The Future?

"He's totally deaf, I tell you. It's impossible to talk to him. Now he's reached the restaurant early and is waiting for us and grumbling. What's the point of giving him a cellphone if he can't hear on it. And he thinks it's already 8.45. It's not!" So complained a dear aunt as Anando, she and I hurried towards the restaurant from the car park.

An hour earlier I had met the uncle being criticised so, and he'd complained non-stop, "Go for a walk," she tells me. "Arre, I don't want to go for a walk. All the nerves in her head are creating a short circuit and her brains are fried," diagnosed the old man.

Once inside he muttered that he'd refused a friend's invitation to join him for a drink because we were on our way, and he may as well have gone if he'd known we'd stand him up like this.

Conciliatory, at the dinner table we offered him the drinks menu. I asked the aunt, "What will you have?"

"Water," he replied on her behalf, even as she wrested his cane from his grip and leaned it against the sofa.

Anando and I exchanged smiles.

Forty years ago, they got married, after our aunt fought to convince her rich ghoti family because she had fallen in love with a bangal man.

Four minutes ago, our aunt said as an interlude to her grumbling, "When I see all these old men I still think your Pishe is much more handsome."

Exactly three years ago, Anando and I got married.

Forty years later, I wonder where we'll be!

Celebrate Bandra

The festival begins on 14th November, and goes on till the 29th. The big parade to kick it all off starts from St. Stanislaus School on Hill Road around 5 pm on Saturday, 14th November, and will proceed down Bandstand Promenade to end at the Amphitheatre.

In addition to the usual music, dance, theatre and other staples, the theme this time is "Go Green". There will be nature walks, recycling initiatives, and all residents of Bandra are requested to avoid using plastic bags for at least the duration of the festival, and for as long as possible after that. There will also be one day that all residents will be asked to keep their cars off the roads and walk, cycle or use public transport.

Do participate, even if you live halfway across the world, by at least avoiding plastic bags, or walking instead of driving. In the go green spirit, I leave you with this strip.

Lookie! A Cookie!

Now that we're in Bombay, we're staying in a serviced apartment till we can move into the flat. This is our 4th day here and each evening we've come back to the room to find a little glass jar containing 4-6 cookies, some chocolate and some plain. They're rather yummy and Anando and I started looking forward to it the moment we realized it was a pattern. We polish them off and the next day the empty jar is removed when they clear the room. This evening I happened to be in the room when the doorbell rang (5 minutes ago). I opened the door to find a uniformed staff-member grinning at me. Holding out the jar he said with a cheerful smile, "Hello ma'am, evening snacks for you!"

Wow. I feel like I'm at a school picnic or camp, with allotted meals. But if snacktime equals cookies, I'm not complaining! Will keep this short as it's hard to type with a crumbly cookie in one hand.

Flight from the Desert

Mixed feelings, as always. We leave Dubai for good in another hour's time. Although you might argue that I "left" when I closed that bank account, got my cable TV refund, or when I locked the doors to an empty house one last time. But that moment, when the aircraft noses upwards and I crane my neck to watch those skyscrapers give me a standing ovation in the sun for 20 months well spent, will really be it.

I am pretty sure I will have moist eyes and a lump in my throat. There is so much to look forward to. But I am glad there is so much to look back on with joy and nostalgia as well. There had better be. It would be a shame if I'd spent this time of my life here and found nothing worth remembering. It's not Dubai, but a life, a lifestyle, a friends' circle, and the last of my 20s - which I saw off here - that will forever linger in the desert haze of Dubai.

I will be back to reclaim it, but always briefly, and always temporarily. I don't mind. It's going to be my very own time capsule.

Memories for Sale

It's that time of life, again, when you put a price tag on things you cannot keep any more, and try and convince other people to buy them. Moving to smaller accommodation in a different country means rationalizing, and I mean really rationalizing, what all you can make room for. And the things you give up move into a mental shelf instead, where they will defiitely remain, unspoilt for much longer than their physical incarnation.

But even though you put a price tag on some things, you only realise their true worth when someone tries to haggle over it. So I dusted, polished and photographed our shoe cabinet and posted the ad online.

Within hours, I got a curt response "How old? Is it scratched and much used? I will give you ___ (insert woefully low amount here) Dirhams for it and pick it up this evening."

Well I beg your pardon!!! How presumptuous. Did he really think I would just worship him for extorting it from me! My shoe cabinet is unscratched, very new, and definitely worth more than that, thank you very much. And so, indignant and emotional, I took the ad off the Net.

What's left? The washing machine that knows my dirty linen inside out and tumble dried; the sofa-bed which...hmmm; oh well, the cooking range where I experimented with hotplate cooking; and the bean bags that enveloped my family on relaxed afternoons on our balcony.

Visitors to our Bombay house - do not be surprised if you find woodwork emerging from the inhabitants, as at this rate I doubt I will sell anything.

Wuff...

In all my blogging negligence, I forgot to introduce a new arrival at my parents' home. So just for the record, here's Kaizer. Watch out, he bites. But he'll also drop whatever he's doing for a tummy rub.

The Flower

It’s Thursday today. She used to need hibiscus flowers on Thursdays for her pujo. When younger, she would go to the park herself, looking through the shrubs for perfect flowers to pluck for her gods. A twisted ankle thanks to an unseen pothole ended the independent trips. Then it was up to us to fetch her flowers. As pollution and cars around the neighborhood park increased, I returned empty-handed on Thursday mornings, rushing to change into my school uniform. By the time I joined JNU, she had given up expecting fresh flowers, making do with a refrigerated garland of marigolds, bought the previous evening. Rushing to class through the campus wilderness, I would chance upon the red flowers, but it was too late to pluck them and take them home. By then her pujo would be done: her wet hair drying down her back as she read the paper and chewed her paan in the wintry noon sunshine, rising briefly to rescue the prasad placating her gods before the ants and lizards got to it.

It’s Thursday today. And exactly 2 years after I said my last goodbyes to her, I was greeted this morning by a nodding hibiscus flower on a balcony some floors below me. A living, breathing reminder of a love-and-tears memory.

Farewells

I said my first Dubai good-bye yesterday: to a neighbor who left this morning and won’t be back in Dubai till the end of the year. We weren’t close, we just met occasionally while waiting for the lift. J, who lives alone, is an elegant, charming lady, probably in her early sixties, an Iranian who has her family (and some posh homes) scattered across the world. So she spends the summer between South Africa, LA, Paris and wherever else she wants to go. She has visited India seven times.

She had invited us over for dinner some months back. The evening had been pleasant, though rather amusing thanks to two show-off men who competed to tell a rather undressed, hot, blonde, Australian diamond buyer how they had been all over the world, really, and “even eaten fried tarantula” (“oh it tastes awesome” nodded show-off #2). But J herself has no airs about her. She has a quiet dignity and wealth she takes for granted but needn’t flaunt.

So anyway, I had hoped to call her over one evening and really get to know more about all she’s done, places she’s lived, and her opinions of Iran. But she was away in LA and came back just briefly before heading off to Paris. And I told her we were going to leave in October for good. So over sticky Iranian sweets and a quick tete-a-tete to say bye, all I learnt was her childhood memories of Maxim’s Restaurant in Paris and how Pierre Cardin has ruined it by buying it and setting up chains all over the world (“It used to be so nice, like a club, you knew everyone, and you had your personal table right from your father’s time…” she protested) and how she is a “bad Moslem” (she doesn’t fast for Ramadan and she served and drank wine when we’d visited her).

And I came away with a box of Maxim's chocolates and a little card with her name and Paris address on it, and an invitation to visit her anytime I like, and an email address where I can contact her. And memories of a smiling neighbor who genuinely seemed to like us. And I hope she remembers us as the smiling young couple across the hall whom she will someday meet again.

I think traveling helps you to leave little bits of yourself all over the world. And that’s what I like best about it.

Time to Go

Uproot. Unroot. New routes.
Changing the soil beneath our boots.
Watching, observing, experiencing.
Thinking, feeling, hearing, glancing.
Stability. Comfort. Routines to follow.
Cultural differences to swallow.
Time flying on calendar pages.
Just yesterday. It’s been ages.
Uproot. Unroot. Time to pack.
Stability under attack.
Excitement and anticipation too
Unfamiliar. New. And yet not new.
Old town. Old friends. Shops we know.
Places where we used to go.
Uncaring. Certain. Bombay awaits.
Omnipresent in our fates.
We’d gone to save. To live. To earn.
She always knew we would return.

Oops!

I was waiting in a hotel lobby for Anando, leafing through a magazine. At each 'ping' announcing a lift's arrival, I would look up to see if it was him. A lift arrived. 'Ping'. A man stepped into the lobby, looking a little bewildered, a heavy laptop bag weighing his left shoulder down. He was dressed in a t-shirt and baggy jeans. His head swiveled this way and that, not sure which way he was meant to turn. At that crucial, absent-minded moment, a voice warned him, "Sir, your zip...". The poor man wildly reached for the fly of his jeans, starting to raise the hem of his t-shirt, when the Good Samaritan added, "on your bag."

For the next few seconds I had to bury my nose in the magazine as I stifled my giggles.