I'm Going Home, Back To The Place Where I Belong

So, other than the fact that I luuurve Chris Daughtry (something about the bald head and the gravelly voice and ..um...I think that's it....my taste in men was always pretty suspect), this is all about the fact that, this time on Friday, I'm going to be in Bombay, baby!!!

It's just so strange...I've lived across quite a few cities in India (and now one teeny-tiny one in the Middle East), but there's no place quite like Bombay (yeah, I'm physically incapable of saying Mumbai. Just ain't gonna happen). And, freak that I am, I have an itinerary of EVERYTHING that has to be squeezed into the 2 weeks that I get in my precious city...but then again, knowing my friends, I can pretty much rip up that list right now. Not that I'm complaining, mind...I'm getting to see this lot after a year now, and I miss the days when we all, as my mom puts it, "Lived out of each others' pockets". Christ, in some ways I think it's great that we've all grown out of the phase where meeting each other was as essential as breathing, but on some horribly selfish level, I still want that closeness....well,okay, the closeness is still there, but sometimes, geographical proximity would be good! This whole cross-country nonsense with Oman and Dubai and Bombay and Sydney is just....yucky (yeah, I topped my class in English, can you tell??)

Okay,so melancholy aside, these are the things I absolutely HAVE to do once I'm there:

1. Go to Leo's - And as much as I know the boys are going to grumble...they can stuff it.Leo's is tradition! Leo's is home! Leo's is comfortable and I've been away for a year and I'm the princess and I have to get my own way (there's a little foot-stomping and pouting going on here. I have to practice if this is going to work on them when I get there).
2. Pig out at Britannia's - Mmmmm God, mutton saali boti and chicken berry pulao and caramel custard.
3. Pig out at Trishna - Crabs. With butter and garlic and pepper. And garlic naan. And Hyderabadi daal.
4. Pig out at any place that serves a decent saada dosa with non-sweet sambar and, oooh, medu vadas! And fried idli! Crap, I miss good Indian food...even though there's a massive Southie contingent in this country, not one fucking place that serves a decent dosa. Bah.
5. Pig out at Bade's - Because I miss leaning against a car at three in the morning, winding down and eating boti and naan.

Yeah, I know food features prominently on this list...but seriously...is there ANY place more reknowned for gastronomic pleasure than Bombay? (if there is, please tell me)

6. Frequent Hard Rock, Toto's and Zenzi - The former two for the music and the latter for the eye candy, both male and female. I tell you, I really missed out, living in South Bombay all those years and neglecting the 'burbs. Obviously all the droolworthy men are there (at least, I'm hoping).
7. Spend time with A.H., who will have plenty of tall tales filled with drunken debauchery and devilry, which will no doubt keep me entertained for a good week.
8. Find a woman for N.M., or at the very least keep bugging him about the fact that I get more action than he does.
9. Try and find out conclusively whether or not I.P. and N.P. are, in fact, gay, and if so, WHY THE HELL WON'T THEY JUST GET TOGETHER ALREADY. 'Cuz, seriously? They need to be locked in a room. Or clubbed over the head. I'll gladly volunteer.

And that is a fraction of my very ambitious itinerary. Somewhere in there I have to squeeze in Christmas, New Years', and an exam (which I'm trying really really REALLY hard not to think about, but it just won't go away!) and visiting cousins and exes and their wives and fiancees... But, whatever, in 91 hours, I'm hooooooooooome!!!

"Are you married?"

The three most despicable and over-used words in this part of the world.

So, I've been in the middle-east a little less than three months, and I lost count of the number of times I was asked the dreaded question after about, oh, 47. Apparently here, if you're female, 24 and not completely bleargh, there's no earthly reason you shouldn't be shoving out Baby #4 as you read this. The shining moment for me, of course, was on my first day at work, when, while I was surrounded and Spanish Inquisitioned by a gaggle of abaya-clad secretaries, one sympathetic soul asked : "You cannot have children, yes? That is why no man will have you?" I WISH my reply had been to slink down in my seat, close my eyes and attempt to teleport myself to some distant and not-so-patriarchal location (a la Hiro Nakamura...don't you just love 'Heroes'??), but sadly, I chose the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar approach. You know, the whole "The world is changing" blah blah blah and "Women are independent and happy without a man" yada yada yada.

I might as well have been trying to teach Osama bin Laden the chicken dance.

So back to the Question-That-Shall-Not-Be-Asked (only by me, it seems). I have been asked that at job interviews (because, dah-ling, don't you know, a diamond ring is the working-girl accessory out here), at clinics during visa-related check-ups (why can't they just come right out and ask if I'm sexually active instead of married?? I have vowed to say the word 'sex' at my next check-up and see if the doctors will spontaneously combust. Or deport me.), at supermarkets (I think they figure no married woman would consume the vast quantities of Coke and hazelnut chocholate that I do), at bars (this one I'm a little confused about. Apparently the unmarried women in bars are prostitutes. So why would any man take his wife there??), and, as I mentioned, at work. Oh, and the women I work with? They're all younger than I am, and, between the 5 of them, have 21 children. I kid you not.

You know that fear you have, when you go to a new school, that you're just not gonna fit in? Yeah, that might be the case here! Though I'm not sure whether it's because of my "radical" opinions or my Sex and the City shoes.

But really, even back home, this whole preoccupation with marriage is mind-boggling! When did it become the be-all and end-all; the cherry on the sundae; the nirvana to be attained? What happened to the fiesty, fun, I-need-a-man-like-a-fish-needs-a-bicycle women? The ones who stayed single till their thirties and then married for equal parts love and lust? Who worked till midnight and then partied till dawn? I mean, obviously not here, where it's a big step forward for the local women to leave their hair uncovered. But at least in B'bay, I thought we were moving towards that new breed of woman that said "Fuck you" to matrimony, swivelled on one three-inch Jimmy Choo (Colaba knock-off) and sashayed away to flirt with...well...I can't actually remember there being anyone to flirt with at work. Are there people to flirt with in the workplace? Most of the bosses I've had have looked like Mr. Potato Head.

Then again, maybe all this introspection is because Serious-Ex#2 is getting married in November.

Wake Up and Smell the Bubble Wrap

So we're moving again.

As a kid, I went through eleven schools in the kindergarten-to-12th years, and I loved almost every one of them (there was just this one place that was an all-girls' disaster...you know, with the rampant desperation and the comparing of boob sizes. Puberty is a tough time). But I think the best time I had was at the last school I was in. I actually managed to spend 3 years there! And it was those all-important years from 15 to 17, so of course there was drama and intrigue and mayhem and men...all very Sidney Sheldon (God Bless his soul), but without the sex.

And, of course, there was the-object-of-affection . Said object was actually someone I knew this time (as opposed to his predecessors, Prince William and Nick Carter), and lord, sometimes I think back to how utterly clueless I was about such things and I want to bang my head against the wall. Oh, I managed to talk to him without stammering and stuttering (I think), but it would more or less remain at comparing English marks (how scintillating!). And, embarrassingly, I think I was rather obvious about the entire thing, you know, with the blushing and the hair-twirling and the gaggle-of-giggling-friends a few feet away. I was a reasonably attractive teenager, but gawd, so low on self-confidence, so back then all the innuendo-laced flirting that I now manage was pretty much out of the question. What I wouldn't give to have projected this calm, cool, worldly image instead of the weirdo I must actually have seemed like! But I guess something must have been in my favour, since I got my first (and second) kiss out of it...And look at that, I still have a goofy grin on my face when I think about it! I guess once a nerd, always a nerd.

I think the strange part with object-of-affection was that my relationship with him only really began after it ended. I remember (once we started talking again!) that I could finally talk to him without the what-is-he-thinking-about-me and the ooh-say-something-hilarious-so-you-can-hear-that-cute-laugh. And as I grew a little older and a lot less self-conscious and, amazingly, so much more comfortable within my own skin, it became easier and easier to talk to him about men and women and college and jobs and aspirations and moving-blues and everything else under the sun. So then he become one of those friends. You know, the kind where you can pick up the phone after six months and start yakking like you just hung up five minutes ago? Love that.

So last night when mom and I were looking at empty walls and stacked packing crates and indulging in our moving-time ritual of curling up in bed and popping the bubbles on leftover (or, well, stolen) bubble-wrap, she asked me what I hoped to get out of this move to Muscat. I gotta say, with the way things have worked out in the past, a little crush wouldn't hurt :)

Plus, it's been a long time. A veeery long time.

Venereal Disease (Well, okay, no, but it sounds more interesting than 'Valentine's Day')

I have never celebrated a Valentine’s Day with a significant other (even when I was dating, there would invariably be fights on either the 13th or the 14th itself (ah, tempestuous romance of college days, how I miss thee. NOT.). But the day is still pretty damn special for me. Okay, I’ll admit, it’s so blatantly commercial that it’s difficult to see where the romance begins and the promotional schemes end. And honestly, if you’re a woman and you’re PMSing and you’re – god forbid in these hearts and flowers times – single (gasp!), the copious amount of red-heart-bedecked store fronts and ultra-mega-gigantic billboards shouting “Valentine’s Sales” and “Two-for-One Lovers’ Discount” get to be a bit much. Well, when I say a bit much, I mean only in the hitting-in-the-head-with-a-bulldozer sort of way.

Sour grapes, you say? To which I heartily rejoin: Nahhhh. Sour grapes is this woman I know, who’ll walk down Marine Drive in the evening and scowl at all the poor privacy-deprived couples and mutter about taking them out with a bazooka. Oh, or this other person I know who’ll walk into every greeting-card store and not-so-surreptitiously stick all the heart-shaped balloons with a pin and then gleefully proclaim “I broke 75 hearts today!” Um, note to self: must find new friends’ circle. But really, what I don’t get is how people don’t see the day for the corporate-sponsored malarkey that it is. I know it’s been said a million times before, so it can stand to be said again: Why should there be a separate day allotted to love and showing it? It’s a nice concept, I’ll grant you that – a special day set aside like any birthday or anniversary (and there’s no such thing as too many special days). But card companies and restaurants and TV and movies have turned it into this whole huge deal, to the point where I actually know people running around in a panic at the last minute because they don’t have a date for the 14th of February.

Oh, and since I have chronic foot-in-mouth disease, to these people I said: “So?” And boy, did I ever get reamed out. “Don’t you have a romantic bone in your body?”; “Do you want to die an old maid?”; “Don’t you know how important the day is?”; “Don’t you know how much fun it is getting all those gifts?”; “Do you WANT to be a lonely 80 year old with 47 cats?” and the like. I dunno, really. I’ve always rather liked cats, and as for dying an old maid…well, I really doubt one Valentine’s Day is going to tip the scales either way on that probability! As for the gifts….ok, yeah, I’m losing out there. But damn it, I’m a woman of the 21st century and I earn my own money (albeit not much), so I can buy my own damned Swarovski crystals (the teeny-tiny ones)!

I think what prompts most people to want to celebrate the 14th of February (aside from all the nummy chocolates and the cosy hand-holding) is the fear (or maybe despair) of being alone when most of the world is paired up. I said earlier that Valentine’s Day is a special day like any birthday or anniversary, but unlike those days, which are celebrated by family and friends and large groups of loved ones, Valentine’s Day is a day for two. It’s a more intimate day, a more exclusive one, and third wheels are not encouraged to tag along. It’s very firmly a Couples Thing. And, deep down, there’s a lot of people out there yearning to be part of a Couples Thing, especially on the 14th, when the Couple Vibe is on display EVERYWHERE. They want to walk down halls with fingers intimately clasped and play footsie under restaurant tables and gasp with delight at gifts received and seal the day with a kiss (or, okay, more).

So the thing is, what I miss today isn’t a significant other. This day is normally special for me because in Bombay it always meant going to Leo’s or out for dinner with the entire bunch and groaning over the fact that EVERY place insisted on playing “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You” and “Everything I Do” at least 6 times in succession. It meant looking at couples fighting and smirking to ourselves that we were footloose and fancy free and, most importantly, free to ogle without recrimination, even on this, the much-touted Most Hallowed of All Days of Love (pardon the oodles of sarcasm). It meant eventually piling into someone’s car and sitting by Marine Drive or Worli Seaface at 3 in the morning, speculating about what we’d all be doing and where we’d be, and who we’d be, 10 years from now. It meant a very real, and very visceral fear (confusingly laced with a little anticipation) that maybe next year, one of us wouldn’t be there, because we’d have found someone (someone else, someone not us) and abandoned our little ritual for the wonders of Valentine’s Day. Not romantic, no, not at all, but special in more ways than anyone can quantify.

And okay, now I’m in Cal, and we’re all running up our phone bills (yeah, no more Swarovskis for me...sigh) calling to and from Bombay and Delhi and Calcutta and Dubai and Sydney. But there’s still the smirking and the speculating and god, tonnes of catching up (and all without the sappy songs in the background!). And fine, even if it isn’t 3 in the morning in someone’s car on Worli Seaface? It’s still pretty damn special.

In Which WorldSpace Should Pay Me For Promoting Them...

"There's something to be said for music: it has the amazing ability to make people bond. Be it Aerosmith (my mother particularly likes re-enacting the "Dude Looks Like a Lady" dance with the vacuum cleaner, a la Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire), or Prodigy ( my sweet, 50-plus dad headbanging away to "Smack My Bitch Up") or even the Backstreet Boys (i've told my little brother I'll disown him if he tells anyone he listens to boybands and is related to me), music appeals to anyone and everyone, be they possessed of discerning taste or not. Me, I relax with the dulcet tones of Metallica and Switchfoot and Incubus and, when i'm lucky, Eminem. Or wait, actually, I think the only thing we bond over is yelling to each other: "Turn the bloody volume down!" Sheesh. Parents. Do they have to blast the Marilyn Manson quite so loud?

No, but blatant name-dropping aside, this WorldSpace thingy is a stroke of sheer unadulterated genius, and to everyone out there who does not possess one: what are you waiting for, you poor sod? Go get it! 40 channels of music to suit every palate. So one second you could be listening to "Kandukondain kandukondain,", the next it could be "Tanhayee" and then "Donde Quieras yo ire" and subsequently "Unbreak my heart." I totally lack pride in my country's contribution to the world of music, and I suffer little to no shame about it...I firmly stick to the 12 channels allocated to rock, hip-hop, r&b, country, electronica, pop, chartbusters and international hits (I can't help it..."I want to kiss your bellybutton" sounds a million times better in Spanish than in Malayalam).

And, okay, there are news channels too, but who needs gloom and doom when Beyonce's talking about being a naughty girl? Still, for those who feel the need to be well-informed at any given nanosecond ,there are umm...I think...six news channels, all droning on about world affairs, so enjoy being clued in! And yes, that includes up-to-the-minute scores for every concievable sport that's being played out there, so all you cricket/football/hockey/ice-hockey/baseball/volleyball/basketball/women's-beach-volleyball fans, go get your jollies.

And what's best about WorldSpace Radio? Entertainment value: at the end of a long tiring day, I come home to see my grouchy 110-kilo maid doing the ironing and blissfully wobbling and shaking her groove thang to Daft Punk. Ah, bless music."

So, I wrote the above piece of ass-kissing a few months ago. My maid has since left (tossed out by my mom for the 289th and final time), and the only one wobbling and shaking her groove thang is me.

I HATE ironing. Hmph.

Okay, so I know a lot of people out there aren't really into poetry in a major way (or at all, really)...but this is a poem I go around stumping to just about everyone. You know how it is...you come across something so beautiful, you just have to share it with people. It's Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII: Love.

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
Or arrow of carnations that propagate fire.
I love you as certain dark things are loved:
Secretly, between the shadow and the soul;
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom
And carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers...
And thanks to your love, darkly in my body
Lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where;
I love you simply, without problems or pride.
I love you in this way because I know no other way of loving

But this, in which there is no I or you:
So close, that your hand upon my chest is my hand;
So close, that when I fall asleep, it is your eyes that close.

God, I love this one. Actually, I love most of his stuff. They're all translations into English, though, since the originals were in Spanish, but it makes you wonder...if the translation can feel like such a kick to the gut, how beautiful must the original be? His "Body of a Woman" is amazing...this one line gets me everytime: "You look like a world, lying in surrender." Gah. Oh, and his "Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines"...wow...just...wow.

It's amazing the power that words can carry...how immensely evocative they are...how, to someone with an imagination (and hoo boy, do I ever have one!), words can convey more than a picture ever could. And I've seen this power mostly in poetry and songs...Not just Neruda, but Frost, and Dylan Thomas, and Byron, and Shakespeare and...Metallica, and 3 Doors Down, and Deathcab for Cutie, and Bif Naked, and....okay, it could go on forever.

But seriously. Do yourself a favour. Read Neruda's "Sonnet XVII" and "Body of a Woman". And Ben Jonson's "Love Poem to Celia". And then listen to Metallica's "Turn the Pages". And Bif Naked's "Lucky". And Bush's "Out of This World". And Staind's "It's Been A While".

Actually, listen to just about anything that makes you smile and sit down and say "Oh." Do that once a day, and I think it'll be a whole lot better for you than any vitamin tonic or calcium tablet or iron pill.

Now if I could just sell that theory to my doctor. Sigh.