Say Cheese

Today is team photograph day at work. Shirts have been tucked in. Ties rule. Borrowed jackets all around for the guys. Some have even shaved. The group of dishevelled looking young men who usually traipse around our office are suddenly walking straighter with their tummies sucked in. There are some odd combinations - like striped shirts and pin-striped trousers. But anything that helps you smile wider for the camera, with confidence, can only be good.

Peking at Beijing

...is what I called it. But they thought differently :)

If you look at the epaper (Travel Agenda page), you can actually see the way it looks in print!

6 Months

On the 12th of February Anando and I woke up a little earlier than usual, brushed our teeth for the last time at the tiny sink a little larger than my cooking wok, packed up the linen we had used for our last night in Bombay and wandered through the house to make sure we had packed everything. The packers had removed all the cartons the previous day. As we talked from one room to another, our voices echoed in a suddenly empty house. The early morning of a hazy day made it necessary to turn on the lights. The lit-up apartment that had been home ever since we got married suddenly looked unfamiliar. The ugly furniture from the landlord, which we'd camouflaged with our own stuff, stood out starkly - reminding me how unattractive I'd first found it. Over time I had got used to it, like I take in my stride scars from chicken pox and bicycle crashes.

I locked our door and left, remembering when we had excitedly walked in 3 weeks after the wedding, to call it our home. When we took our suitcases down to the taxi, a normal day was just starting in the building. The bathroom singer across the shaft was massacring a popular song as usual as I switched off the lights one last time. Kids were getting ready for school. The tiny grocery near our gate was stocking its wares for the day. And we turned away from it all and came away to Dubai.

6 months later - the shiny new apartment we rent here is home. We chose all the furniture, so it's all our fault if people don't like it. We can't blame a landlord like we used to in Bombay! We have a routine. We know some of our neighbours. Family have visited and warmed up our guest room. Friends have come and partied at our place, smoked on the balcony, admired the view. I have cleaned every corner of the kitchen and swept the house - a distinct assertion of ownership as far as I am concerned. Plants have agreed to flourish indoors (ahem...most plants. shhhh!).

All I'm trying to say is : it's been six months. In which I have ceased to complain about missing India because I have met innumerable people who have left behind much more. Lebanese and Iraqis whose countries are in flames. Afghanis who sweat it out here to support large families back home and haven't gone back in 5 years. Sri Lankans who clean other people's homes so that they can feed a home back in Colombo. Filipinos who will never find work in Manila because there just aren't that many jobs. Bangladeshis who are trying to escape poverty. Pakistanis and Indians who construct buildings so that the tin roofed house back home doesn't disintegrate. Taxi drivers, beauty parlor girls, maids, nurses, waiters, labourers...all of whom are in this gilded cage called Dubai. They rail against it because it holds them by the power of salary. They criticise it because it exploits their weakness for money to grow stronger, because the city is as big as the dreams of the people toiling to create it. They hate it because it is shiny and new whereas all they love and have left behind is dusty and ancient. But they all carry on like worker ants. Because of what they have left behind. Because they are responsible for it. Because they want the best for it. Because they have a chance to change it for the better.

Dreams on Wheels

He worked far away from his country, creating a family out of the other young bachelors who worked at the office – playing pranks, eating with them, confiding in them. His parents lived in a small town in the depths of India – and when he offered to buy them a car they protested the expense out of habit. He wore down their resistance, telling them to go ahead, visit the showroom, pick a color, take a test-drive. After repeated assurances that he could afford the EMIs, they accepted his offer to buy a car while he waited in the sharp desert sun to take a bus to work every morning.

The car was chosen, the color picked, the downpayment made, with him pulling the strings by remote control with the power of a foreign-currency chequebook. They drove it home, stopping by the temple to submit a coconut to the Gods before driving home along palm-lined narrow paths in a sturdy 4-wheeler that shone black against the green all around.

And he sat at his faraway desk, with a picture of the car on his desktop, answering to clients and pouring his creativity into making a living. Dream 1, at least, was achieved.

Tourism in Dracula's Kingdom

This is my offering for a magazine's inaugural issue. Am still researching for the rest of the article. But I think it starts pretty well and so I decided to share it with you all :)

Innocent women run for their lives as a shadowy vampire snarls in pursuit, baring oh-so-white fangs in his bloodthirsty desperation. Blood-curdling shrieks, strings of garlic, and a suspiciously pale, tall, menacing figure form the popular imagination of that place called Transylvania.

But the reality belies the myths and legends surrounding the region.

Verdant mountainsides undulate into the distance, and occasional tall spires poke into the skyline, the unusual green of their old copper reminding us how ancient this land really is.

Immortalized as the home of the sun-hating and haemoglobin-guzzling Count Dracula (ordinarily, but no less creepily, called Vlad the Impaler), Transylvania lies in the western part of modern-day Romania. In reality the Carpathian landscapes of the region are pleasing to the eye and hold no terrors, neither in the bright hours of sunshine nor after dark. Don’t forget your camera.

That Blood-sucker

Vladdy hell, we're talking about Count Dracula (also known as Vlad the Impaler). My pet project at work right now: projecting Transylvania as not just where Dracula came from. It's involved bumping into fascinating Eastern European words like Szekelys, and realising that Transylvania basically means simply 'beyond the forest' (all it needed was a sandhi-vicched).

So while some windows on my screen focus on the serene and sylvan settings of Dracula land, the others are personal blogs with images dripping blood, lots of garlic ringing the screen, and Flash-animated bats winging into the twilight as Dracula comes forth.

What do you guys know about Transylvania? Anyone ever been there? Would love to hear about it.

Hunger pangs

I'm at work right now. And while there are deadlines threatening to devour me, I'm also really hungry. I ran through the options in my head - there's a nice food court nearby that I usually love. But what I feel like eating right now is an entire experience:

Greasy street-side chowmein. Served on just-washed steel plates to be eaten with tin forks that jar your ears when they strike metal. A white non-absorbent paper napkin with fading red borders - offered just because the dhaba is trying hard. Balancing plate while resting gingerly against a parked scooter or car. The spice making your eyes water just a little bit. People jostling past you in a busy market area. You balance all your shopping bags in one hand - slinging them through to your wrist so that the same hand can also hold your plate. The other shovels fat noodles into your mouth. Orange carrots stray from your fork and withered cabbage sticks resolutely to the plate bottom.

This was not good therapy. I am even hungrier now.

While I can just walk across to the food court anytime I want, there are millions who have no such option - and Aunty G just shared a great idea to help them. I can't believe it is so simple and yet a genuine way to help. Try it.

Autoblography

Tagged by Eve's Lungs and A Muser. Gosh, this is too much me. Will try not to be flippant. It helped that I recognised so much of myself in what I read on their posts.

I am: hot-tempered
I think: I should sleep less
I know: how lucky I am
I want: to learn another language
I have: poor time-management skills
I wish: globe-trotting wasn't so expensive
I hate: hypocrites
I miss: Dida
I fear: that I will lose my memory with age
I feel: the texture of book pages when I buy/read them
I hear: someone from my family calling me when I miss them - it's just my imagination!
I smell: what I'm cooking to figure if it will taste good
I crave: not much nowadays, but brownies are always welcome
I search: for too many things that I myself misplace at home
I wonder: How others feel about all sorts of things - I keep trying to put myself in their shoes
I regret: Nothing yet. Would like to keep it that way (touchwood!)
I love: intensely
I ache: when I see old people fending for themselves, trying to timidly cross a busy road, queueing at banks or post offices
I care: about what people think. I tell myself I shouldn't, but I do
I am not: a gossip
I believe: not in God, but in the goodwill of those who love me
I dance: when I iron (to Punjabi pop...Kendi PUMP up the JAM)
I sing: whenever I know the lyrics of the song playing
I cry: when I am angry and frustrated at being helpless. And oh, when I am sad. And when I miss someone a lot. Oh, I cry a lot.
I don’t always : get my way in life
I fight: with Anando
I write: My to-do list for the day, this blog, my journal. I write myself in all that I write.
I win: people's confidence
I lose: patience easily
I never: judge people at the drop of a hat
I always: try to see two points of view
I confuse: others by talking too fast
I listen: with varying levels of attention because I am always dying to start talking
I can usually be found: at the computer/reading a book/making goo-goo eyes at brownies in shop windows
I am scared: of being alone when I die
I need: to have regular contact with family
I am happy about: the way my life is playing out

I tag: Anyone who wants to do this :) And to the entire list, I will add one more: "I imagine:___". Let me know if any of you take this up!

The Took Bag (or the "Book Tag")

Pardon the spoonerism! I couldn't resist.

Okay, so Eve's Lungs has tagged me to do this. And it's a remarkable coincidence that a book we both have in common is what I am re-reading (for the nth time) right now.

The rules are:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you .

And I have, from The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy (I'd so much rather be blogging my favorite bit instead of random lines from page 123):

"Take each piece of happening that, by itself, was just a meaningless hurt and
find its place in the big picture. Do it over and over, because that way one
came to understand things, and they hurt less. He had, since his seventh
birthday, come to understand a lot and the knowledge he now held within himself
was not made of sharp, separate hurts."

Wow. Would you look at that. "Random lines", I said, and yet they hold . They cope with pain. And make you stronger as you relive your own pain. This is why - though the book is prescribed reading for 9-12 year olds - I still love it, and it moves me every time.

I tag Sbora, Aunty G, Diligent Candy, A Muser and Dipali. Please tell me when you've done the tag!

Thanks Eve's Lungs :)

O Great Altar of Passive Entertainment

When you are travelling in a foreign country on work, TV is often a refuge from boredom. Of course, if all the channels are in German, and the pay-per-movie channel offers only x-rated entertainment, it can be rather dull. Unless of course you are that kind of couch potato.

But of course, late one night, when the channel that had German soap operas all day suddenly starts showing something very, umm, educational, you tend to get worried. "Did I press that button by mistake?" you ask yourself, as you sink down on your pillow and (okay, i'll admit it) watch in horrified fascination. You change the channel, but your fingers go to the "back" button just to see if it is still there. And it is. Did you really subscribe by mistake?

And then you realise, this hotel bill is going to go to the client and OH MY GOD, it's going to say "xxx-erotische" on your room bill. And your heart pounds faster not because of what's on TV but because your client will never see you the same way again. And you start planning how to leave the country in the dead of night, how to pre-pay your bill with your own credit card, and maybe even how to find another job.

And then there's a commercial break, and the jingles bring you back to earth and you realise, "Oh, this is Friday night entertainment in Germany"! It's not going to be on a bill, it's a free-to-air channel and this is their idea of a weekend bonanza. Phew.