I Should Have Saved The Title For This Post…

… instead of using it here. Ah well, I’m not the weather bureau, and hence couldn’t predict that I’d want to recycle my witticism (scant and obtuse though it may be) for commenting on Cyclone Phet, which I lived through unscathed. Having survived 2 cyclones now with minimal damage (I don’t think a leaky bedroom window and TV transmission disappearing for 2 hours counts for much), I have to say this one was definitely milder than Gonu…rained on and off for a day-and-a-half, infrequent wind gusts, and a death toll in the low (mercifully) double-digits (may they rest in peace).

I think it’s just that all the ongoing construction in this place is disturbing the flow of the wadis (dry river beds) and playing havoc with the natural drainage system of the land. Or could be that before this, the land never saw the need for natural drainage, what with being a desert region and glimpsing rainfall once a year, if that. Whatever it is, the place floods up quicker than a stoppered bath-tub, and all activity virtually ceases, with work shutting down, schools closed and international exams cancelled (CFA – boy, are people unhappy about that!).

How different from Bombay, when, far from shutting down, the city would exult in the torrent! Even then, we’d trudge through to college (yay for living town-side and not in the suburbs), go sit at the CCI or get soaked on Marine Drive (of course, gorging on hot buttered corn or pakoras all the while). None of this stay-home-off-the-streets-avoid-bridges stuff. And really, what’s the point? Two days later, and we’re back to 50-degree scorching heat.

Makes me long for the unrelenting week-long downpour of a good old Bombay monsoon.

"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.