The Long Road Home

I have to apologize to all my readers for having ignored this blog for over six months. Life changed for me in more ways than I could have imagined. I now live in a different country and have also been blessed with a little bundle of joy. While this should keep me busy, these changes in life also give me ample things to blog about.

I want to share my experiences in Singapore with all of you along with my experiences as a new mother. Reminiscing about the days gone by with my parents has given me plenty of food for thought and I also plan to resume my series: Strange Encounters of the Arranged Kind.

I hope to be able to take time out to write again. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and I sure am back on the long road home.

Good Times

42 months of togetherness. I ordered this bunch of 42 roses to take home to S. (I can be cheesy too, you know?)

Craze for Cars

The car bug seems to catch boys very young. My friend's 3 year old checking out the all new Manza at a showroom in Bangalore.

Dilemma

Life isn’t always fair or rosy or any of those things we believe it is. It is often a test. I’ve learnt that the same holds for friendship too. Every relationship goes through its share of ups and downs. I have some of the best friends anyone can ever hope to have. We’ve grown up together, giving each other shoulders to cry on, taking calls at the crack of dawn to share good news. Some things will never change. There is comfort in this knowledge.


I’ve found myself change over the years though, from being very judgmental to becoming reflective; from speaking my mind out and expecting them to understand just because they are my closest friends to understanding that we may be friends, but we are individuals first. I realized only today that this was the new me. The new me doesn’t say “I told you so” when things go exactly as she predicted. In fact, the new me has been around for a few years now, I just didn’t realize it.


Life is full of choices. My friends are free to make theirs. If I have reservations about those, I can make a choice to keep my reservations to myself. I got a jolt this morning. I happened to reflect on how differently I might have reacted to the same event about 5 years ago. I thought about why I chose to keep mum, when in another avatar I may have jumped out with bucket loads of unsolicited advice. And then I saw this Facebook status message of someone very close to me:


Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.


Life has brought me to the cross roads and I made a choice today. What do you do when you are in a fix? If you knew that your friend is about to make the biggest mistake of his/her life, would you watch him/her do it or would you speak your mind? Would you watch them go through the fire and wait for them at the other end? Or would you plead with them to listen to you because you "simply know" better?

Another year...

Another year has gone by. This year has taught me much. It has, among other things, taught me that this blog is as loved if not more than my food blog. While this is just my rant space, I've found that people are interested in what I have to say. It doesn't matter if I talk about the state of affairs in the country or share my personal achievement of driving to work and back.

This has renewed my enthusiasm. I have the energy I need to keep this blog going. Thanks to everyone who comes and leaves their comments. By letting me know that you're here, you've egged me on.

OnlineRaga completes three years on the blogosphere. Thanks to all of you! Happy Birthday OnlineRaga. May you give us all many more years of happiness.

Simple Pleasures: Visiting Friends

When I was growing up, we didn’t have guests who dropped in for tea very often. Somehow, even though we were a rather social family, the “let’s go visit with XYZ as it has been a long time” thing didn’t happen with us. (We just visited friends and relatives from time to time. Neighbours dropped in often and we dropped in at their places too.) To my uncle and aunt in Bangalore, it was really their lifeline. To me, it seemed almost ritualistic. It didn’t seem like they really had much to discuss or talk about. Even the gossip was minimal. But the visits took place on a regular basis. Even at my maternal grandparents’ place in Bombay, there always seems to be a flurry of activity. Somebody or the other always seems to be dropping in at tea time. It is one of those things they took for granted. One of those things that was always so alien to me.

Last week, a dear friend told me that she’d been unwell for over a week. Now this friend lives just across the street from where I stay. I decided to visit her the next day. I spent a good two hours at her place. We talked about a lot of things, and her illness was not really what we were discussing. As I walked back from her house to mine, I couldn’t help but notice how pleasant the evening had been. It reinforced my belief that we live for these simple pleasures. I am certain my friend enjoyed the evening too. We didn’t go to a pub or a disco. We didn’t hit the malls. We didn’t sit down with a cocktail each. We just talked and laughed some. But it was a great evening. A lot of people say very proudly, “I hardly know my neighbours” or "I barely meet my friends" or (the most common) "I have no time". It doesn’t take much to get to know your neighbours or stay in touch with friends.

Is this sense of formality ruling our lives? We wait to be invited and expect folks to come over only when we invite them. Or is it that we treat everything as though it were an invasion of privacy? Do we think we are intruding on their private space? If only we’d care enough to reach out, we’d probably enrich our lives as much as the other person’s.

A new first

For the very first time today, I drove on my own. I had a couple of choices. I could take public transport and after 2-3 changes, reach work. Or I could take the plunge, drop S at work, and take the car. With a little urging and a lot of, "Of course you can do it"s, I ventured out on my own. The high was like nothing I've ever experienced. I didn't think I'd even enjoy driving so much. I breezed through the National Highway 8, even touched 100kmph, reached the toll plaza to be greeted by a very pleasant attendant (it was almost as though he wanted to share my happiness), and reached work by driving through the horrible Outer Ring Road. Fortunately, I didn't stall even once on the 45 km route.

The journey back was quite different. I took the same route as I did in the morning. At one point, I'd already spent 1.5 hours in the car and wasn't even half way home. There was an accident on the road and it had blocked the traffic. It took me almost an hour to cross a 3-4 km stretch. Once I was out of there, it was a breeze again. I reached S' office and landed myself in a spot that I didn't want to be found in. After some manouevres that I would have considered complex even 24 hours before then, I managed to get out. All I wanted to do was celebrate my big first. But by the time we reached home, I'd already spent close to 3 hours driving non stop. While I was fully expecting my legs to ache, it was my head that gave me maximum trouble.

All said and done, I was thrilled. Thrilled to have successfully managed to get to and from work on my own. Thrilled to have not bumped into any car nor have anyone bump into me. (Those of you who've driven in the NCR will know that this IS a BIG deal!) I wasn't so thrilled at the guys who leered at me from passing cars, but it was better than what it may have been when I would have been standing at a bus stop trying to flag down an auto.



After driving around a little within Gurgaon and after never having driven the car with no one else in it, I figured I did know when to depress the clutch. (And to all people who believe the Tatas cannot make passenger cars that women can drive, I have to admit that I drive the Tata Indica Diesel with as much ease as I do a Santro Xing Petrol. Tata cars are not a pain to drive. Period!) After having been so used to riding a two-wheeler (including the big mobikes) for so many years, I finally managed to shift gears, quite literally.

I’ve noticed that…

• The seat next to mine in a bus/plane is almost always empty.
• The window seat is always taken by people who have no interest in looking out the window.
• Courtesy and chivalry aren’t exactly dead.
• A smile and some meaningless banter can really make someone’s day.
• At times a smile is all there is between a complete stranger and a new friend.
• Despite all the hullaballoo over the new international airports, the Chennai airport rocks.
• However independent or grown up I might be, it still takes oodles of courage to say bye to my parents without crying.
• I'd give anything to spend a quiet hour with my parents, my head resting on my mother's lap.
• People you've never met can become good friends in just a day.
• Regardless of how long I've been out, it feels great to be back home.

On the road from Madras to South India

“Are you a Madrasi?”

That’s a question I heard more often than I’d have liked to. Now I don’t take offense to a classification like that. I am a Madrasi. Because I belong to Madras. But if you were to go by the generally accepted meaning of Madrasi, then you’d be talking about at least 4 states in India that are comfortably nestled south of the Vindhyas, not to mention parts of Maharashtra and Goa. What I find most amusing is that a Bambaiya, who may be a Madrasi for a Dilliwala, would call a Madrasi a Madrasi. My own maternal family would make a solid case in point. Originally from the Konkan belt that extends from Goa to South Canara, they have settled in Bombay and consider themselves to be West Indians and not South Indians. As though the people in the south are somewhat inferior to the folks in the rest of the country and they can’t associate themselves with that lot.

I’ve wasted my life until now explaining to people that every south Indian is not a Madrasi. This conversation with my colleague at GE stands out:

P: Where are you originally from?

Me: Don’t know. I have mixed parentage. But I’d call Madras my home.

P: Even I have mixed parentage.

Me: Oh, that’s nice. Where are your parents from?

P: My mom’s from Amritsar and my dad is from Bhatinda.

Me: Oh, but they’re both from Punjab.

P: Yeah, but culturally, the two places are very different. Your parents?

Me: My mother is a Mangalorean Konkani and my father is a Tamilian.

P: Arrey, to yeh mixed parentage kaise ban gaya? Dono Madrasi hi to thehre na! (How is this mixed parentage then? Both of them are Madrasis!)


Well, now after a lot of gyan sessions, I am back in the capital city. The last one year has been amazing. I've noticed that people use the term Madrasi a lot less and use "South Indian" a lot more. Some progress. But I've had some folks ask me, "Do you speak South Indian?" People!! Last heard South India was a large region. It comprised at least the 4 states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamilnadu. There is no one language that is common to these states. Just as Oriya, Bengali, and Assamese are not one and the same, the languages spoken in the different regions of this state are not one and the same. I have a South Indian father and a South Indian mother. I also have a South Indian husband. Yet, each of them has a different mother tongue. I speak all 3. Now, which of these were you asking about?

Ditto for other things like food, weddings, mangalsutras and the like. "Oh, you had a South Indian wedding?" Now, will someone please explain to me what a "South Indian" wedding is? People look at any one of the many mangalsutras I have (thanks to mixed parentage and my having married someone from a different background) and say, "So, this is what a South Indian mangalsutra looks like." And to me, not one of them even remotely resembles the other. So what generalizations they draw, only they can tell.


The same goes for food. "Can you teach me how to cook South Indian food?" Dudes, there is no such thing as South Indian food. Just as they do in the rest of India, food and cuisine change every 50 km across the southern states too.

But how do I explain any of this to anyone? I am surprised I even try. Although people have undertaken the arduous journey from Madras to South India, after all these years, I find they haven't budged an inch. They remain exactly where they were when they began this journey. Blissfully unaware of anything. I feel sorry for them at times, I feel sorry for myself at others. But as always, this will be one more of those things that will remain beyond my comprehension.

A celebration

Last year on the 7th of May, I wrote about The Many Incarnations of God. Had my uncle and aunt been here with us, my uncle would have turned 80 and we would have had a grand celebration. There is not a single day that passes without my thinking about him. It could be a memory relating to a dish I made, about a person we were both close to, about a book, about something on TV... just about anything.

The 7th of May is also the day that I first met S. And we celebrated our "anniversary" last evening by going out for dinner to a highly recommended Italian restaurant in Gurgaon called Italiano.

The 7th of May has always been special and I am glad that as a couple, it is a special day for us as well. My biggest regret is that S never got to meet Bappa. I wish he had. This will always be one of those things that's outside our control. But I am forever thankful for whatever I have.