+: etcetera :+

Fall - such an apt word for this time of the year. Leaves are falling, or are supposed to (read on). Friends around me are dropping like flies - slightly different cause there, of course - the marriage pandemic or its more serious complication - children - has been busy “getting” practically everyone I know. I’m starting to understand the morbid fascination with which my grandparents used to turn to the obits as soon as they got the paper. There goes another, I tell myself everyday. Fare thee well, friend.

First the leaves: I did my very first fall-colors weekend trip on Saturday. I’m a relative newbie to fall foliage. Foliage of any sort, really. North Texas has shrubs that alternate between two states in a year - green and leaf-less. Anantha and four of his friends were kind enough to take me along to go see Bushkill Falls.

Motion sickness is a malady that refuses to go away with age… As feared, breakfast was hurled - outside the car, thanks to some nifty breaking action from Anantha. That formality out of the way, we got on with the rest of the day. We had to walk for a little bit before we got to a spot from where we could see the Delaware Valley. Green, green, green, as far as eye could see, save a single tree with a few non-green leaves that probably felt like a little like those people who bought their i-phones the week it came out – just a little foolish. The rest of the damn trees probably waited for us to turn our backs to them before instantaneously turning into wondrous shades of brown and gold. The only thing that was brown and orange was the water. So I suppose I shouldn’t really complain.

While on the topic of scenic getaways, I don’t really get the point of these “hiking / trekking” outings. If the point is to admire nature, one doesn’t really get to do it - as you have to keep your eyes on the ground all the time, at least as long as you retain a wish to not tumble down some conveniently placed gorge or two. When you do look up from time to time, most of your focus is on catching your breath, trees and skies be damned. However, I will admit that as you get increasingly light headed, you start to see the light, in a way. As Anantha slowly walked up, pausing every now and then to take the millionth photo of some picturesque pebble or stream, I huffed and puffed beside him, and before I knew it, I’d realized who I wanted to be when I grew up. I want to be just like T, one of my team mates from work. T is about 55 years old, and knows exactly what he wants from life and gets just that - nothing more, nothing less. He doesn’t give a damn about what people think of him, but is unfailingly “kind and gentle” (his words) towards the fools he has to suffer. I tell myself that as soon as I get off this damn hill, I’ll learn to have the courage to stick to my own guns, whatever they are at a given point. I also realize that this moment of absolute clarity will have vanished once my circulation returns to its usual sluggish flow and I return to the real world. But these fleeting moments of faux epiphanies are precisely why you go risking life, or at the very least a limb or two on some Pennsylvanian hill. So yes, I got my money’s worth.

Potentially life altering epiphanies apart, it was also very instructive to observe our little group composed of one married couple and three single people. The single people, without exception, did the mandatory “photos for mom to distribute to other single people and their moms” thing. I wonder what purpose these photos serve, if any. Proof that you are not so big a loser that you have no friends at all and have had to resort to a professional photographer? That you possess motor skills enough to actually get yourself to the top of a hill or a waterfall or whatever spot you’re posing from? It’s lovely, the way we desis try to optimize the experience - the photo has to include some feature in the background and also portray you in a favorable light. This requirement invariable leads to shots of people in one corner of the frame with interesting rock / building / other natural or man-made artifacts also featured prominently. After all, the photo is for the people being photographed too! Proof that I too was young and traveled to all sorts of interesting places once.

Have you noticed how the people in these photographs (irrespective of gender or age) all look alike? They all have the same look in their eyes – the one that uniquely combines desperation, fear, and plain old fury - “please, let me look good enough for my mom to not bully me into another one of these for another 12 to 18 months… but not attractive enough to get a call back from that undekha unjaana dreamboat psychopath who will invariably look at this photo 2.4 months from now, by which time I will have lost these 10 pounds! So what the f*&# is the point of this photo anyway?”

Sometimes I worry these pictures will eventually come back to bite me in the ass - as so many things do in life. The ideal future, of course, has me sitting on a rocking chair (my hair’s greying at the temples, but is still all there, and I’ve lost 25 pounds - with all the diseases I’m bound to get, a little gratuitous weight loss is the least am owed), looking at these pictures and chuckling to myself. But considering I won’t remember the reason I photographed that block of wood because there was an icky aphid on it (which btw, you can’t see on the finished product) next week, imagine the amount of agitation that particular photo is going to cause, whenever I am jobless enough to actually look at it again. I will probably waste many minutes wondering why the hell I thought that piece of wood was important. The pictures before and after that shot have me smiling - I looked so happy then, was it that stupid piece of wood that made me smile so? Do those etchings stand for someone’s initials? Who was EBW? (at least I think that’s what it looks like…) E.B White? Yes, I did love the New Yorker in those days, but enough to go around carving E.B White’s initials into pieces of wood? And wasn’t he long dead in 2007? Maybe that crazy off focus shot five pictures ago was his ghost…I suspect this is how those crazy stories that old people always have get invented. Or was I simply high? I won’t remember shit, but do depend on myself to make something up.

But to return to the picture taking exercise. The married couple did not bother taking photos of each other. They have already crossed that bridge. R intermittently recorded stuff on a camcorder. We all waved at it a second or two after we realized that we were supposed to do stuff, and not just stand there. Desi’s have only caught on as far as posing for photographs, I think. The whole motion thing continues to surprise us. I wonder what people do with these recordings? These trips usually involve at least one or two people one isn’t really close friends with. Years from now, I can imagine R and his wife wondering who the devil that girl with the glasses is. They will accuse all their known friends of bringing me along. Then one of them will remember I was the chick who threw up on the way. If R is super anal about passing on his digital wealth to his progeny, I will go down in R family history as that unknown female who threw up on grandpa’s trip some where in the US, and why it is vital to always carry Dramamine on road trips. This is how you achieve immortality.

Of course, we weren’t the only people obsessed with taking pictures. At the end of the trail, there was a statue of a bear in what I assume is the mauling position. Practically every child and every third adult took a picture with this thing. One woman repeatedly instructed her daughter to hold the bear’s paw and look sad. She then asked the little girl to hug the bear. Don’t know what that was supposed to depict. That she was sad about being mauled by a concrete bear and then it actually mauled her? I wish I could hear whatever story this little girl will come up with when looking at that picture years from now.

Thanks to the evil device we call a digital camera, documentation of an experience has come to replace the experience itself. Not content with merely recording television shows and weddings, we’ve moved on to recording our entire lives for later perusal, whenever that may be. Every experience we’ve come to feel is “significant” (and remember the most boring things might become damn significant 50 years from now when you can no longer remember how to spell your own name) and hence worthy of documentation - every trip we ever take, every pebble or dead insect we were even remotely curious about on said travels… After all, if you have a picture where you’re smiling a lot, you must have had fun! Do this digital recording on a grander, helluva lot more expensive scale and you’ll have yourselves a wedding! Yaay! The first of many proofs that one’s done all one is supposed to’ve done.

Am back from a number of fun, but at times fun in a Spanish Inquisition sort of way do’s - a trip to and from India that involved being trapped on seemingly endless Kuwait Airways flights (one more serving of rice and dhal and paneer might have snapped the spirit forever), and a few days after my return, being trapped on Ellis Island for several hours, and finally being trapped (this last was voluntary) on the West Side, where I watched six movies over two days.

The India trip was, well, the closest to the Spanish Inquisition, and not of the comfy chair sort either. There was a wedding in the family, which gives one an excellent opportunity to meet lots of folks without having to travel even more, but does also give these assorted folks the opportunity to make inquiries about one’s own manless, childless and in their minds life-less existence. I ticked off those members of the family I could afford to tick off, with anything ranging from offering to shack up with the first man I met after I landed in New York to remaining single for the rest of my life. But mostly, I nodded a lot and let them believe that am waiting for them to find me the perfect man, which a number of them believe they have ready. The question of marriage, I find, is a bit like non-vegetarianism. Meat-eaters and pro-marriage freaks both seem to think that it’s all a question of finding that perfect chicken, and once you’ve had it, you’ll never go back to your old ways - conveniently ignoring the fact that there are millions of people who lead perfectly content lives that are chicken-free in every possible way. But since I’ve already bored all my friends with this rant, I shan’t crib anymore.

Moving on to Ellis Island. The office threw a party there last Friday. A grand affair, I admit. But the one principle that all office parties must abide by was thrown to the wind, literally, in this case. The principle, of course, being that escape is to be made possible at multiple points during the evening - after cocktails, after dinner, after dessert, during boring speeches, etc. By fiendishly shipping us over to an island and by dismissing all ferries back to Manhattan, all 1200 odd people (spouses and significant others included - suckers!) were trapped there till at least 10:30 PM. Of course, the palliative of an open bar was available, and many took full advantage of it. But since one had to risk a trip back on potentially choppy waters, one didn’t want to complicate matters any further. The folks at work think badly of me already, puking all over them won’t help one bit, come review time.

As for the West Side - the New York Film Festival kicked off this weekend. I caught four movies - short reviews will be put up are up on the other blog (don’t want to bore you fine folks, who being in possession of a more balanced approach to life are not into silent German versions of Hamlet) at the festival, and caught two more because I was in the neighborhood. I’ll confine myself to audience reactions to Lust, Caution here. The audience at the show I was in was 99% Chinese / Chinese American. Considering that this is an Ang Lee movie and a non-English one at that, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Till yesterday, I’d wrongly assumed that watching movies with highly inappropriate companions was an exclusively desi habit. One of my cousins watched Boys, sandwiched between an aunt and said aunt’s mother in law. A friend watched Omkara with her aged mother in law. I’m hardly guilt-free - I remember watching Carry on up the Jungle with my parents - fortunately I was a kid, so they were more embarrassed than I was. But that was till I noticed (and was noticed) by a teacher from school in the row in front of me, and then we were all embarrassed - by the movie, by each others’ presence… But it was interesting to see that Chinese families seem to have the same approach to big name movies as Indian ones do, which is to treat it as a family affair, MPAA ratings and reviews be damned.

Lust Caution provided plenty of those unenviable “kill-me-now” moments to young Chinese folks, trapped as they were between grandparents, or people who looked old enough to be great-grandparents. The saving grace was that they didn’t have to also deal with 6 year olds (remember, this is an NC-17 movie) who might have asked questions rather than stoically sit through the movie or pretend to be mature and treat it as a scientific experiment in how bendy the human body can get.

It was also odd to watch a non-desi movie in the presence of an audience that mostly didn’t need the subtitles. Several times, it was obvious that 99% of the audience was watching one movie, while the “me no speak Chinese” suckers’ illusion that they too watching the same movie was subtly undermined. While the English-speaking audience was being told perfectly bland things such as some character’s need to get a job, or a wife being glad that a husband was late from work, the Chinese audience was laughing out loud. And it’s a bummer that reading subtitles at desi movies won’t work as revenge - it’s the opposite with our movies - the subtitles are where the humor is. My 15 seconds of cheap thrills came from a single scene in which someone speaks a line or two of Hindi / Urdu, and there were no subtitles for that bit! Ha! Take that you gigglers, you!

All said, it’s good to be back.

New York is filled with tourists at the moment. It is a long weekend, after all. I’m staying in, as I have for most long weekends this year. I haven’t yet adapted to this city’s habit of leaving the place to outsiders during holidays. Besides, this is the weekend before I leave for India for a short holiday. A wedding in the family, you see. Fortunately, not my own, so I look forward to the food.

I’ve spent the last two days walking about town, popping in and out of trains, accumulating a growing pile of gifts in the process. As I’m stopped now and then and asked for directions, I realize with a start that I’ve lived here for over a year now, and can actually give directions.

When I give the matter further thought, there are plenty of other signs of my having made inroads into becoming a New Yorker. I now know instinctively in which direction a train’s doors will open, an event that used to fill me with anxiety and complete surprise before. Not only have I gotten over my initial frustration at having to shop at multiple places for all the things one needs – other Americans have malls to go to for their odds and ends; New York has a mall, but as far as I know, no native New Yorker actually shops there – I’ve actually come to like it. The knowledge of where to go for what was one I’d feared I’d never master. But now, I have my own little system, not necessarily the same as that of other New Yorkers, but it’s the fact that I have a system at all that counts. Where one buys Jasmine Tea is very different from where one buys Indian Chai, and one does not buy pants from store A and no one ever buys shirts from the store where you get the pants, and there’s an entirely different set of stores for coats and shoes (broken down by the type of coat or pair of shoes one’s in the market for), and there is a right side for every elevator ride depending on what one plans to do while riding said elevator. A grown man in full Superman costume, red cowboy boots and a white cowboy hat passed me on the road today. A sight that would’ve stopped me dead in my tracks a year ago doesn’t even make me pause now. I kept walking, with just a passing thought, wondering where a man would go to get red cowboy boots in the city. And of course, one avoids areas around Herald Sq. and Times Sq. at all costs during holiday weekends. They’re filled with tourists, you see.

All my life, I’ve moved to a new city roughly every three years, and adapting to a new life is something I should be used to by now. But I doubt that I’ll take to it. I was warned off about New York by plenty of friends, even the ones who liked me, and the city. It gets too cold, too windy, too dull and depressing when it rains, they said. You’ve to keep walking, and fast. No matter what romantic notions you have in your head about this city, you will eventually settle down to a boring routine – work, sleep, TV, laundry, and groceries. I’ve found all of this to be true.

But, and c’mon, you knew there was going to be a ‘but’, I’ve taken to it all with a rather cheerful enthusiasm, I think. I’m not sure when exactly a strange place starts feeling like home. When the local politics isn’t gibberish any more? When you learn to curse the “sick passenger in Grand Central” who’s holding up all trains in your direction rather than feel sorry for this poor sod? When you learn to be proud of your pairs of pretty but essentially un-wearable shoes, and slightly sheepish about those other infinitely more comfortable pairs of shoes (“they’re my walking shoes, you see”)? Not really.

I think the precise moment when a city feels like home is when you experience a minor panic attack at the prospect of leaving it for more than a couple of days. I leave next Saturday, and it’s already starting to impact my life in those tiny, but significantly annoying ways. I’ve film festival tickets to buy, and they go on sale Sunday – as always, everything happens exactly the day after you leave home on a long visit to anywhere. The Walter Reade Theater which’s been closed for renovations for the last few days is going to open this week, and will no doubt have fabulous movies when am gone (I refuse to check and have my heart broken), fall television season will have started, including a whole bunch of new shows that I will probably not understand a word of because I’d have missed vital pilots… Heck, for all I know, subway rides will have become more expensive and the effin’ leaves on trees will have changed color.

Yes, all of this sounds pathetic, even I realize that. And I know this because a few years ago, I felt exactly the same way about Madras. The city would get miraculously cooler, rare Oscar winning movies would be released in theaters that normally featured the latest Ramarajan oeuvre, friends who did absolutely nothing all year would decide to do fun things together – a thousand reinforcements of how crazy you were to ever dream of leaving the city, especially at that time!

And there’s the fear that someday, I’ll have to leave this city for good. Goodness knows I’ve a history for leaving places. The day I moved to New York, all “good Tamil boys” apparently up and left for California, at least according to my family. There’s been an overt and covert campaign at making me friendlier towards males in the West Coast. I’ve nothing against good Tamil boys, but do admit to a newly minted New Yorker’s instinctive lack of enthusiasm for a place where you need a car to survive. People from all sorts of cultures, when they decide to find a mate, usually start with people from the same geographic vicinity as themselves. Indian females, on the other hand, must be prepared to move to the ends of the world for a “good match”. Of course, all of these irrational fears might come to nothing – I might get fired, and then will have to move, just to put food on the table. Or the INS might decide to kick me out. I worry about all of that too, being an equal opportunity disaster neurotic.

But for now, I suppose I’m going to have to make the best of things. After all, there are some things to look forward to. Given my longer stay this time, I can do the idiot tourist act in Madras. I can insist on visiting the line of samadhis at the beach, and complain about noisy crowds at the theater, and ask for the rest of my coffee (have you seen the portion sizes in Madras? Are they kidding us?). And on my return I can boast of having eaten the best, most authentic South Indian food there is, and further solidify my already unchallenged Tamil authority (unchallenged of course, because the group is composed of one Eastern European, one Anglo-Sri Lankan, one Chinese American, one Argentinean and one Bengali).

Oh well, I’ll be back soon enough, back to this city filled with people who carry idealized images of mythical homelands, places in which they actually feel like tourists during their periodic pilgrimage. On September 22, I’ll be home, provided, of course, the gods of JFK are in the mood to be kind to a home-sick New Yorker.

This evening, running late for a movie, I take a cab. Balkar Singh, the cabbie, is a polite sort. Starts the conversation by asking if I am from India. Can’t exactly deny this, so I agree. We go on to establish that I’m from the South and that he’s from the north. So far, the conversation happens in a mixture of broken Hindi and broken English. No subtitles. Then comes the question, “So, do you live around here?”

From my considerable experience in these matters, I know that this question is one of those select few that automatically turn on subtitles inside the heads of inquirers, irrespective of the language in which the conversation is happening. If I say yes, it comes out as “wastrel” or “rich bitch” when translated, depending on who’s doing the translation. Since am not in a mood to feel defensive or offer justifications, I decide to play. I say no, I was visiting a friend. So where do I live? After a quick pause, I say “Newport.” He asks, “Where is that?” (Now this surprises me, and am glad I picked a place that I’ve actually been to) Before I start going into PATH schedules, he moves on. “So”, he asks, “going to watch a show, eh?” Since I’ve asked him to take me to the Lincoln Center, it makes sense to agree. He goes on, “Show first, phir dinner… maybe some drinks-shinks, eh?” I’m starting to get offended, but smile and shrug.

Maybe he is somewhat sensitive, for he changes tack, “You work in the city, yes?” I nod. “Wall Street?” I continue to nod. Then comes another seemingly innocent question, “Is your family here only?” I say no, the family is in India. I should have seen this coming, for god knows I’m asked it often enough. And am just cursing myself for stepping into that trap, when it predictably snaps, “So are you married?” But this time, I’m prepared. I say “No, but am going to be married.” There’s an imperceptible tremor as the world starts to right itself.

“Soon?”

“Very soon,” I reply.

“Marrying an Indian?”

A pause, as I wonder just how far I want to go with this. I’m tempted to be outrageous, but decide to take it slow, since this is my first time inventing a fiancé, “Yes.”

I appear to have made the right choice. “Ah good. Indian is always best. Some people, they marry these whites. No good. They don’t take anything seriously. So many divorces…”

I let him carry on, nodding along and offering further evidence of my new status as a “good Indian girl”. He continues to approve when I tell him that the wedding will be in India. He asks when I will go back to India, and I tell him the fiancé is going to move here. Oh, he asks, so the fiancé is not here? Another pause, I say “No. He goes to school in…. <mentally short list suitable American cities> Boston.”

“Ah Boston. I was there only last week. Harvard?”

Once again, I’m deeply tempted. But decide to play it safe. By now, I’ve started to actually enjoy this, so it’s easy to smile as I say, “No. Not Harvard. Boston University.”

“That is also a good university,” he consoles me. I agree, “Yes. He’s looking for a job here, and will hopefully find one by the time we get married.”

Before I have to make up other details (am short listing possible professions in my head now), we arrive at my destination. I get out, and he tells me “Get married. Soon.” I laugh, and hope he’ll mistake it for a bride-to-be’s blush, and promise him I will.

As he drives off smiling, I start to feel a twinge of guilt for lying to this nice man. But then, I remember the drinks-shinks comment. From a slut out on an evening of debauchery it took very little to turn myself into a nice Indian girl engaged no doubt to an equally nice Indian boy. Any guilt I might have felt is smothered by the satisfaction of finally conforming to someone’s idea of what I should be doing with my life, even if that someone is a rank stranger I will likely never meet again. And this way, no one loses. The stranger goes away with the satisfaction that there is one less freak in the world. I don’t feel angry or defensive. And the fiancé, well, he just got himself a Wall Street woman.

So much for strangers. If only I could come up with a suitable response for friends. These are the people who know that if I spent an evening in that part of town, it was probably spent watching some movie with subtitles (and they aren’t wrong. Danton was the object of this evening’s adventures). What these friends (with minor exceptions) don’t understand is why I choose to throw precious hours away on celluloid men with unpronounceable names (btw, if any one knows how to do this one “Wojciech Pszoniak”, please let me know), when I could have so easily spent those hours on the internet, “expressing interest” in nice boys who, for all we know, are about to graduate from Boston University. My response, “and trade Robespierre for that?” I know will not please them.

Perhaps, I’m being paranoid. Mr. Singh might have simply thought that chatting me up will lead to a better tip. But I can’t help thinking that men, desi or otherwise, don’t feel the same pressure, if at all they are subjected to this sort of grilling-by-strangers in the first place. Or perhaps 30-something men have their own demons to slay. But that’s another post, for someone else to write.

Later in the evening, I have dinner by myself, musing about my Boston hero. The introduction of a fiancé, even an imaginary one, can apparently work wonders with more than just cab drivers. The fortune from my cookie is more interesting than the usual drivel, “Look around yourself. Your answer is nearby.” At a table for one? You bet. The answer is very much around myself.

For the next desi guy who wants to have coffee or lunch or dinner with me because I stood next to him in a line:

Yes, I’m Tamil. And oh yeah, I am single. It’s just me and my 15month old twins. And please, do give me your cell phone number. You see, my youngest did the cutest thing this morning. Well, I call her the youngest - but she’s only, you know, 3 minutes and 7 seconds younger (it did not feel like under 4 minutes, if you know what I mean). As I was saying, she did the cutest thing this morning - she stopped sucking her thumb! Can you imagine! My son hasn’t - but I realize that as a boy, he’ll be taking his time to mature - but let’s not go into that… I keep getting distracted - yes, your phone number - do give it to me. I have so many pictures I know you’d love. I even have before and after pictures of the thumb-sucking victory! You don’t have MMS? No worries - just give me your email ID instead. And as for lunch, do you want to do it Saturday? Can you pick us up at 10:30 on Saturday morning, or we can do dinner at 4:30 in the evening…yes it is a bit early, but when you wake up at 4:30 AM, trust me, it’s time for a meal. I know the twins will just love you!

And don’t you dare try me. I will find pictures of twins to send you. Perhaps even your own.

Pressing clothes has to be the one most annoying thing about being a single adult in the US. Children don’t do it anywhere in the world. Adults in India get their friendly neighborhood Iron guy to do it. Married people in the US get their husbands to do it (at least this appears to be the desi norm). Just us single folks are dinged. Yes, I suppose it’s no fun to be a married desi man either. But as they ought to know by now, nobody gives a damn about them. 

This weekend, I finally got down to my spring cleaning. Yes, we’re well on our way to summer now. Which is why I figured I probably won’t need my winter clothes for some time. I spent most of Sunday putting woolens away to make more space for cottons. That’s when the trouble started. Unfortunately, there is a side effect to my ‘clean mode’. Symptoms include ‘let’s clean everything we can’, ‘wash everything we can’, and the lethal ‘press everything we can’. Cleaning everything is easy when all you have are two shelves. Even the washing is fine – there’s a Laundromat not one block away. And I assiduously read labels before I buy clothes – anything with a ‘hand wash only’ label is not even considered.

I would prefer to wear no-press stuff, but somehow all the pretty clothes, especially the semi-formal stuff I need for work all need to be pressed. Wouldn’t it be awesome if society were to become OK with slightly crumpled work clothes? I’ve no wish to go to work in jeans and a T-shirt (having worked for a start up for over two years, I know it can be fun. But the practice completely wrecked my work-life separation). I like wearing formal clothes. I just don’t want to press them. Am also curious why when outside of work inside-out is not only right-side up, but perhaps even fashionable, we continue to remain so straight laced about what we wear in the workplace?

One solution to this, er, pressing problem might be to do this ironing thing in batches, as opposed to ironing everything garment in sight But yesterday I was in ‘let’s do this’ mode. That enthusiasm last for nine shirts, but that barely made a dent. The pile of ‘to be pressed’ continues to be larger than the ‘to be washed’, or the ‘ready to wear’ piles. What breaks my spirit is that this task is never ending! There is no such thing as an ‘all done’ status, and if one exists, it lasts for all of one evening, if that. For, even if, by some divine miracle, one gets through every freakkin’ piece of spineless garment, there will be an army of newly washed ones to take their place. It’s enough to make a girl seriously consider marriage. Fellows - seriously, why do you think marriage is referred to as the “X for laundry” deal among female circles? (replace X with whatever reason(s) you think you’re getting married for. FYI: you’re lucky if you end up with the X for laundry package. Other packages include X for laundry + dishes, and the one I’m personally on the look out for X for laundry + dishes + grocery shopping. Please make sure to read the fine print to understand what is permissible under ‘X’. Conditions apply.)

As I contemplate my pile of clean but crumpled clothes, I desperately miss the winter. You can wear anything under a sweater, and if you know you’re going to be outside all the time, your winter coat gives you even more leeway…

PS: Apologies for the earlier post - I was a bit trigger happy with the Publish button. All that ironing has clearly given me carpel tunnel syndrome.

My friends and family have been engaged in a somewhat alarming debate in recent months - the question is just how Tamil am I. “Sure, she has that unpronounceable name. But have you noticed how she sometimes gives out the pronounceable, but mangled American version? Heck, sometimes she even gives out false names just to get coffee. Yes, the girl drinks rasam by the litre, but what good does that do when she openly refuses to go watch Sivaji? We’ve lost our old girl to crazy Americans.”

In an effort to regain some of my street-cred, I did a very desi thing over the week end - attended an AR Rahman concert. I’d never been to one of these, and figured it’d serve as a litmus test for myself. If I had a good time, then clearly, I still had at least some of whatever it takes to be Tamil / desi these days. And I’d be able to tell people questioning my cultural identity to take a hike.

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I’m in Madras for the first time in five years. Practically everyone I’d met in those years assured me that I wouldn’t recognize Madras at all. I was also frowned at for continuing to call the city by its old name, with all its colonial connotations. Unexpectedly, I find myself in a city that I placed on a pedestal not so long ago, but have since started fearing. After all these years, will it feel like home? And if it doesn’t, what do I do?

After about four days here, I’m astounded by how little it has changed. Places I remember from my college days are exactly where they used to be - Landmark, Balaji Bhavan in Pondy Bazar, Sangeetha in Nungabakkam, even the little marble Pullayar near Sangeetha that I used to secretly think of as my lucky charm. The streets are as full of Mamas on their scooters as they are with younger men who look cool despite the April heat because they are on their Yamahas. After a six year hiatus, my old neighbor is moving back next door, and continues to drop in for a few minutes’ chat, but stays on for an hour or two, while my mom and I pace around in silent frustration, making eyes at my father. Mom fills me in on family gossip - cousins now have their own children, but everyone continues to have the same minor but apparently insoluble grievances as before. The television plays movies and songs from the 80s - Mohan and Ranjini sing and dance in the middle of what appears to be a thriving dhobi’s backyard, with miles of clotheslines bearing their colorful loads.

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When I moved to New York, I enthusiastically did everything I thought a ‘New Yorker’ should. I bought fall jackets and winter jackets, four umbrellas, and 25 pairs of shoes (the Mayor’s office threatened to deport me if I didn’t comply), joined a gym and promptly stopped going there. The only thing I resisted was the iPod. I felt it was too rude, too self-absorbed – you might be a M86 bus headed my way, but f*&^ you! I clearly have better things to listen to. Besides, one couldn’t just buy an iPod and be done with it. It was as bad as acquiring a fashion consciousness – it needed a life long commitment to accessorizing.

But I finally gave in. It was one of those inexplicable impulse buys, the kind you often indulge in when you’re feeling guilty about something that has nothing whatsoever to do with the object being purchased, but which at that time seems like the solution you’ve been waiting all your life for. In my case, I believed a lack of personal music was what was keeping me from the gym. If only I had an iPod, I could get myself a whole repertoire of “good” music, as opposed to the kind supplied by my gym (made by artists overdosing on crack or caffeine or both – ‘jumpy’ is the only way to describe it). This was followed by some very clever circular reasoning – I didn’t spend enough time listening to music, anyways (conveniently ignoring the fact that I am hooked to my headphones for at least 8 hours a day at work). An iPod at the gym would be the perfect way to ‘catch up’ on all I’d been missing. It would

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New York today started out as a strong contender to London’s latest claim to fame. A day’s worth of icy rain, wind, topped off with snow was promised by the weathermen, and for once, delivered. And if all that weren’t enough to make you want to kill yourself, it was Valentine’s Day.

From what I’ve observed in the last few months, New Yorkers don’t seem to care too much about the weather (except in the summer, when they can’t stop whining). Somehow, the rainier or colder it gets the more stoic they become. But today, as they squeezed themselves into wet subway trains, juggling bunches of roses and multi-colored soft toys (a soft toy is an abomination to begin with – what can I possibly say about a mustard-colored one?) with their winter gear, even their spirits seemed just about ready to call it a day.

Personally, I can’t resist bad weather. In Madras, whenever there was a depression in the Bay, I somehow found reasons to visit the one friend who lived in T. Nagar. Once the roads were so badly flooded, that I walked all the way home to Kilpauk from the USIS, where I’d watched All the President’s Men (my mother did not appreciate the clearly indisputable necessity of that particular outing).

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If you thought my posts were crappy, wait till you read this one:

My first day at the bathroom here. Deed done, I zipped up pants. And then, a sudden gush of water, and my pants got drenched. Sopping, dripping, heart wrenching wet. Yes, I did get the order of events right, Ms. Know-It-All.

Puzzled, I did what every guy does. My carefully tucked shirt came out, and I walked gingerly back. I realize I am smoking hot, but can’t these girls stop looking at my pants for some time?

A few more attempts and some more pant wetting before I realized: Stop tucking your shirt in, because the stupid thing will flush whenever the tank is full, doesn’t matter if a guy wearing his only pair of Calvin Klein chinos is in there finishing up.

We’d sit around the table eating lunch, or dinner, or smoking cigars or playing poker or doing whatever else a group of people in an alien country can do sitting around a table. We’d start off well enough - how the food sucks, why the affirmative action policy in Malaysia was all twisted, why work blowed and so on … A few minutes was all it took though, for conversation to veer back to our favorite topic: Toilets. ⇥ Continue reading

Today I had a couple of teeth extracted.

Till this afternoon, I’d never felt like an action hero. I’ve indulged in the occasional wishful thinking, sure. But I’d never imagined what it might be like to gouge a bullet out of my arm with a blunt pen knife, or walk barefoot on shards of broken glass, or like the new Bond I like so much, taunt some evil torture master with, “C’mon, is that all you got? Give me more, go on, just try me!” Didn’t see the point in such an exercise. But thanks to my new magic potion, Novocaine, I know better.

The feeling of absolute invincibility that Novocaine confers is something, isn’t it? A tooth and its companion were ripped apart, there was so much blood that it had to be sucked up by a machine, and I didn’t feel a thing! I lay there thinking, “Ho hum… what, over already?” While biting down on a piece of gauze, I knew my powers far exceeded that of the run of the mill action hero. I was clearly in superhero territory! My power - invincible jaws! I’d be able to bite my way out of any trouble. That was it! The bad guys could lock me up in a cage made of reinforced concrete, but I’d tunnel myself out - with nothing but my teeth! I’d rescue orphans by chewing and spitting out the atomic bomb at their orphanage…

I needed a suitable superhero name - Jaw Girl? God, I hope not! Super Smile? Yuck - that sounds like a toothpaste…Bitey? Hmm… not bad - kind of like Spidy… Just as I was about to start composing a tune for the theme song, the nurse gave me instructions about the diet I should stick to for the next few days. Of course! Every superhero has some chink in his or her otherwise invincible armour - my personal Kryptonite was going to be crunchy food - after the Novocaine wore off, and I returned to my Peter Parker-like self.

I can picture my life as Bitey - some bad guy would threaten to harm something or the other, and instead of running into a corner and stripping off my street clothes to reveal my superhero costume, I’d run off into a corner and call Dr. Elias, my oral surgeon. No, wait, that sort of puts a damper on things, doesn’t it? No matter, I’d learn to give myself Novocaine injections. So, let’s go back - random evil person(s) threaten(s) harm to random good person(s), I immediately retire to the nearest nook, take out my dental syringe, and shoot myself up with Novocaine. Make quick work of the baddies, and then quietly go home, stopping only to pick up a pack of frozen peas on the way. I’d reflect on the day’s happenings with contentment, as I held that bag of peas to my face, soothing my ravaged gums. Being Bitey would give me the immense satisfaction of rescuing defenseless old women, heck, entire cities even, but that pleasure would come at a price. I’d never be able to eat murukku or seedai or Biscotti again. I’d have to live exclusively on Gerber’s. Hmm… maybe not so bad a deal, eh?

Well, I have to go now. The Codeine is starting to kick in now. And that calls for a whole other kind of superhero.

As part of my new-city-new-life-dementedness, yesterday, I took myself to a Hatha Yoga class. I checked with at least 6 people if the class was for beginners and hearing uniformly positive answers, decided to take a chance. Clearly, what I consider “Yoga for beginners” – my version involves “lie down on back, breathe in and out, turn over to lie down on stomach, breathe in and out” (it’s all in the breathing, ye skeptics!) – is apparently very different from what those half a dozen people think. Sure, I wouldn’t have minded occasionally stretching a limb or two, but the things this instructor made us do…The body would shudder at the thought if it could (it is too painful to execute the sort of complex muscular maneuvering that shuddering involves).

All my life, I’ve been a front-bencher. You know, the type who sits in the first two rows of any class, shushing any one who talks, advertising her “active listening” to the lecturer and the world at large through vigorous nodding of the head, and taking of notes. Yesterday was different. I was the one who felt like bursting into giggles and did do so more than once, kept looking at my neighbor’s poses (even when I was explicitly instructed “to keep my head straight and look at the wall”), and said many many times to the instructors – I can’t do this. It felt very librating, or as liberated as one can feel with one’s butt pointed heaven-wards, head down and thighs and knees off the floor.

At one point, when trying to touch the floor with my feet by bending said feet over my head, I couldn’t help laughing. I was the only one who apparently saw the inherent ridiculousness of this activity. My instructor walked over and told me to not laugh, because it could hurt my stomach. No kidding. Bending your legs over the wrong way to touch the ground which can be touched in a much more direct fashion is fine. But laughter – that’s the true killer. If my head hadn’t felt like bursting from all the unaccustomed blood flow, I’d have been capable of stronger emotions than a mere girlish giggle.

At the end of the 75 minute class, I staggered out and very gingerly made my way home. I’ve not tried drugs, but I can imagine the high being similar. When I say I felt high, I don’t mean the great feeling that all health freaks swear you get post a vigorous session of exercise. I felt light in the head and almost ethereal. Were it not for assorted dull and not so dull aches and pains, I’d have easily believed that I was levitating. But if this is the sensation for which people get drunk or take drugs or ride roller-coasters or twist themselves a la kai-murukku, I don’t understand why they do…

And the sad part is that I didn’t really punish my body, or nowhere near as much as the idea of taking the class seriously might have involved. I remember this old physics experiment about water finding its own level. You pour water into a container with multiple dissimilar necks and you see that the water reaches the same height in all the necks, irrespective of their shapes. My body’s like that. Irrespective of the ridiculousness of the posture I tried to cajole it into, it would find the position of least discomfort and settle into that.

Yes, I can see that it must be nice to fit into clothes for thin people. It must also be nice to not have every friend and relative drop hints subtle and unsubtle about how much better life is when you exercise. But why does it have to be so hard? If survival is the raison d’etre for a species, activities that make that possible usually come very naturally, or are definitely pleasurable. Getting into shape and remaining that way take time and a lot of effort. If it’s in the best interests for the survival of your species that members remain healthy, why isn’t it easier? And if it feels this unnatural, are we right to even have such goals for ourselves?

Maybe we just like to make things difficult for ourselves, so we can feel a sense of accomplishment. I’m currently reading Jonathan Franzen’s How to be alone (amazing book, review will be up later this week). In one of his essays he talks about how the ‘worthiness’ of a book increases in direct proportion to how difficult it is to read. I couldn’t agree more. As readers, we know that the books we’re the proudest of having read are often also the ones that weren’t a breeze to get through. Isn’t it the same thing with acquiring the body beautiful? Does it feel beautiful because it is so difficult to achieve?

And while this will sound stupid coming from a person who has spent all of 75 minutes “trying” to do yoga, won’t it eventually be carried too far? I just ask because that’s what happens with reading and movies. You start out as everybody else, reading Arthur Hailey and Robin Cook or watching and enjoying the typical Hollywood blockbuster. But over time, you only get your thrills from books and movies that are, oh, what’re the terms we like using – “difficult but rewarding”, “horizon-expanding”, and the always popular “weird but fun”, alienating yourself from friends who now use you as a reliable barometer of what to avoid.

Going by my experience, someday, if I stuck with this Yoga thing, I’ll have to not only have to tickle my ears with my toes, but simultaneously drink water using a straw stuck up my nose to truly enjoy the experience [1]. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to pursue yoga because not only will I end up drinking water through my nose but once converted into a the-mouth-is-for-amateurs person, I will likely insist on proselytizing the rest of the world too. Friends who insist on my acquiring healthier habits, do you really want this to happen? Isn’t it bad enough that I demand you to read Joan Didion and enjoy it? Let me be my fat self. It’s for your own good.

[1] Readers who still remember Door Darshan might recall a yoga show, which featured a stringy bearded old man performing yoga and doing things with water that were amusing in a horrifying sort of way… Younger readers – please note that DD served up horror in the name of entertainment (they probably thought it was educational) long before the West came up with Fear Factor.

When I first came to New York, I recall being shocked by how polite people were. And how clean the trains were. Of course in those days, I was a newbie who’d just arrived from Haryana. In Gurgaon, we offered sacrifices to favorite gods if we got our mail (and if you got it on time, you bumped the offering up to include a virgin or two, depending on how critical the mail was), so I may have been just a tad easy to please.

Now, I’m not so sure… My ‘welcome to the city’ package tells me that I won’t be permitted to remove my out-of-towner badge till I poke at least 8 adults and one kid with my umbrella. Or close the elevator door on at least 25 people who work in the same building as I do. It’s been tough going, because I keep cancelling out my rudeness quota by allowing folks to pass me in Times Square…

I also have a nasty habit of smiling at everybody on the street. I was not always this way. I must have picked up the habit in Texas, because there you meet about 3 people a year (and that’s in a good year), who’re also out walking, and generally partaking of nature from outside their SUVs. At any rate, it’s high time I made a start at achieving my rudeness goals. I can either buy myself an umbrella with a really sharp point, or I can take the quicker, but more challenging route of tripping up an old person on some stair way. (Challenging because nice old grand-motherly types here are quite crafty, and will likely run you over with their motorized wheel-chairs if you don’t watch out.)

Graffiti I never noticed before has cropped up all over the city. The last time I spent any serious amount of time in New York was in 2003. When I innocently ask folks if the Mayor has cut spending since then, I’m told that I have no aesthetic sense, followed by a muttering that sounds a lot like “trucking Texan”. But before I can protest that I never drove a truck in Texas, they walk away.

Folks in New York leave me bewildered for all sorts of reasons. Take food, for instance. How anyone is supposed to survive on such itty-bitty portion sizes, I don’t know. Don’t they know that the only reason to go to a restaurant is to stuff yourself with so much food that you can only fit into an SUV? Besides, with all the walking one does here, don’t people get hungry by the time they reach home? After getting nothing but blank stares when I ask waiters to “New York size” my meals, I’ve taken to buying 2 orders of everything. Honestly, if I wanted scraps, I would’ve stayed at home.

It’s a good thing I didn’t always live in Texas. Otherwise, I may never have known that you can actually use your feet to walk from place to place. (In fact the only folks in Texas who’re out walking because they’re going somewhere are desis, mostly Aunty-ji’s and Uncle-ji’s who’re visiting their children and telling each other how Texas is as hot as Delhi or Madras or Kumbakonam.) Just I learnt that “it’s a short drive” is not a good phrase to hear in Texas, I’m now learning to be wary of the phrase “oh, it’s a walk!” This phrase seems to cover distances ranging from a four minute jaunt to the Dandi march. These are the times when am glad that Manhattan is a relatively small area, and technically one could walk from one end to another without simultaneously setting world records.

When I moved to Texas, all my friends advised me to get myself a Texas millionaire (as though they were being given away at the local dollar store, but I suppose it’s the thought that counts) I knew it was wrong of me to keep putting that off…I spent most of yesterday wishing I had a sugar daddy. Not just any sugar daddy, but one who makes 80 times my rent-to-be, has a pristine credit history, and wants nothing more from life other than to be my guarantor. Let other women have the sparkly trinkets – I’d pledge eternal gratitude for a rented studio.

In Dallas, I got used to being surrounded by Southerners, and not just the American kind. In fact, I did more things Tamil in Dallas than I ever did in India. Manhattan is not the same. In the custody battle between the city-folks and the Jersey-folks, someone decided that we’d get Saravana Bhavan, while the theaters and DVD stores would live with the ex in Edison. Before the fight got too bloody, someone decided to make Queens the guardian of grocery stores and the temple. Queens is a neutral party to the proceedings, because as far as I know no Tamilian actually seems to live in or care about Queens. At the end of the day, Tamilians in the city apparently manage by watching Hindi movies and going down to 28^th street to drown their sorrows in some excellent Sambar. And every resident of Jersey as well as Manhattan feels truly blessed when taking his or her personal assortment of trains, drives and buses to get to the temple in Queens. Which proves that religion works, although not always in the ways they’d it like to.

Oh well. I’ve got to go now. I must go practice. It’s part of the prescribed syllabus, you see. At my upcoming ‘Now you’re a New Yorker’ ceremony, I need to stand up in front of an audience and say, “Hmph. Out-of-towners!” and deliver the line with a sneer. And I’ve been told that if I don’t get the sneer right, I’ll be sent back!

Picture Courtesy Wikipedia

Golden dragons sit atop the striking green fa�ade, flanked by golden arches on the left and (overpriced) gold topped taxis beneath. A unsightly blue roof stretches along the entire street, designed to keep out the elements and whatever little charm the facade has to offer. “Jalan Petaling,” the multilingual signboard suspended from the lowest tier says. Petaling Street.

Petaling Street, a narrow stretch of road in downtown Kuala Lumpur is the green dragon facaded, blue roofed home to a gigantic flea market selling bootleg merchandise. Fittingly, the market operates from dawn to midnight, drawing an enormous throng of bargain hunters looking for Rolexes and Patek Philippes; Guesses, Guccis, Givenchys and Louis Vittons; Star Wars and Flight Plan and Sims and Civilization and food.

A row of stores on each side of the street, and down the middle of the street a double row of stores with their backs to each other, splitting the narrow alley into two narrower alleys. Enter through the left, bargain your way up the street till the end, gawk at the vendors selling fried fish, and kabab rolls and ice kacang, and a Rolex or two; turn around and haggle back down the other way. Along the way, a sensual treat: the bright flouroscent lighting, the smell of sweaty bodies laden with faux Italian fashion goods mixed in with the the smell of barbecued fish, the sounds of hagglers haggling and touts touting.

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In which a forced break from blogging causes one to overcompensate by writing an overly long post.

I was sixteen. She must’ve been a few years older.

I was the kid that snottily buried his head in a book through the hourlong bus ride to school, except to look at the occasional poster. After her, I was the kid that was starting to fantasize about burying the head elsewhere. Dirty thoughts, I know, but not as dirty as you think. I didn’t know all that then.

In truth, she wasn’t all that pretty. Thin and wiry and bespectacled and fair and squeaky and rude and unsmiling. But she wore exceptionally short skirts that fell just below the knee. Can you imagine? And traveled the same route as me every single day for two years, standing but a few feet away from me. And most important of all, she went to Nrimala[1] College. What could be hotter?

Ever since a we’d heard that story about a bunch of girls at Rinmala who raped the milkman that went to deliver milk to their hostel, the hotness quotient of everyone that spent any time at all in the general vicinity of the campus had increased by several orders of magnitude in our eyes. Especially because Rex - who assured us all that he knew - informed us that the story was very true. He also threw in a few details of the incident - oh my! - that made me think that being a milkman wouldn’t be a bad way to make a living. Wake up, clean bullshit, milk cow, visit college, get raped. Bliss.

Could the girl on the bus be a rapist, I wondered. And then hastily assured myself that she couldn’t have been. Given the time of the incident, she was probably in this very bus when her classmates were doing the nasties to the poor milkman. Unless it was a predetermined crime, and she had stayed back that night. Quite possible, you know, with these young college going types.

Now, in case you think we believed every story we heard about IrNmala, you are so wrong. That story about the girl and a broken test tube for example: In spite of the obvious truth that in those days - most young girls possessed rather loose morals and were capable of most acts of debauchery a male brain could think of, this one was a little too farfetched to be true. Also, it coincided a little too well with our entry into the world of pipettes and burettes and - you guessed it - test tubes. So we only partly believed the story.

And then one day, the girl didn’t show up. After she kept up the habit of not showing up for a few more days, I knew I had lost her - either she had graduated or she had fled the law. It must’ve been the latter - how could someone graduate in December anyway?

She had vanished without a word, my scheming rapist shrew girlfriend. Thank God I hadn’t introduced her to my parents or bragged about her to Rex.

We’d been seeing each other for a good year and a half, and what did I get out it? A sorry glimpse of knee.

This won’t do.

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I am an un-married, un-pregnant, not-in-love-and-not-confused-or-sad-about-that, and getting-long-in-the-teeth person. Why has that become such a crime of late? With each passing day, the egregiousness of the crime only seems to increase. I’m not sure what irritates me more - being thought of as a hedonist, an “abnormal” person, or being treated with hope and sympathy - “you’ll change soon”, “everything’ll be alright”, “just wait till May”… People fail to see that I am just as miserable as married people, pregnant people, people in love, and people who’re just confused. Why this marked preference for one form of misery over another?

So, here are the top 10 ways to respond the next time someone tries to give you the “talk”:

- I actually want to be in a relationship, but since I’m fat, ugly and stuck in a dead-end job no one will have me. Can you set me up with your best friend / close relative?

- If the goal is to not fit into that pair of skinny jeans, which method would you say is more efficient? 1 1/2 hours at Olive Garden or 1 1/2 weeks at Presbyterian Maternity?

- And how are you enjoying Nickelodeon?

- Thank you for asking. My relationship with Netflix is everything I ever dreamed of.

- Last Tuesday, I finally did it. Fell madly in love - with myself. I give it two months.

- Children? I’m waiting till more book-friendly models become available.

- Ah yes – the pitter-patter of little feet. I convinced my parents to adopt. It’s been wonderful for them, really.

- Since you asked, research shows that single life after 35 is completely cancer-free. We singles don’t like to let that out.

- (This one’s for enquiries from anyone who’s 10 or more years elder to you) So, what you’re saying is, “If your best friend jumps into a well, so should you?” Oh well, I only wish you’d taken the trouble to tell me that when I wanted to (a) get my tongue pierced (b) drop out of school to get a head start in the pizza delivery business (c) save that money to move to a commune

- You’re just jealous that I might pull a Demi over y’all.

PS: In the last month, I’ve outed myself to some of my friends, and I expect threats, tears et al. from a number of you for this post. Remember your own advice - let’s wait till the end of the year, I’m bound to change sooner than later.

This has been an interesting week for me. Why beat around the bush? It’s been a miserable week. Four, what should I call them - disappointments, i-knew-this-would-happen’s, i-should-have-seen-this-coming’s, still-it’s-not-the-end-of-the-world’s, c’mon-you’ve-been-through-worse’s or my favorite at-least-i-have-my-blog-and-my-health’s in seven days. Two out of the four were pretty solid whacks to the heart and ego. The other two would have gone by almost unnoticed were it not for their timing - their contribution is invaluable in giving life that perfect degree of bleakness.

As my back-end processors work on a pep-talk for myself, I am going to bore y’all for a while by examining the common theories of happiness / sadness to see if I can pick the right model for myself:

Alternating peak-trough theory. Sometimes, I think I put too much faith in the peak-trough philosophy - the one about life being filled with alternating troughs and peaks. This makes me feel entitled to a peak every time I hit a trough and fear a trough the minute I hit a peak. So I spend my whole life dreading peaks, because only a trough can follow & the bigger the peak, the deeper the trough, and so on. And what if some lives are all troughs or all peaks? It is, after all, as valid a theory as the alternating peak-trough one.

Widow-door theory or the “when a door is closed, a window opens” hypothesis. People really should have never bought this theory in the first place. From the very name window/door, you know they’re pulling a fast one over you. The scale’s all wrong. A DOOR closed. And a window is clearly a completely inadequate consolation prize. The door’s usually of the magnitude of losing the love of your life, and the window’s like your boss telling you that you’re wearing nice shoes. Nice try, boss-man – can I be offered a day off?

Post-mortem settlement. This is very similar to the alternating peak-trough theory, but the crucial difference is that the time frame is considerably longer, and possibly never-ending. This one proposes that by facing tough times, you’re either repaying debt from a couple of generations ago, or shoring up for future generations. I have many problems with this theory. One of which is that according to this theory, the act of dying is less powerful than declaring bankruptcy is and say what you will, that just saddens me.

Plenty of other fish in the sea theory: I suspect that this is the old window-door theory rebranded for fishermen.

Shit happens: Why are we so enamoured of patterns anyway? Why seek logic? Life is random. So long as one doesn’t have to hear the story of a butterfly in Shanghai causing a storm in California, I think I’m actually ok with this one.

I don’t know why I started this post, but when have we ever let minor things like that stop us? I must work on my pep talk now.

When I was a child, I was told that everyone has something special about them, something that makes them wanted. I still believe that. You may be depressed, balding, too fat, too thin, jobless, too busy, religious, debauched - there’s a telemarketer, televangelist, spammer, or at the very least, a flyer for you. Personally, I draw peddlers of every sort. Most of them come in batches - just when I think I can’t take one more email offering Ciali$$ or Vi x gra (proof that humans will ever be wiser than all things mechanical, including spam bots), there’d be a home mortgage or a 0% APR credit card phase. My peddlers like to mix it up.

Spammers come and go. But the one group that has ever had a presence in my life, and made that presence felt is the “let us save your soul” group. They are persistent, inventive, and omnipresent. I don’t know what it is about me that gives me away as a soul in distinct need of saving. I’ve sampled almost every marketing tactic known to man to get me to believe in God. That I may already do so seems to make no difference, which leads me to wonder if God is actually trying very hard in his / her own way to tell me something.

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Today, someone was extremely rude to me. Understandably, I am hurt and angry. I didn’t try to, er, return the compliment. But this post is not about my desire or ability to be rude. No, this post is about musing what might constitute fair restitution for all manner of hurts, particularly those cases where there is a clear distinction between the injured party and the party to blame. The way I see it, I have the following options:
- swear
- curse, or wish upon this person anything from a flat tire to a mosquito bite.
- do nothing, but take comfort from the belief that some mysterious accountant in the sky (or is it below ground? My Hindu mythology’s a little rusty) will update the karma accounts of all parties involved
- act noble

Option 1 may provide a temporary release, but really, it doesn’t do much else. So I won’t bother with it. The other three are worthy of deeper contemplation.

Option 2: Curse
While this offers a very tempting promise of quid pro quo, here’s why it is not a good enough option in the long run. Let’s say I wish this person had a flat tire, and some genie actually makes my wish come true. That still leaves too many questions unanswered. When will the flat tire happen? Today? Next week? Twenty years from now? And a mere flattening of a tire isn’t going to do anything for me. It has to be made clear to the rude person that the tire was flattened because he / she hurt someone (ok, moi). Otherwise, what’s the point? They’re going to think they’re the victim. OK, so that may be true, but they must realize why they’ve been singled out for victimization, right? In order for this to happen, retribution must be swift, and not take place a decade and a half after the initial act of rudeness.

There’s another aspect to the question of timing. Sure, I want rude person to be inconvenienced, but what if flat tire happens when he/she is rushing to the hospital to see / save a [dying] loved one? That would be terrible! Even I’m not such a monster… after all, only my ego was hurt – no damage to life or limbs occurred… So, maybe the curse idea isn’t such a good one. Moving on.

Option 3: do nothing, rely on Karma
This is my least favorite option. I am still not sure a 100% about the mechanics of Karma, possibly because I am a crass materialist. But being the crass materialist I am, this is my interpretation - Karma is like a bank account. Good karma dollars get put into your account if you behave well, and bad behavior takes your accumulated savings away. Of course, there is such a thing as a deal size, or in this case, a deed size - letting roomie watch game on superbowl weekend may be worth about 10 or so karma $. Actually sitting with said roomie and watching a game you neither understand nor like because you remember that the same football loving roomie watched Memoirs of a Geisha with you, that’s got to be worth at least a $ 1000, if not more.

But here’s what the problem is with having an account - money comes in, money goes out, and at some point you lose track of individual dollars, (unless one happens to be on some Interpol / FBI / SEC watch list for money laundering - and considering that I am neither Mother Theresa nor Saddam Hussein, my karma cash flows, whether positive or negative, are no where close to “laundering” status yet). So whether your boss suddenly goes on vacation or your car breaks down on the 635, you’re never sure what brought it on. So where’s the opportunity to learn? Sure, I could be “sensible” and try to only those things that I think will bring in the karma moolah, but really, let’s get real.

And the other thing about karma is that is too personalized. I only seem to have a direct say about what goes on with my own account. Causing minor emotional injury may cause rude person to lose a few dollars from his or her account, but what does that do for me? I can’t, for instance, say I want $9.99 taken from rude person’s account and put into mine. And even if we assume that I receive some form of compensation (that I got to write a post about it may be one for all I know), I’d really like to be able to choose my own compensation. Even if it’s a lousy choice, like the ones that Readers’ Digest gives you, I’d still like to be able to choose. If asked to choose between an idea for a new post, losing 0.2 pounds with no physical or mental exertion, and oh, something to day-dream about when am stuck watching that silly game on Sunday, I might want all three, but hey, at least I can grumble about life being unfair, pick one and move on. (and in case you’re wondering, I’d have picked losing 0.2 pounds. I watched “Aadhi” AND had the presence of mind to take notes AND I can survive a bunch of men in helmets chasing a ball with an identity crisis any day (it’s not a ball, for balls are round. It’s not an egg. What is it?) - but losing weight by doing nothing, now that’s an idea - ask any infomercial)

Conclusion: I don’t want to rely on an accounting system that seems to be almost as good as Enron’s.

Option 4: act noble
As you can see, through out this post I have taken great pains to raise the question “what’s in it for me?” in very many subtle and not so subtle ways. Acting noble (without the option of good karma) is clearly not an option to spend too much time thinking about. OK, I take that back. You can act noble, in cases when you’re confident it will drive the opposing party wild. In my case, and this particular rude person, I don’t think it’s going to work. As I know this person rather well, I know that the rude person is simply going to think I’m a prat and continue being rude.

One thousand words and counting. Still no answer to the original question “what constitutes fair restitution?” Now the question is what restitution would you want for having spent those precious minutes of your life reading this post? Think about it, and let me know. As soon as I receive mine, I’ll get by to thinking about yours.