we fed Small Cat. Her cat, you see, did not drink milk and refused to eat fish. We smiled. We knew what that was about. Small Cat had put us through the same worries, except that since I had been a cat owner before, I knew that the myths about cat-hood may have had some base in reality but, for the most part, they were really only stereotypes stretched into those myths. Cats do not always like milk. Cats do not always like fish. Cats do not always like the place and not the people. All myths.

Small Cat herself is a little spoiled brat, whose every whim and fancy is catered to, even if it means waking up and staggering blearily around the house at some unearthly hour of the night because she wants only her favourite biscuit and not what the dish has in it and she needs her paw held (in a manner of speaking) as she chews her ration-for-the-moment of a few stalks of wheat grass. I do not doubt that the little cat that we met this morning will be like Small Cat, indulged and pampered to the point where she takes her owners for granted and absorbs all the love and care she gets from them...and gives it all back with trust, ambushes from behind the door and lotsof biting and scratching. It is her catly right and duty, isn't it?

Toil and turmoil

The world is in a rum state these days. Lots of upheavals and messes and imbroglios that don't show any signs of being sorted out. Many of these are made worse by the media in this vast and wonderful country of ours, with the Indian penchant for melodrama overtaking good reportage and any standards of programming that may have been part of the world of news at any time. The todo they made over the Arushi Talwar murder case was incredibly tacky and insensitive. The fuss they have been making about the badly handled matter of Kenneth Haywood and his exit from India is execrable, the same footage looping endlessly while the commentators talk on with amazing banality at the whole incident. The Niketa Mehta abortion story got its spice from TV audiences and reporters pushing microphones into the faces of the parents-to-be, the doctors involved and - I am sure if it had been at all possible - the fetus long before it was born. And the Amarnath land issue would not, I am firmly convinced, be as nasty as it seems to be if the media had not blown it up beyond actual fact.

But then television in India is like that only, as they say. They present the facts somewhere inside the thick layer of masala that coats them, pushing the proverbial envelope so far that it drops off the horizon of reality and becomes the staged drama of a reality show instead. Is that the fault of the media or the people who give it so much importance? Sometimes I really wonder.

Winner takes all

Everyone knows that Abhinav Bindra is a winner. He showed it by bringing home the gold medal that he won for shooting a perfect score in Beijing. But he showed in perhaps even more in his mien - that cold, unflappable, focussed way of responding to everything, be it the actual moment of winning or the stupid questions that the media (especially the Indian TV channels) flung at him or his meetings with the political biggies in this country, from the President and Prime Minister to the various functionaries whose attentions he has been subjected to.

Mnay say that the reason he won and, more importantly, the reason he was able to develop that winning ambition was the financial support he had without really asking for it. His father, a fairly successful businessman, was able to give him everything he needed to reach his goal, from his own shooting range at home to specialised training abroad when he needed it. He had a psychologist, a trainer, even what could be called a life coach, someone who helped him develop a certain blinkeredness in achieving that winning personality, literally. Bindra's own psyche allowed that distance and coolness to mature, no matter that he seems to have parents who are exuberant and far more outgoing than he himself is. Maybe he is shy, reserved, preferring to save that bubble and brightness for a very select circle that he chooses to know.

That same selectiveness labels many as snobs. Maybe most people have seen Bindra as a snob too. But does that matter? After all, snob or not, he is a winner!

Ships in the night

Last year was a rather varied one. I lost one potential friend and found another who had never been lost. I think it was more than fair exchange, since the one I lost wasn't worth keeping and the one I found again has been part of my world for so long that it was not complete without it. I also discovered many hidden strengths in many people, especially in myself - loss did not matter as much as I thought it would and not at all (except ego-wise) as compared to the stunning impact of previous losses. And new discoveries were indeed worth all the anticipation, all the imagination, even all the irritation that had gone into finding what should have been there all the while.

Somewhere along the way on this journey, I made new friends, too, in people I never expected to know. Artists who still keep in touch, never mind that I do not publicise their work. Gallery owners who make sure that I know what is happening in the spaces they manage, even if I am not interested in writing about the works displayed there. Fashion designers who tell me excitedly about new lines they are creating, without ever thinking that I could or would buy them. Fun stuff, great stuff, the stuff of future novels almost!

Like the work of a gentleman with a Bengali name, but based in Gujarat: Amar Dutta. I have two of his designs, both kurtas. One is a deep purple, long, with the most exquisite embroidery in the tiniest and neatest stitches ever - you could not tell the back from the front. The other is a creamy white, in cutwork silk, with extravagant sleeves, a touch of silver sparking the neckline. except that he seems to cater to very tall and slim women with no hips, his work is well worth acquiring, no matter the fairly high price tag attached.

I also added Bela Parekh to my wardrobe. Also not cheap, but worth the effort. The top I liked most is a swingy, cap sleeved little thing, which could be worn as a mini if I still had the legs for it. It is in lovely red teamed with a rather odd brown-grey that soumds unappetising but is actually very elegant.

The most appealing aspect of both these designers' work is that there is a very strong ethnic element to it, apart from the functionality of kurta-hood. They have used traditional craft techniques that are not often found in modern western garments that almost everyone wears these days, and that touch of mirrorwork or block-print or applique or threadwork is what makes it happen for me. When I shop for clothes - and most other fabric stuff - that is exactly what I am looking for. It becomes an identity statement, an affirmation of who I am and where I come from. Which is the secret to being sure of who you are and why you exist. I know. I doubt the people I don't know any more know!

Changing times

Well, it's kinda like this: I once wrote a blog with monotonous regularity and made sure that it was updated every day, rain, shine or life's little dramas. Then my workload at the paper I just quit increased and inspiration levels sank, which made the updates a whenever-possible affair. And now that I am home for a while, I decided it was time to restart what I had let go. Even if nobody reads this, it is a way to communicate whatever I want to say, when I want to say it.

And this time there is a slight difference. Where I once crafted my writing rather more carefully and made sure that it was spell checked and evenly punctuated and all that good stuff, now I am doing it directly online, which is a greater challenge. You make more mistakes if you are just bashing away, with the occasional feline walking nonchalantly over your keyboard or the mobile bings in a message just when you are stuck for things to say, which sends your spellings and your memory of what you had been saying far into the blue yonder...see now, I forgot what I was saying!

And all that apart, I no longer have to hear suggestions from anyone about what I should write and how. Nobody who is doing nothing with their lives that is of any use or joy to anyone else can tell me what to do and say, which many have tried, trust me, and not exactly succeeded. And whether I want to talk about people I used to know, people not worth knowing or people who should be part of my 'I-know' circle is my business. Yeah, sore point there. I dislike wofflers and cowards and anyone who does nothing to get what they want but talk endlessly about anything, no matter that the listeners are bored and being polite in at least pretending to listen! Another sore point. But leave those behind and get with it, right?

I am very getting with it these days. And loving it. The first thing I did when I was finally out of my job was to update the various address books I have. All extra numbers were deleted from my mobile and those zillions of scraps of paper with numbers scribbled on them were carefully checked for what I wanted to keep, the numbers transcribed into a stout diary and the fragments tossed. I found many people who were, effectively, ships that passed through my life and out for ever, some with a mild feeling of regret, many with a sense of relief. One or two I will talk about tomorrow. For now, I plan to take my sabbatical seriously and take a nap!

Back in business

For a while now, i have been thinking that I need to get back to writing this blog on a regular basis. I took off from a full-time job exactly a month ago and today seems the perfect day to celebrate - India's 61st Independence Day and a sign of my own freedom from a rather stultifying work routine. But, as Father always points out, there has been no break from working, not yet. I am at his computer every day, bashing out an article or trying to get past that dreadful feeling of not knowing what to write and how to get about writing it, since there is a deadline and an editor breathing heavily and passionately (though not affectionately) down your email link and occasionally sending you a nasty SMS to ask just when in heck you plan to deliver your copy.
Sigh. And I thought I was done with all that!
Quitting a job is not easy. Rationalising your need to get the paycheck isn't either. It was great to work at something you had no interest in, grouch madly at home that you really didn't want to work at that job and take home the money at the end of every month. It assuaged the conscience and made spending a taken-for-granted matter. Now, since there is no paycheck coming in regularly, and I am not really looking at one for a while yet (it does not seem to be looking at me either at close range), I get attacks of guilt if I long for a lipstick, a pair of shoes or a new diamond, but those are blended with a little voice with a chuckle in it that says hey, you don't have to wear shoes and put on your makeup and your jewellery and go out, you can swan around in your pajamas all day and feel happily fat and smug about being free.
Am I free, is something I ask myself at least once a day. I can plan my own day the way I want to, but I am also tied down by the routines of the maid, the driver, the various people who traipse in and out, Father's work, Small Cat's whims and fancies and the television I want to watch. And then there are the people who want work done, when they want it done, not when I want to do it. Yeah, at some level this is the life I asked for and managed to get for myself. But is it what I want to do long term? That is something I need to get working on now....

Taking that final step

It’s not easy. In fact, it can be quite frightening. For months I have been saying I want to do it, but now that I finally have, I am feeling rather woffly and unsure about having done it. This does not mean I am going to undo it, not even that there is any remote possibility that I am considering undoing it, but I cannot help being a little wobbly, almost like a downy little kitten taking its first tentative steps away from its mother’s warmth.

Actually, when you just read that wonderful piece of verbiage, you will find that it says very little except that I have just done something I am not sure I should have done. But I have done it anyway and will not be undoing it. Ergo, it needs to be considered to be irretrievably done and not undoable, not under any circumstances.

ANY? Well….maybe there is a tiny circumstance or two I would undo it under, perhaps if I was given the freedom to do what I am planning to do now that I have done the thing that I cannot undo. But since that is never going to be possible, I need to just grit my teeth and get on with the thing that I have been wanting to do, once I had the freedom to do it, that is, which is the whole reason for doing what I have done that I cannot, will not undo.

Whew.

I got the same feeling about two years ago, when I had my hair done. I had it cut short and, much to my own consternation, coloured it a wonderfully deep and dangerous purple. It was lovely. I was pampered and preened and primped and polished for hours and hours by my hair-expert and her crew, and I sat there falling gently asleep even as successions of nasty-smelling stuff were slathered all over my scalp, washed off and replaced with more. At the end of it, strangely exhausted, I tottered out of the salon, feeling more fragile than I had any right to be, but also feeling wonderful, with hair that glowed an almost iridescent violet in the direct sunlight. That this colour did not last was a given that I should have taken but didn’t remember to. I slowly went from deep purple to cherry scarlet to a cheap-bleached orange. And then, for the first ever time in my life, actually coloured by hair to go back to my natural, normal dark black.

Well, the story is just an analogy. My hair does not come into my undoable decision at all, except that I may now have the time to get it done again, though not the same kind of colour-adventure. You see, what I have done, which I am nervous about but will not undo, is to quit. Yes, you read right. QUIT. My Job. I gave in my one-line resignation letter a couple of weeks ago and have another couple of weeks to go before I walk out of here in, I hope, a little glory, if not an entire blaze of it. Where I am going to and what I am going to do remain between me and my mind (and, of course, Father and Small Cat if she has been listening in), but I have all my fingers and toes crossed that I will do it, and do it in a way that makes me and mine proud to be me and mine.

I will miss this place, especially the irascible boss and the people I work with, never mind their idiosyncracies and my own. But life is all about moving on finding new treasures, learning new routes and enjoying new adventures. This is my turn to do just that….

Brown and beautiful

I was in a store in South Mumbai this morning that almost epitomised heaven for me. ‘Almost’, because I was fast developing a headache due to a combination of stress, not enough sleep (Small Cat has decided to hold early morning sessions of high opera just to liven up the proceedings when she is awake and the rest of the house is not) and an unexpected in weather from very hot and muggy to cool and wet to very hot and muggy again this morning. That notwithstanding, I was in a place that could conceivably called heaven, even for those who do not have the same tastes as I do.

The place is called Theobroma and it is located at the end of Colaba Causeway, once one of the most popular shopping destinations in the city. It stretches from Regal Cinema on one end, to Kailash Parbat on the other and runs parallel to the waterline that you can walk along in front (or behind, since it is said that the building is actually the wrong way around) of the Taj Mahal hotel. I had heard about it a while before I actually found it on my personal map, and am glad it took that long, since it would have meant a few more inches to that rapidly expanding waistline rather before I was ready for it to happen.

This morning I stopped the car right outside and hopped in to the store. It isn’t very big, but it fills your head instantly with smells and sights that are enough to delight any food-lovers heart. And a few people who do not like eating (poor souls) would be delighted too, since there was enough in there to make anyone happy. It is as if you run into a physical wall of sweet and savoury, with the tang of lemon, the sharpness of cinnamon, the richness of cream and the bite of meat luring you from every side. Trays along one wall offer up varied delights – chocolate in the form of croissants, brownies, cookies and Danish; puffs and pasties stuffed with chicken, mutton, an occasional veggie; rolls groaning with the weight of mayonnaise-gooey salad and breadsticks of various shapes, sizes and flavours. A mirror lines one wall, where those more involved with their hairdos or figures can take a good look, and there are enough people at the small tables to watch them rather than the goodies.

I stood there for a moment, breathing heavily. Then I walked slowly past all the deliciousnesses on display and cogitated, albeit only briefly, and started selecting what I wanted. I took brownies, deeply chocolate and studded with chunks of the semi-sweet brown stuff, I chose pasties for a friend who craved them, I chose plain chocolate for Father, just because he was often half-sweet-half-not and I chose a cake that was so dense and rich that it made me feel vaguely bilious just looking at it. And I chatted briefly with the lady in charge as she had it all packed up, billed and paid for.

I am in a strange way glad that I am not in that part of the city too often. Apart from the sudden wicked need to get to eat more than is my wont, I also tend to have eyes that are bigger than my stomach, if you know what I mean – I buy much more than we can really go through before we get sick of it all. And then, of course, there is my favourite pair of blue jeans that refuse to stretch…

Rain days

Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Jairaj Pathak seems to have a brilliant mathematical mind. He also has his facts and figures – as local parlance so pithily puts it – at his fingertips. The last three days has given Mumbai 10 per cent of the season’s average rainfall which, according to Pathak’s numerical wisdom, means that 10 per cent of the city’s monsoon worries are over. Now all we need to worry about is the remaining 90 per cent.

But that 90 per cent is occupying about 100 per cent of the Mumbaikar’s mind these days. After all, one day of rain threw Mumbai’s various mechanisms out of gear. Trains were stalled, roads were flooded, walls collapsed and short circuits abounded. To cap the list of disasters, in a brilliant stroke of irony the Bombay Municipal Corporation’s heritage office building in South Mumbai had leakage and flooding problems, on the sixth floor that too, where accumulated files had to be covered with plastic to avoid data being damaged by water dripping in. The same plastic that shelters pavement dwellers and road-crews alike. Through the weekend, at each high tide, the areas of the city prone to flooding became mini-lakes as the rain fell persistently. Workmen stood in often-thigh-deep water, trying to pump away the flood and clear the choked gutters of the rubbish that prevented efficient drainage. The emergency clean-up services worked, but they should not have been needed at all.

Who is to accept the blame for what happened? The Municipal Commissioner insisted that promises have been kept – the city’s sewers have been cleared of muck, the roads repaired, potholes filled, railway tracks de-silted and the storm water drains cleaned and refurbished. The flooding, he said, is because of the basic structure of Mumbai’s drainage system – it is too old and not extensive enough to cope with a population that has increased so-many-fold since it was originally built. As a result, when the tide comes in, water cannot drain out and collects, causing traffic disruptions, hampering pedestrian movement and resulting, in a few unfortunate cases, in death. An excuse we hear every year.

The roads are being repaired, some relaid, but the rains came two days before schedule, disrupting progress, he reported. But he could not explain why, in so many instances, digging up road surfaces to concretise whole stretches of major arteries began just before the rain did. He also – albeit in passing, perhaps knowing that nothing will come of it - blamed the civic sense of the local people: accumulated garbage accounts for a great deal of the waterlogging, on roads and railway lines.

But the plain truth is that what has happened over just two days of rain is frightening if it is a prelude to a three-month-long monsoon. How much more damage will a sustained and much heavier downpour produce? And, even with the paranoia of fairly recent memory to prevent a recurrence of July 26th, 2005, can Mumbai manage to survive another such disaster? With such hard-working and responsible civic officials at the helm and with an urban disaster management system as the one Mumbai now has so firmly in place, it seems highly unlikely.

Don’t be a damp squib

Never mind what the Met Office may say about it, but the weather has changed suddenly from hot, sweaty and irritating to cool, damp and invigorating. The weather-people can call it a depression if they want to, but most of us are thrilled at finally feeling – and how! – the end of the mugginess that bogged us all down. But that euphoria rarely lasts. The joy that the first rains bring is soon dampened, literally, the rain seems endless, you long for sunshine and cabin fever wreaks deadly havoc on relationships, however close.

Now that is the problem. The monsoon has a nasty habit of making more than just clothes and floors and hair feel soggy and sticky. Romance, too, seems to be stuck, in some soggy rut, where everything is boring and mired in clouds of gloom and everything seems so much worse than it actually is. Worse still, you start fighting with your significant other for nothing, just because you are not able to go out and play, shop, eat, watch a film…whatever makes your cookie crumble. You want to eat popcorn, but it goes limp by the time it has finished popping. You want to sit on the windowsill and feed the birds, but they are all sheltering under some eave somewhere, out of the rain. You want to drive down to the mall to buy new socks, but the car is standing in four inches of water that you do not want to wade through to get in. And it’s all his fault…or hers.

But come the monsoon, when real rain pours down in thick sheets, when all you can see outside is water, when not a fly or a crow (think the Tamil proverb) is stirring, romance should be. There is love in snuggling on the couch eating hot onion pakoras, sipping tea, humming along with Raj and Nargis as they croon under an umbrella. There is romance in being warm and dry inside the house while people struggle to get to wherever they are going by train, by bus, by flooded road. There is passion in the knowledge that you really do not need to get your feet wet and your hair frizzed while you wait for the next clear patch before you dash to the store to buy milk.

There is indeed romance in the rain. So stop being a damp squib and grouching about the season of sogginess!

Waiting for the unexpected

(I did this for the arts page of the paper. It was a fun experience...)

“A story becomes a story when its end is known,” Martine Franck once said. Her own story has been one of adventure, excitement, discovery. Born in Antwerp, she grew up in the United States and Britain before heading to Europe – to study art history first at the University of Madrid and then at the Louvre School in Paris. She started working for Time-Life in Paris in 1963 and met her future husband, Henri Cartier-Bresson, while on a fashion shoot in 1966. When the Theatre du Soleil was established in 1964 by director Ariane Mnouchkine, Franck focused her lens on its stage and has photographed every production there.

But its not all glamour, there’s a gritty side too. She has been involved with humanitarian reportage and was part of Vu and Viva (as a founder) photo-agencies, and has worked with Magnum for many years now. As Franck says, “A photo-agency is stimulating. It keeps you on your toes, inspires you to follow your colleagues’ work.” Reportage can be soul-sapping, exhausting, even painful. “I personally have never been in such a situation, but there have been times where I have censored myself and refused to take the photograph. There are no fixed rules. Each photographer reacts in his or her own way according to their feelings or principles.”

Apart from photography and administration of this continuing interest, she does social and charity work for the Little Brothers of the Poor, a non-governmental organisation which cares for the elderly and outcasts of society. She has also authored a number of books.

Today photography is sometimes as much about creating an image as it is about capturing a moment on camera. Digital technology has made it easy to ‘cheat’, allowing manipulations, but “This depends very much on the individual photographer; I personally do not manipulate my photographs,” Franck clarifies. ‘A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either, it's more of a fleeting, subjective impression’, she has said, and explains that “A photograph is only a split second of ‘reality’. A person may look very happy in an image and yet be in a tragic situation and vice versa - that is what I mean about not it necessarily being the truth.”

Once a painfully shy person, she has used her camera as a screen. “But I no longer hide behind my camera,” Franck smiles. She prefers to speak with it, though, “I hope that I communicate with my images, but that is for the viewer to say, not me.” And what is she trying to say? “I basically photograph what I like or who I like and admire. The important thing for me is to put myself in the other person’s shoes and try and understand or feel what they are feeling.”

Though Franck will not be in India with her work this time, “I have been many times to India and hope to come back again next year.” She says, “I very much like the work of Dayanita Singh and Raghu Rai, but I know there are so many whose work I have not yet seen.”

She has spoken of ‘transgressions’ and explains that “Transgressions for me are a matter of going a little further than what reason tells you to do - either getting closer, being insistent in meeting someone, sometimes being ‘impolite’, pushing your way forward, stepping on people’s toes…” all that today is essential to being a paparazzi, the least liked species of photographer. And, as Franck says, “All these things I have done.” After all, being true to the lens and always in search of that perfect picture is what the craft is all about. “What I most like about photography is the moment that you can't anticipate; you have to be constantly watching for it, ready to welcome the unexpected."

Martine Franck – Photographs, Art Musings Gallery, Colaba, May 3 to June 21

Running from the rain

(I wrote this for the paper I work with. I kinda liked it. Hence it finds its way here....)

I feel a bit like Mrs Macbeth, even though the weather is making me look a little more like one of the witches on that blasted heath that Shakespeare spoke of. My hair is frizzing beyond even the control of the stern ministrations of my hairdresser and the kitchen towels are not drying even after being double-spun in the machine. It is damp – nay, moist – within and without and the atmosphere hangs heavy in my very existence.

There’s something in the air tonight, oh, Lord! And that something is not just Phil Collins’ squeaky-smoky voice, but the monsoon. Like the good Mumbaikar that I am, I wait not-too-patiently and watch the sky from my bedroom window, but there has not been any tangible sign of that cloud that people chase from its first appearance off the Kerala coast to its descent over the mountains of the northeast. Nary a raindrop in sight, not in my sights, at least. When I am lying in my bed, spreadeagled to catch every waft of the coolth from the airconditioner, I hear an occasional drop bouncing off the chhajja and spring up to peer through the olive green sheers…nope, that is just the AC from upstairs dripping.

I am not really sure why I want the rains to arrive. Maybe it is because, with my usual stickler-ish-ness for keeping to schedule, it is supposed to, therefore it must. Maybe at some deeply existential level I am being my vaguely eco-aware self and realise that to get the crops growing and keep the farmers from dying the rain is essential. Maybe it is all a matter of that cycle of life thing that those animal folks sang of. Or maybe it is just that the season of hot and more hot is getting really boring and I need change.

Frankly, I am not a rain person. I hate the smell of sheets not drying and the green stuff that grows on slippers that got damp in a puddle. I hate the feel of dankness in the hot air and the stickiness of floors that never dry. The time that my small car actually floated a couple of inches off the road in many feet of dreadfully dirty water – that happened last year – is something that will always haunt me. It was not the fact that we were pretending to be a boat, but the fact that not having solid ground under me aggravated my vertigo and actually made me, who hates getting her feet dirty, long to splash in a few puddles.

For now, I do not have too much to worry about. The potholes are being filled, with promises if not with asphalt, the roads are being concretised – or at least dug up for the process – and my new car has been rust-proofed and Teflon-coated to minimise damage. In my world, things are all set for the onslaught of the monsoon. All I need is that first downpour. And while I wait for Nature to do its thing, I watch the drip from the airconditioning system above my desk in the office.