So Long England, 'til we meet again

     Two weeks ago, I packed up the last of my clothes, threw away half finished bottles of ketchup, mustard, chipotle sauce and drove away from the house that had been my home for the past year. It was bittersweet;  I was sad to leave Weybridge but I was looking forward to spending the next two weeks as a resident tourist in London; a farewell tour of sorts, a re-run of the greatest hits  and experiences of the year. 

    Now, at the airpot, as my husband checks in the last of our 9 suitcases (total weight 175 kilos!), I realize that this is it. My year of living in this country - a country with almost 2000 years of recorded history, a country that has a nasty historical relationship with my native land, India yet today counts people of the Indian sub-continent as its largest immigrant community - has come to an end. It was time to recapture how I spent 378 days on this island. I have gained a different perspective on my life in the US by living in a similar yet different culture. I have seen the role of government in taking care of its vulnerable citizens and read about the bureaucratic challenges of a big government. I have watched people foster communities without compromising their personal space, cherish history and natural resources with great pride while adapting technology to make everyday life simple and I have:

• toured magnificent castles at Windsor, Edinburgh, and Hever and  gilded palaces - Buckingham,  Kensington, Hampton Court and Osborne palace and tried, in vain to keep track of English history and numerous families that have made up the English royalty since 1066
• reveled in landscaped gardens and  grand manor houses at  National Trust properties like Polesdon Lacey, Claremont gardens, Gatton Park, Box Hill and  Painshill Park
• participated in the Royal Regatta at Henley-on-Thames, driven through picture perfect villages of warm yellow colored houses in Oxfordshire and marked off filming locations from the Midsomer Murders and Inspector Morse series
• walked in the countryside straight out of a Thomas Hardy novel with hills colored in different shades of green dotted with white puffs of the sheep kept in check by straight drystone walls in the North country and tall hedges everywhere else
• punted on the Cam along the backs in Cambridge, walked in the shadow of the towering spires in Oxford and felt a twinge of envy at the well-dressed scholars of Eton College

• driven my car onto the ferry at Portsmouth and onto a train to go through the Eurotunnel at Folkestone, driven almost 8700 miles in all from the gorgeous Isle of Wight, to the pebbled beaches of Brighton and along the gorgeous West coast of Scotland
• driven on narrow village roads with cars parked on either side, only  to see the oncoming driver pause to let me pass, through roundabouts as small as a painted circle in the middle of the road to a large stretched polygon with five exits, feeling the collective movement of cars flowing through the circle in harmony, and struggled with extremely tight parking spots in parking garages at Windsor and Weybridge
• felt my heart soar with Beethoven’s Fifth played by the Surrey Mozart Players at the ancient Trinity church in Guildford, felt goosebumps listening to Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass’s composition played on India’s Independence day at the Royal Albert Hall and stared in amazement at the glorious mosaics on the ceilings of the St Paul’s cathedral while attending evensong 
• minded the gap on the Tube platforms, walked endless steps through the tunnels and rode up and down deep escalator wells to get onto the streets of London and tried in vain to keep up with the fast walking, extremely fit men and women dressed in their usual  stylish best, no matter what the weather
• experienced theatre in the West end and shopping on Regent Street, ogled at high fashion with unapproachable prices at Carnaby and Mayfair, watched a game of cricket in Hyde park and strolled  in St James’s Park shielding myself from the feral pigeons
• eaten the best Indian food in my life, ever. Period. 
• felt the joys of ordering groceries online to be delivered at home the day after we returned from a trip, and the ease of buying fresh, ready to cook meals, small packaging sizes of produce and single servings of wine in bottles at the grocery stores
• enjoyed many a pints at quaint village pubs and sophisticated gastropubs, indulged in fish pie, fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, roasted lamb, Yorkshire pudding, dainty crustless sandwiches of egg mayonnaise and watercress or cucumber and dill with cream cheese, sticky toffee pudding, Victoria sponge, exceedingly flavorful ales and Gin and the occasional Pimms 
• lived in the art form that is the English garden; whether outside a tiny cottage in Shere, walled gardens at Hampton Court or the profusely flowering and scented RHS Wisely, Savill Garden, Isabella Plantation and Queen Mary’s garden

• hiked the rolling Surrey Hills in the North Downs, stark white chalk cliffs of the South Downs, and the rainy peaks of Catbells Fell in Lake District; looked in wonder at the countless white, brown and black stockinged sheep as well as the Galloways and hairy cows grazing everywhere on this island 
• experienced glorious sunsets, sweet birdsongs of robins, magpies, and finches every evening right outside my bedroom window, and brilliant blooms of labernums, magnolias, peonies, rhododendrons and  horse chestnut blossoms all through spring
• walked on miles of public footpaths through kissing gates and over stiles in meadows, heaths and ancient woods of oak, beech fern and bluebell carpets in spring or buttercups, poppies, cowparsley, foxglove and daisies in summer
• played miniature golf, got scared at Chessington and was transported to a bygone world on the Bluebell railway
• watched proudly as my daughter learnt to canter on a horse and finally conquer her fear of water, and my son sing old English songs and Latin hymns with his school Choir 
• enjoyed the Queens language spoken in its best form, making up my mind to use whilst, reckon, row ( instead of argument), and give you a ring in my vocabulary
• perused innumerable antique stands at the Alexandra palace fair, Sunbury market and Portobello road along with my husband, appreciating the British knack for re-using things till they break, and bought many more used books than I donated at various Hospice and Charity shops
• felt frustrated with the tiny washer-dryer at my flat, rudimentary telephone coverage and unsatisfactory customer service on the phone but experienced excellent personal service in stores in London 
• seen more ducks, swans, dogs and horses in everyday life than I have ever seen before,
• almost drained my credit card buying English pottery at Stoke on Trent
• walked the birthplaces of Wordsworth and Jane Austen and stomping grounds of Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson and Dickens 
• mastered (well, tried to) the Essentials of Cuisine techniques at Le Cordon Bleu in London 
• marveled at treasures from all over the world at the National Gallery, Victoria & Albert and British Museums, learnt about the personal horrors of the Great war at the Imperial War Museum, vintage cars and airplanes at the Brookland Museum, got my fill of old Jaguars and MGs, and brand new Bentleys, Aston Martins and Maserattis on the streets of Weybridge, Cobham and Esher
• participated in a Medieval fair, International fair, flag hoisting and concerts along with the  wonderful ACS Cobham International school community 

And cliched though it may seem, I have made friends with people from all over the world and memories that will last me a lifetime. 

Moving Day...again.

A gentle breeze is playing with the leaves of the ash tree while somewhere above, a pigeon is cooing contently. It is 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I'm sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of Twinings Tea.  If you walked into the house right now, you would think we had lived here for years. The truth is, we moved in just three days ago.

Having enjoyed our intial days as tourists in hotels in Central London, we were getting restless for space. The novelty of living out of suitcases and searching for new restaurants for every meal was wearing off. Since we had already received the keys to the flat, we decided to move in one day ahead of schedule. We had opted for a fully furnished flat instead of a bigger house considering the temporary nature of our stay here. In many ways, this move was not the same as all of the earlier ones. And there have ben quiet a few of those.

Moving has become a recurring event in our family. When we meet new people and talk about our past, the seven towns we have lived in and stories about our moves become engaging topics of conversation. Since the first move from India to the US, with only the proverbial suitcases in hand,  we found ourselves packing and moving every 2-3 years. We have lived on the western and eastern coasts of US and also the mid-west.  We moved across continents for a two year stint in India, before coming back to the US and now, we are here in the United Kingdom. When we bought our first house, we moved all our possessions with the help of some well meaning friends and Subway sandwiches. As the years went by, things started adding up. We have moved our belongings on an 18 wheeler truck across the country, in a giant container on a ship to India and this time in sturdy cardboard boxes for air cargo.

This move feels different; temporary and liberating. We have a timeline here and all decisions are based on that. We are not looking to settle down in the best house we can buy and decorate it with our style of furniture and appliances. We need the essentials to cook, clean and live comfortably for one year and plan all the trips we can possibly take. So, we brought pillows and comforters and toys with us so that we would have some familiar things from 'home' and ordered the rest on Amazon. This feels like an extended sleep-over. Settling in did not take more than a weekend.

My family moved a lot when I was a child. I did not grow up in the town I was born in. In fact, I did not live there till I turned 16. Living in different states with different cultures and languages made me appreciate the diversity in Indians. I became fluent in 5 languages. I don't have trouble talking to strangers or making friends. A life like this makes you a constant traveler and that helps you take risks, give people more leeway than you normally would and hence be less judgmental. Great for forming relationships!

However, I miss the feeling of belonging to a place. I am jealous of people who can call themselves native Punekars, or New Yorkers. I have roots but they are aerial, branching out in search of light and water and thriving wherever they find it.  I am from nowhere yet I belong everywhere. Maybe that is why I try to live each day the best I can because I don't know when and where I will move to next.

Fishy.

“Something smells good, Mom”, my eight year old son calls out over the music of “The Adventures of Tintin” that he is watching with his five year old sister. The smell interrupts my husband’s Saturday night semi-fugue state, induced by old Hindi movie songs, ghazals and single malt Scotch. My industrial grade Viking hood is doing the best it can, but is no match for the heady fragrance of dinner, cooking in bubbling oil on its way to a heavenly state of golden brown crispiness. I am frying Pomfret.

Wikipedia says pomfret is a perciform fish belonging to the family Bramidae. It is found in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. I say, they have no idea what Pomfret is.

Pomfret is my mother, announcing on a Saturday morning, that my brother and I were to watch out for and stop the local fishmonger  as he made his way through the neighborhood. The object of our attention for the rest of the morning was a short, dark man with round eyes and a quick smile. His bushy mustache apologetically made up for a receding hairline. He usually wore a mundu, a long rectangular cotton garment worn at the waist, and a shirt, with a scarf-like piece of cloth wrapped around his head.. He would ride into our alley on a bicycle with a basket tied precariously to the back seat. He announced his presence with a loud horn – the sound a cross between a duck’s quack and a broken reed. It was in this basket, over a thin layer of ice, under dark green banana leaves, that he presented the manna from local rivers and the Arabian Sea, occasionally his prized catch, the pomfret. It is an exciting day for us because cooking fish at home was a show of culinary bravery for my mother. She had grown up with strictly vegetarian, staunch Hindu parents and had tasted meat only after she got married .She was adventurous enough to cook fish but was not confident about buying or cleaning it. That was Amma’s job.  “Amma” is Malayalam for mother and to us, it seemed like the whole town called her Amma. She was a stern lady of indeterminate age, who worked in our house as a housemaid/translator/spreader of neighborhood information. As soon as the fishmonger stopped in front of our house, Amma was dispatched to do the needful. She wiped her strong and heavily wrinkled hands on her work cloth and walked up to him. She gave the man a once-over as if silently warning him against any mischief. Then she peered into the basket and moved back the banana leaves. She picked up the plumpest, whitest of the fish and gave it a good sniff. If it passed her olfactory test, its gills were pried open. If it was nice and pink inside, Amma gave the man a slight toothless smile and picked a few more. The care with which she picked fish for us made us feel like royal children, whose food was tested for poison before it was served. After the necessary payment was made, all of us followed Amma to the back of the house where she proceeded to clean and prepare the fish and hand it over to my mother for further processing.

Pomfret is my father, ordering fish for me, at every restaurant that we went to, even when it was the most expensive dish on the menu. The love on his face, having ordered the best dish for his favorite child, in my opinion, was returned with a grin on my face, when the waiter brought the plate of crisp golden fried fish, head intact, eyes open, garnished with red onion rings, chopped cilantro and a lemon wedge. For my brother and I, eating out at a restaurant was a luxury, a status symbol. To have a special dish ordered just for me was hence, a momentous achievement. Over time, the restaurants changed from a “dining hall” of five or six tables covered with white table cloths over worn out reddish brown carpets lit by shabby chandeliers to avant garde restaurants in five star hotels in Mumbai but the ritual never changed.

Pomfret is little fingers, peeling off the crisp skin to reveal firm white flesh held together by a skeleton of long bones. The fingers do not have find and remove tiny bones that hide inside other kinds of seafood. The fish has been fried whole, with two short slits on each side where the marinade of garlic, ginger and turmeric, green chilies, cumin, coriander and salt has made its way inside. The skin is a crispy golden brown, while the flesh has cooked in a fragrant steam of the marinade, giving it a flavor even the finickiest of eaters cannot ignore.

The smell reaches deep inside me, taking me back to the land where I grew up, thousands of miles away from this beautiful prairie that we now call home. It is the link from my childhood to the life that I am trying to create for my children. It inspires me to make memories with them, which they can turn to, when they grow up. I hope that this fine specimen of the Bramidae family thrives and multiplies for generations in the saline ocean waters so that my children can share the joy of a perfectly fried pomfret and steaming rice with their loved ones, for years to come.

A different shade of green

     A line of old Ambassador cars greets you as you step out of Kochi International Airport. This is one of only two states in India where these rotund and sturdy cars of the 1980’s have not fallen out of favor. Sleek elegance, modern amenities and power are aspects not associated with this car, but their drivers do not seem to mind. Well-maintained city roads direct the fast and unruly traffic and billboards advertise mega gold jewelry marts and silk saree emporiums. As you make your way towards the rural interiors, you remember the caption on the tourism department’s brochure – Kerala, God’s own country. Roll down the windows - use your biceps, no power windows here - and inhale the gorgeous sea air, there is no doubt you are in a tropical paradise.

     No matter what the season, there is equilibrium between the water content in the atmosphere and the air so that there is just enough air to let you breathe comfortably but the humidity makes it thick enough to be palpable. Paddy fields, with thick sheaves of rice, sitting in puddles of water put on an intense display of green. Acres upon velvety acres are tended to by hand, mostly by women, who try to coax rice, the life blood of the region, from this stubborn plant. The straight, brown trunks of the coconut trees rise up tall with a head of lush long, yellow–green fronds. It is capped off with a big bunch of coconuts and stalks of small yellow fragrant flowers. The soft, flimsy stems of the banana plants support  wide leaves and big bunch of fruits which are loved by humans and animals alike. Elephants are the workhorses here, carrying loads of timber from forests with the same aplomb as serving in religious festivities in temples, decked in gorgeous livery. 

     Then, there is the water. Tucked away in the southwestern corner of Indian peninsula, Kerala has a long coastline along the Arabian Sea. This is the landing ground for the majestic monsoon, which gathers up from the Indian Ocean, drenching the land for most of the year. Water collects everywhere; in small ponds, lakes and gurgling streams, filling up with water lilies and buffaloes in the blink of an eye. Three large rivers traverse this small state spilling their energy onto the shores and into the people. The vast waters of the Arabian Sea to the west of the land mass form the perfect backdrop for the tiring sun to rest, every evening, bathing the coconut groves and rubber plantations in a surreal golden hue.

The houses are modest, complementing a population that is cultured, conventional and hardworking. One or two story concrete buildings, painted in light colors with red tiled roofs. A compound wall marking the property line and a gate, usually an intricately welded iron one, making you pause before you enter. The yard is dirt with bushes of brightly colored flowers along the walls. Hibiscus, gardenias, jasmine and roses vie for attention under the tall presence of coconut palms and jack fruit trees. The scent in the air is primal, of a happy balance between nature and its human tenants. Technology and the progress that modern amenities promise have found their way to this remote corner of land but the culture of respectful indulgence in nature’s bounty has created a harmonious lifestyle for its population. With as many people wearing the latest fashion in jeans, skirts and pants as there are men wearing the cotton mundu and young girls wearing the silk white and golden sarees, God’s own country is not stuck in time. She is relishing time, as it flows like the deep waters of the Periyar river towards the sea.

Back To School

“Can I wear this right now, Mom?” My seven year old son asked me at the checkout counter, fully expecting me to say no. He had a brand new back pack in one hand and a big bag full of folders and pencils and supplies in the other. I started to say no, out of habit, but I stopped myself. His enthusiasm and genuine excitement rubbed off on me and we walked out of the store with him wearing a new jacket and an empty backpack on his back.

     In case you missed all the advertisements, it is Back to School season! With just a week left to go before school starts, we braved the pouring rain and similarly motivated families to go shopping for clothes and school supplies. The atmosphere in the store was akin to Christmas. Bright signs and flags marked the way to a large section of the store dedicated to Back to School items. Some frequently bought items were packaged together into convenient bundles for hassle free shopping. There were three or four rows of shelves for just binders and folders. Pencils, crayons, markers and sharpeners were spilling out of cleverly placed end caps. Overall there was a mood of gaiety and celebration all around. 

     This made me think about my back to school routine. I spent most of my childhood in a small south Indian town which had one hospital, four churches, two temples, a small vegetable market, one bakery and one stationary/book store. Summer vacation ended around the last week of May and we made that first trip to the school, before the school began, to get our school uniforms. That was the beginning of the week long ritual to get ready for the new school year.  A list of textbooks and notebooks was provided by the school but everything else was optional and left entirely to the financial ability of one’s parents. Pencils were mandatory till the third grade and after that; we could only use fountain pens. That meant bottles of nasty smelling Camel brand blue ink also made their way into the shopping bags. Backpacks were made of durable canvas and were available in basic colors such as black, blue, beige etc.  Pencil boxes were fashion accessories. In the higher grades, we had to buy the geometry box with a compass, divider, ruler, Set Square, protractor, eraser and a pencil sharpener. Mechanical pencils were a big deal, available in bright colors and usually “imported”.  Being that the highly anticipated southwest monsoon usually made its entrance around the same time as the school started, raincoats and umbrellas were a necessary purchase. A stop at the local Bata store for a pair of black lace shoes and white socks completed the shopping trip.

      The second part of the ritual was a family affair. We would lay out the books to be covered and labeled. Rolls of brown paper were taken out along with sheets of name labels. My parents would cut out the brown paper needed for covering each book and meticulously cover and tape that book. Warnings on keeping the books neat and organized ensued. When they thought I was old enough, I was trusted to cover my own books and a few of my younger brother’s. There were single lined notebooks for Social Studies and Science, four-lined books for English and two-lined books for the two local languages, Hindi and Malayalam.  While my parents worked hard to make them look academically dignified, I would open up textbooks and browse through lessons on the Human Body, Differentiation, Robert Frost and the vast maze of newsprint that was to be my companion for the next year. The final touch was the label. Very basic in form, this was a rectangular piece of paper with pre-printed lines for Name, Std., Section, School and Subject. With each passing year, new and exciting innovations occurred in the field of the labels. One year it was sticker labels while another was all about Mickey and Minnie and Donald Duck or bright floral prints or cute animal themes. My father would then write our names, proudly and neatly, on these labels, with more instructions and warnings to keep the covers and labels on the books at least till the first Terminal examination. Then all the books and pencil boxes were put away in the respective schoolbags, awaiting the start of yet another exciting year.

       The school lists have changed, the supplies options have upgraded significantly but the excitement and anticipation of going to a new class with some old and some new friends, is still the same. For my children, at this age when getting the right pencil grips, erasers and sharpeners is as critical as finding out who will sit with you in the class and on the school bus, which kid you will have to avoid and what the new teacher will be like, back to school shopping is an important event, as it was for me. I am looking forward to the new school year and I smile as we join this last minute frenzy of back-to-school celebration. 

Let's do it one more time, nice and slow.

The excuse that I have come up with now is:  I am a writer. I operate at a level deeper than physical beauty and I need not worry about how I (should) look or how much weight I should lose. Before this, it was: I just had a baby and the baby needs me. I cannot leave her and go to the gym to exercise -it worked for almost three years. The most reliable one, my favorite has been: I work full time, I am too tired during the week and I have so many things to do on the weekend. There is no time for exercise.

I do not have a problem coming up with an excuse to not go to the gym. But that has not stopped me from contributing financially to the $25 billion fitness industry. Whenever I move to a new town, I dutifully visit the local gyms, right after the local library and park district and have, over the years, had the honor of being a fully paid member at most of the nation-wide chains. They promise I will lose all the weight I wish, be the person that I truly am and realize all my dreams if only I keep walking in though their door regularly (3-5 times a week). I believe their claims and my enthusiasm drives me for a few months (or weeks) but eventually, I let the membership elapse and go back into the shell of self-loathing, feeling appalled  about my lack of determination in doing  what I absolutely must so as not to have another depressing shopping trip.

                This time, I vowed it would be different. This time it was not just about losing weight. I was getting older and having seen family members suffer health problems, I decided I would take care of my body while there was still time. I discovered the chicest health club in town, three stories and a gazillion square feet of sleek, well-designed space with amenities to help you take care of your body (and mind). In addition to the workout equipment, they had a spa (the little voice in my head warning me that this is not the real reason I should enroll), two indoor heated pools and an outdoor water park (finally, I can learn how to swim), a health food cafe and best of all, the third floor was dedicated to a state-of-the-art child care center, complete with a jungle gym, computer stations and even a rock climbing wall. This was perfect as I did not have to worry about my child being away from me (separation anxiety was enjoying an extended stay in her little psyche) and it would give her a chance to socialize with children her own age. The facility was very impressive and the dormant enthusiasm woke up and shook away its lethargy. Once again, I signed on the dotted line as I  decided that this time that I will go all the way..

               I arrived for my "free fitness assessment” and after being stared at, pinched and measured all over my body, I was told by a girl in her late twenties who broke the scale probably at 100 lbs, dripping wet that I had the body age of a 46 year old, but the potential to be a 29 year old! My real age didn't seem to matter, but then, it was just a number. She walked me through all the options I had, treadmills and stair-masters to lose weight, lumbering machines that will isolate and tone any muscle in my body, the soothingly lit yoga and Pilate studios and the room where thirty stationary bikes were waiting for eager bottoms to spin away to sculpted good looks. That is when I noticed the people inhabiting this land, the sub-species of humans that has always amazed me, the Regulars - the women (and some men) who used this equipment for joy, with such ease that you would think they were strolling down the path in the prairie. It seemed to me that the people exercising were precisely the ones who did not need to be here. These were bodies with proportions that evolution wanted the human body to have. These were clothes off the display racks into which the bodies had been poured. When they exercised, they even sweat in the right places. Where were the other bodies, those dressed in black sweatpants and comfortable t-shirts, trying hard to complete the first 25 minutes on the elliptical, calling up the last reserves of energy and determination, spiking them with memories of the way they used to be and pushing themselves to finish the workout for the sake of that red dress hanging in the closet, or to stop those knees from creaking as they climbed the stairs? 
              As I started going to the gym frequently, I saw more of them, determined faces willing their bodies to complete one more round, finish one more set and relishing the pain in their muscles as reward for their decision to take care of themselves. Observing the Regulars made me realize that they were not an alien sub-species, but normal people who spent their free time hiking, biking, running and walking and when the weather turned dull and cold, took refuge in this stylish and pristine ecosystem to keep their bodies going. I have joined their ranks, hoping my determination and resolve last long enough to turn this passing fancy into a way of life, to enjoy a   lifetime of benefits of an active lifestyle. It is too early to declare myself a winner but I am on my way. And yes, my daughter has started playing with the neighbors and is having fun, socializing. 

Imagine...

The human species prides itself on its imagination. As far as we know (mostly because we do not communicate with them), no other species has the ability to imagine like we do. We have credited most of our significant achievements on being able to imagine things that would have seemed impossible.

Merriam-Websters defines imagination as the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.The truth however is that imagination is wholly influenced by what we know of our reality, of what experiences in our lives have informed us about the world we live in, about what is and is not possible. When we imagine, we have a reference beacon very much in the reality. That is why we imagine aliens with a humanoid appearance; with a head and a torso-like structure ending in appendages. When we imagine heaven, it is the most beautiful manifestation of nature we can recreate from what we have seen or heard or read. If you close your eyes right now and imagine the place you most want to be, chances are it will bear striking resemblance to a picture you have seen on TV, on the Internet or in a magazine somewhere. We consume so much information, solicited and otherwise, that it is practically impossible to think of something which does not have a basis in our reality. Our art forms, even though they might involve tremendous imagination on the part of their creators, also reflect a familiar consciousness.

I recently watched the movie, Close encounters of the Third Kind. Even allowing for the 30 years that have passed since this movie was made, what struck me most about it was how we all were (and still are) restricted by our imagination. Extraterrestrial life exists? Sure and it looks almost like us, has attributes like us like music and touch and yes, just like a human facing a strange situation or a stranger, the first reaction is to fight. Whether it is in the design of the next generation vehicles (which will still have wheels and have contact with the ground) or a superbly made movie like Up, we are very much restricted by our imagination.

When a child is young, two or three years old, it begins to comprehend the world around itself. It does not have enough data about the world to imagine events based on "real" facts. That is why a 3 year old can have tea parties with 5 dolls and 2 horses while engaging in pleasant conversation with all of them about the flying dragons. This does not seem impossible to the child's mind. That is real imagination. As the child grows older, we encourage the child to use her imagination in her studies, to think creatively and "out of the box". But when she does that, she is reminded that though it is very creative, the answers to the questions have to be arrived at, using a conventional and hence, effective method that has been favored over the years. In essence, the imagination of that child gets systematically culled as she grows into an adult in our society. By then, the exposure of that child to the "ways of the world" has happened in its entirety and try as any teacher might, that child can only think so much out of the box. There is no escaping the box from then on.

Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” How many of us can separate knowledge from imagination? Aren't we all the prisoners of our knowledge-tinged imagination?

It rained this afternoon.

The clouds had given fair warning. They had been talking to the meteorologists for the last two days telling them how urgently they needed to get rid of the load they were carrying. The experts, in turn, had passed on the word to the lay people to expect severe thunderstorms in the latter part of the day. They were always so accurate. Such accuracy can come only from getting the news at source -hence the clouds had to have spoken to them. All morning long, the clouds gathered around the town. Some gliding on the gentle breeze that blew from the east. The heavy dark ones, full to the brims managed to drag themselves without losing a single drop. It started getting darker and darker as more of them came. Women rushed out to get the clothes from the clotheslines. Some people shut down the windows while others opened the doors and sat at the stoops, waiting. A flock of swallows made a final dash to get out from under the ominous clouds. And then as if on cue, the first drops started to fall. Gently, haltingly - as if testing the lay of the land. And then it stopped. Nothing moved, not even air as everyone waited to see if the rest would follow. And sure enough as if satisfied that the land they were about to fall on was worthy enough, the floodgates opened. A rush of water started to fall from the sky, enveloping everything in almost a fog of water drops and accompanied by the loudest of shhhhsssss, first in a straight line and then with gay abandon. It rained as If there was no tomorrow. It rained as if this was the last gathering of clouds that would ever grace this land. It rained so hard that it stopped people in their tracks and sent them scurrying under the awnings along with the squirrels and the magpies. It rained with a rhythm that could only be played out by master conductor, Mother Nature, herself. It rained with a purpose. It rained this afternoon.

What a wonderful world!

Lately, it seems every book I read, every movie I watch or any program I listen to is talking about the restlessness of the mind, the need to know what happens next, what happens when we die? How do you make your time on this Earth worthwhile? Maybe it was here all along but I have just started to notice. Another thing I have noticed is as I get older, things seem more and more impermanent, momentary. The fact that our time in this world is finite seems irrefutable and obvious. When we are young, it is all about opportunities, new experiences and to-do lists. Everything seems possible. All you have to do is work really hard. It feels like there is an entire lifetime ahead to achieve the goals and have fun. As you get older, you start crossing off those goals on your list. You get yourself a good education which hopefully lands you a good job. If you are lucky, you may even like your job. Find the right partner, get married and settle down for the long haul. Life chugs along just fine and then the kids arrive. That changes the pace of things. It sounds clichéd, but your priorities get overhauled , without you even noticing it. During those years of child rearing, life just paces itself out so fast that you do not realize how you have changed as a person. The responsibilities that you bear in raising these individuals bring into perspective your role in your own life. That is when the thoughts about the trajectory of your life and where it is headed raise their heads. Now a days, faced with the violence and bitterness in the society, the only response that makes sense is to simplify. To live in the moment, to enjoy each day for what it brings, to smile at babies and shake hands with strangers, to give the other person the benefit of doubt and not assume that the world is out to get you. These seem phrases copied from Hallmark cards but when put into context they make sense. We need to use the highly developed brain that evolution has endowed us with to further our species instead of destroying it.

Sure, it is easy to introspect when you are leading a comfortable, healthy and happy life. When you have to worry about where the next meal will come from, how you will keep your baby dry when the roof leaks or where you will hide when the barbarians are banging on your door, these questions seem irrelevant. That is why it is important now more than ever that the people who are content and have happiness to spare, share it with those in dire need. Religion has tried to do this but in my opinion organized religion has failed humankind terribly. The brilliant writer and historian Tony Judt put it succinctly and beautifully when asked about his thoughts on religion and after life. He said :

"I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself. But there's a big 'but' which enters in here. I am much more conscious than I ever was — for obvious reasons — on what it will mean to people left behind once I'm dead. It won't mean anything for me. But it will mean a lot to them. It's important to them — by which I mean my children or my wife or my very close friends — that some spirit of me is in a positive way present in their lives, in their heads, in their imaginations and so on. So [in] one curious way I've come to believe in the afterlife — as a place where I still have moral responsibilities, just as I do in this life — except that I can only exercise them before I get there. Once I get there, it will be too late. So, no God. No organized religion. But a developing sense that there's something bigger than the world we live in, including after we die, and we have responsibilities in that world."

So, if we all stopped worrying about the afterlife and paid attention to living this life to the fullest, then we will mean it when we sing …what a wonderful world!

TIME!!

Watched The Time Traveler’s Wife yesterday and have been t

hinking about it ever since. I have put off watching this movie for a while as I assumed it was a movie adaption of yet another love story with “Oprah book club”-ish sadness and torment and the pain of lost love. I was true to some extent but it was worth the tears.

The movie is a good adaptation of what I can only imagine must be a dark and intense book. Not having read the book itself, I feel like I cannot do justice to it, so I will stick to the movie version here. This is not so much of a review as a reflection on the ideas floated in the movie. Would I call it a science fiction movie? No, it is a love story though and through. A story about love intense yet flawed in a very human way. A story about loss and man’s instinctive need to live. The movie tries to delve into these deep issues but the restrictive nature of the medium itself stops it from doing justice to the theme. Exploring the need to love and live is the central theme of the story. What makes it the consummate romance story is that even though Henry travels back and forth through time, the story is not muddled by the presence of extra characters. It involves only the people and relationships that are central to his life and the story is explained and explored through them. The pivotal scene to me that captures the existential and nostalgic mood of the movie is when an adult Clare post two miscarriages, is visited by a Henry from the past, from the beginning of their relationship . This is right after she has found out that Henry has undergone a vasectomy in order to prevent any more children from being born as they may turn out to be time travelers. It is a very short but well executed scene where the intensity of her love for him, the earlier Henry, before life has taken its course, come shining through. She also acts on her primal need to continue life by having their child by making love to him in the care. It is a reflection of the sentiment everyone feels, yearning for a past when things were better, life was easier and the world was full of possibilities . Throughout the story the feeling of yearning for the past is a constant presence and given the fact that Henry can go through the past, reliving it, though totally out of his control, makes it even more unfair for Clare. The sense of loss – of love, of time, of life – is so intense that it begs the question, would you really want to travel in time, past or future if you knew there was nothing you could do to change it? Would you want to know how you die, when you die and would death then be any less painful for your loved ones? Would going back time and again to a point in the past that was pivotal and excruciatingly painful help you deal with it any better? The one thought that echoed through my mind while watching this movie and after too was to live every moment to the fullest, as if was your last. For you never know and even if you do, there is nothing you can do to change it.

Why do you read?

Why do you read?

I was asked this question once by someone very dear to me. As an instinctive reaction, I was upset but on further thought, I realized that I did not really have an answer to that question.

Reading like painting or sculpting or music is an art form. When you read a sentence, whether you realize it or not, it affects a part of your consciousness. Just as every person you meet leaves some impression on you, you cannot go through a single book without it making you pause and think even if for a tiny fraction of time. It doesn’t have to be a 150 page novel. An essay, a short story - anything that takes a strict course of introduction, body and conclusion has the capacity to draw you into itself, whether with admiration and anticipation or revulsion and disgust. When you read a story you are connecting with its author and in that space it is just the two of you, your imagination processing what the author has implied in the pages of the tome. Unadulterated by the images provided by a third party –like the television or the internet, you are free to roam around in the vast hinterlands of your own mind, processing what your brain is reading. It provides a sacred space, in which you can be yourself completely, without prejudice, without expectations and without being judged.

It is not necessary for reading to have a purpose other than reading itself. Sometimes, if it is a self-help book or something that proffers a solution or understanding of a subject matter, after reading it you may be able to explain something you didn’t know before. That is quite often the case with non-fiction. But fiction – that is a different story altogether - pun intended. What do you get from reading a “story book”? Do you read it to pass time? Glossy magazines help you pass time, at the doctor’s office, at the rental car lounge or at the salon. No, you do not read a fiction book to pass time. You read it to savor it. To go where the characters take you, maybe exploring relationships, maybe investigating past or future incidents, predicting where the story is going next. If this is done with an eloquent yet beautiful language which at once amazes and enthralls you, it is a pleasure like no other. Just as listening to an exquisite piece of music or marveling at a brilliant painting, reading a well written book can exercise your neurons to make them work at their best. It makes you think about the world around you, it may not change who you are in a big way but it will certainly leave an impression in your mind that you will carry for the rest of your life. It is not useful in any other way and as Jonathan Lethem put it, it is this “resistance to usefulness” that is so appealing about reading. You read because you can and because you want to.

New month, new goals.

I was going through the settings for this blog and realized that I had almost a quarter of posts that were still "drafts". Unformed paragraphs, unfinished sentences, waiting for that finishing touch that will make them "official posts". I think that is reflective of my state of mind in general. There are so many thoughts that start in my mind, so many things I want to write about, but I find reasons (maybe excuses) for never bringing them to fruition. For the umpteenth time, I have made a resolution to myself. This time I have a good feeling about my goals. So here's the plan..for the month of November, i am going to pick 4 ingredients that i have never cooked with and try out one recipe with that ingredient every week. also, i will pick one technique or style of cooking and try one recipe with it for the month. I will chronicle my efforts on the blog, within 24 hours.

Week 1 - pumpkin or any kind of orange squash.

For November

Week 2 - clams as in Clam chowder

Week 3- Collard greens

Week 4 - bread pudding (yes its not an ingredient, but it's my thanksgiving dessert, preferably with rum or bourbon sauce.

The technique i will try out this month is brining. I will try to do that for the thanksgiving day meal maybe with cornish hens/broiler hens as we all hate turkey!

So there you have it. my goals for the new month as far as food is concerned. there are a lot of other things going on in different aspects of daily living which if interesting enough will find their way to the blog. for example, when her father or I get angry at A, she starts to cry saying "You make me upset....I love you, you make me upset"!!!!

So till the next post, here's wishing me luck!!

A Treatise on Tenacity

So, today is the big day. Days and months of planning, of separation, of anxiety and pain come to a crowning end. And today, the only thing I can think of is tenacity.

I am sure it is written in self help books under the title of how to succeed in life, but to me the most important requisite to success is tenacity. Here is a man who has achieved what he wanted. He may not always have known exactly what it was that he was after, but he knew he had to make it big. It was not for him to lead a normal, comfortable, good life. He wanted the best in life. And he had the determination to stay the course in spite of the setbacks that he faced.By the force of sheer ambition and tenacity and sharp intellect, he set himself up to where he is graduating from Harvard, today. When I started out on this journey with him, many moons ago, I knew he was going to make it big. I don not think either one of us realised what that was going to be. But by keeping his eye on the goal, he has achieved it. Today marks the end of a long and arduous path, one that took him from his home in central India to this bastion of education, far away from home. It also marks the beginning of a new journey, one that is sure to take him to the heights of success he yearns for and deserves.

This reads like a motivational speech, but it is absolutely true

This man is my husband, Partha and I congratulate him on this awesome achievement.