Ranting Free-style

I was looking for some other document when I happened upon a rant I had written 4 years ago, when a promising musician had committed suicide. I was fresh off publishing my first novel, and was feeling the stings of rejection and criticism.

Funny thing is, apart from those friends and family who feel invested in your journey, there are others who enjoy playing the objective critic, holding your work to standards that I doubt they do for more well-established authors. They do not want to be mistaken for someone who is "less than honest", or someone who would gush simply because you are their friend. So, they will play it cool, and pick your hard work to shreds, and in the process sometimes even revealing that they have not noticed a plot point or a whole line of red herrings carefully inserted.

Stranger still, is the kindness of strangers or people who do not feel obliged to like your book. Because it is they, often, who show enthusiasm and genuine love for your work and will make efforts to let you know. I think what works adversely for the people I mentioned earlier is that they feel obliged to like it, and this makes them feel cantankerous and put-upon.

So anyway, going back to my word document from 4 years ago, I rant about how everyone indulges in paroxysms of grief for an artist who dies, lamenting the extinguishing of a rising star, etc. This is truer now, after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death. My question to people who did so, did you take care to praise his worth when he was alive and struggling? Now that you feel the waste of a talented person who tried to do something different, and put his work out there and exposed himself to your praise and criticism, do you have a healthier attitude to the artists who are breathing around you?

No one is asking for dishonest praise. All we ask for is that you give the artist a chance, and not dismiss him before you’ve even started consuming his work. Because, as I said before, I see a certain careless approach from some people. In my case, they seem to speed read through places, entirely missing certain points, (especially in my second book) followed by a contemptuous announcement at the end, that ‘so and so was not required’, or ‘I expected more from this or that’. When questioned closely, it turns out they hadn’t noticed certain aspects which, are quite evident to anyone reading with even one eye open.

Anyhow, I felt that my earlier writing well illustrates how I feel now, after the publishing of my second book. Everything changes, but everything stays the same, eh?

It’s been a bit of a strange couple of days. I will put in a disclaimer immediately and say I did not know any of these people personally, but the news got under my skin none the less, because of the place I am at in life personally.

In quick succession, there have been a flurry of deaths in the news. I will very carefully steer clear of the politics of this, as I value my skin, in such troubled times. Apart from the obvious, what struck me was how everyone was singing paeans in the brave lady’s name on FB and otherwise. But as some astute observers who had been close to her pointed out, surprising for one with such a multitude of admirers, her paper was in dire straits, fast running out of funds to operate on.

Then came the shocking death in a completely different milieu -- the Western Music scene. I had met him a few times when he was much younger and I had heard that he was a prodigy. There was an outpouring of heartfelt FB posts about how talented he was and what a waste his demise was. What hurt me was the thought that if the young man only knew how highly everyone regarded him, while he was struggling to make it as an independent musician in the big bad music scene in India, perhaps he wouldn’t have despaired and perhaps he wouldn’t have taken the fatal step.

As someone who is an artist (or a wannabe one), let me tell you that it is a big step to turn your back on the ‘respectability’ of a steady income and a designation in the unimaginative but safe corporate world, to try your hand at something you know you love and would be good at.

You think you have established a certain reputation and have acquired the support of enough people to take the step. How do you know? In your naivete you look to FB for this reassurance. You step off the cliff thinking there is a cushion of such people, to make rock bottom (a distant possibility considering the sea of likes and loves on your fb page) a comfortable enough landing. But guess what, folks? When it comes to these people actually doing anything to support your art, they have better things to do. Like transfer their attention to someone else’s FB page. You are left to crash land and shatter on the rocks of the abyss.

When I first announced on Facebook that my book would come out in a month's time, it got 1000s of likes and quite a few shares. There was a delay in the books being printed and made available on Amazon by a month; and during that time there were several people who said "When will it come out? Can't wait. Want to buy a copy", and so on.

When the books eventually came out many of these so-called book lovers and well-wishers disappeared, or sat around waiting for a free signed copy from the author. Those who do read my book, really love the story (I know all authors say that, but it has been a pleasant surprise for me, and I say it in all honesty.) Yet, when I ask them to spread the word or buy a few copies for friends, they demur; even neglecting to write a simple review on Amazon; though they had privately told me how wonderful they thought it. Because they have "done their bit" by putting a wow emoticon on my FB post.

Facebook for all its uses is a dangerous beast. It creates false expectations on both sides. Judging by the effusive 'likes' and 'loves' on my page I am forever expecting a turnaround in fortunes. And the 'likers' and 'lovers' think, just by pressing that button, or by saying “Congrats” or “Good luck!” they have done their bit; they have done enough.

FB has bred an army of armchair "supporters" who promise you the world but do nothing. The numbers never add up.

I know I’m talking like people OWE me. They really don’t. What I object to is how everyone’s waiting till I die to say a single good word about my book, about my writing in general. If you really had felt that strongly about the good work that lady did, or thought he was the best keyboardist in India, why hadn’t you written an FB post in their praise when they were alive? What use are your kind words now, except that it gives you those 2 seconds of reflected glory from a great artist/person gone too soon?

Don’t speak ill of the dead, people say. I completely agree. But I would also add, if you couldn’t bring yourself to do or say a single supportive thing while they were struggling to make a difference with their ideals or with their art; you should really look deep into your hearts to understand the motives behind your rushing to “#RIP” on their Facebook pages once they’re dead.

I am part of an Indian group of booklovers, 13000 readers strong. Every once in a while there will be a post about how badly Indian books suck, and will cite 3-4 books by Chetan Bhagat, Durjoy Dutt and their ilk. Basically, all the authors who have concentrated more on the art of aggressive marketing and selling than what a naïve person would think is the primary task of a novelist, viz. writing books. Comment will follow sneering comment pouring vitriol on these authors. Oh, how terrible Indians are at writing books! This is why we only read books written by Western people.

Finally a small-time author, goaded beyond sense by the unfairness of these comments will say, ‘but but…my book is better than theirs. Not only mine but this writer’s and that writer’s’, and she will post a whole list of lesser known but better written books for these “exacting” readers. But it will be met by resounding silence. Then finally a defiant commenter will fire back: ‘we only take a chance on a book by a well-known publisher.” Really? Like that has worked out so well for you? Were you not JUST saying that they publish the most unabashed crap? That you crave to read relatable books and are only stopped by the absence of good ones? Suddenly they all turn defensive and say, “We don’t owe struggling Indian writers anything. Chetan Bhagat worked hard to become a bestselling author and these people on your damn list will just have to do the same.” Oh? So I’m confused. So we must then turn ourselves into Chetan Bhagat to have you read our books? Does anyone see the irony here? And what of this desire to read relatable books? Why is there no culture of supporting the local scene like every other country has?

It’s all a pose like every other thing in the virtual world is. They will stick their knives in your back while you’re trying to crawl your way to the top, and when you finally fall off midway, they will rush to type out their #RIP messages to show how they understood your worth while the rest of the world were oblivious.

Speaking of supporting the local scene, I have one last observation here. Here we are jumping up and down about ‘Make in India” being patriotic, etc. But that seems to only apply to buying Patanjali products, and taking symbols literally. We have always been a very literal people, like children we take the symbols of higher things to be the things themselves and venerate them. So we will jump around in rage about a silly picture of a person from a different culture perhaps putting her foot on a book. Or books being used as stairs. “Oh, this is unbearable! I love books so much I cannot bear to see them disrespected!” The shrieking comments will start pouring in. “Oh, so madam you love books, do you, all books? You want more people to write them then? Make writing sustainable so there are more books in this world?” “What rubbish, of course not. Unless you have a 1 crore marketing budget I refuse to buy your books even though you’re cutting your own throat with the price you’ve set for it, in the hope of snaring such ‘booklovers’ as me.”

F**** off, f*** off the whole lot of you. You are killing artists and idealists with your own two hands, can’t you see? And then you have the audacity to take to social media to air your grief about the deaths, now that death has cast a glamorous glow on them, that a life chasing their dreams had unexpectedly never imparted them. Then they were only ‘wannabes’, rather embarrassingly trying to achieve something they didn’t deserve with their “no doubt” mediocre talents.

OK, I’m done. Have a fabulous day on Facebook.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Today morning as I stood at my own front door, feeling rather exposed and ashamed in my nighty and with hair that stood on end, one of the housekeeping ladies began to rant at me in Kannada that I only caught the sense of (again another cause for guilt and shame). I just stood there open-mouthed, and felt like I was having an out-of-body experience.

The dregs of sleep still clouded my view of the world that had woken up and got going hours before me. With my late-night habits and frankly nebulous schedule, (and yes, the privilege that comes with being able to sleep in when I liked), I was anyway in a half-sleeping half-waking state, but having the lady completely lose her shit in front of me for the first time in the 6 years I’ve lived here, made for a surreal experience. I felt very little answering anger, just surprise and curiosity at her outburst.

For one, it wasn’t a particularly huge transgression, I had forgotten to leave my pail outside for the second day in a row, and ran to get it only after she rang my bell. There were reasons, though it is of course not something she should care about. Granted. I am usually a rule-abiding person, leaving the bins out well before time and in the ways stipulated by the building association. Their having to ring the bell on 2 consecutive days was irritating no doubt, and slowed them down by about 1 and a half minutes; minutes which snowball into a big backlog I’m sure, given that there are so many flats in one building. Also they work their way downwards from the topmost floor, 9 in our case, and I’m sure the ladies had had to already encounter a few more similarly annoying, entitled residents who had tumbled out of bed and presented their pails sleepily like second-floor-me; when they were breaking their backs living and working from at least 5:30 in the morning.

Not to mention, that in the times of Corona, they were anyway risking their lives dealing with the bins of so many households; being obliged to wear a mask in hot and sweaty conditions. And then there I appear, tousle-headed, well-rested and BARE faced; and it just didn’t seem fair. I can only imagine the new stresses of working an already horrible job.

All those things aside though, it’s obvious that she didn’t stand there yelling at every resident today morning. What startled me about the anger and frustration that came pouring out of her mouth (she was saying she won’t keep doing this, she had work to do, from the next day she would just go, and wouldn’t bother ringing the bell) was that it came immediately after I gave her a sheepish smile and said “Sorry. sorry.” This is what I have been getting at this entire time. It was almost like the apology was what triggered the final explosion.

I honestly don’t know how human beings are in other countries, having only visited some of them briefly. But here apologies are a different beast altogether.

Now let me break down that statement for you as both a serial apologizer and someone who expects formal apologies in return.

I have no idea why, but I have always been the sort who is particular about thanking people or apologizing for even minor things. This isn’t a humble brag, I know perfectly good people who believe that saying ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ too much to a person who is close to you is something that gives offense, since it involves being overly formal.

 So, I have been barked at for saying ‘thank you’ “too much” – “Stop saying ‘thank you’ am I not your….?” (insert suitable relationship). But that also means, that if someone has, without a trace of doubt in my mind messed up, and messed up BIG, and everyone is saying so; I am a stickler for a formal apology. They may send me flowers, knit me a sweater or sweetness may run from their mouths like a hive that has sprung a leak. Or, they may turn up two years after completely vanishing, despite requests to explain what I had done wrong, and make fun conversation, acting like everything’s “chill” over cups of coffee. Obviously hoping that I’ll just take the damn hint and move on.

But I need to hear the exact words “I’m sorry”. Most IMPORTANTLY not accompanied by ridiculous gaslighting counter accusations, or some kind of sarcastic twist. A real-life example: “I am sorry that I thought you were close enough to me to understand that I didn’t mean it when I said “You’re a bad mother”. Or, “I’m sorry I sent the message insulting you by name… to you by mistake. I meant to send it to someone else, you weren’t meant to read that.” (again, true story).

No, if it’s an actual, sincere apology; for me, the healing may start all around, and you actually need not knit me that sweater. Give me a little time, and I may forgive you.

But here comes the rub of it. It is perceived as a weakness. He who apologizes, somehow loses in the game of life. It is the social equivalent of an animal avoiding eye contact, tucking it’s tail between its legs and bowing its head in front of an alpha. It is losing one’s self-respect; it is tantamount to falling at another’s feet. It is to show you are weak. So, they will hang on to that apology like it is a piece of their soul, and would rather twist facts into humiliating untruths that reflect badly on them, rather than say those simple words.

Now this philosophy I have never managed to understand. I myself am quick to apologize if I perceive I have done something wrong, or even if I feel I haven’t but the person is hurt. To me, if I genuinely feel bad, it is a much easier way of expressing remorse than knitting someone a sweater; making hideous jokes in a gradually deepening silence, and so on.

‘I’m sorry.’ Easy peasy.

But when I do, it is very often misinterpreted. I have observed that because I use apologetic body language and a remorseful expression, coupled with the universally understood words ‘sorry’; it is as good as a red flashing sign appearing on my forehead. ‘W-E-A-K’.

A corresponding light bulb goes on over their heads. This one looks like the doormat I can finally let all my anger and frustrations out at. Everyone needs that one dim-witted target who doesn’t answer back or take revenge! The miseries, angers, neglect that everyone carries around with them, all comes out then.

All the while, the people who had heaped scorn and pain on them, slamming down the pails belatedly, slamming the doors on their faces, treating them like pariahs, not paying their bonuses; get no word of remonstrance.

After all, at least they did not say, ‘sorry.’

A rather basic explanation of what Feminism and Women's empowerment means to me. (Written a year ago for an NGO's magazine on a relative's request)

Note: This is a rather dry, and very basic explanation of Feminism that I wrote for an NGO's internal magazine, that an older relative belongs to. There is some belabouring of points, and stating of the obvious. But believe me, some people still need to be handheld through a concept as simple as Feminism and women's empowerment. Read it if you wish. :)

Empowerment and Evolution of Women

Ushasi Sen Basu

For millennia women have been considered secondary to men. We had no rights at all, except for those our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons chose to bestow on us. Except for a handful of women in history; like Cleopatra in Egypt, Elizabeth I in England and to a certain extent Nur Jahan in India, who wielded great power and commanded obedience of the men around them; women have always been considered the property of men, and taught to be submissive and sacrificial of their own needs. These lessons were learnt at the mother’s knee and were rarely questioned.

We were barred from higher education, from most occupations, from holding public office and in most cases from inheriting and owning property. Only at the end of the 19^th Century, after many tens of thousands of years of human existence, did things begin to look up for the female half of the world’s population.

New Zealand was the first self-governing country to give women the right to vote in 1893, followed by Australia soon after, who also gave them the right to stand for public office. Slowly, around the world, in most places after tumultuous strikes and protests by the women fighting for their rights, women began to be granted this right. Since then, gender roles have achieved a profound and heartening evolution.

Over the last century, most countries, including India, have had female heads of state (a notable exception being the United States of America). Women are (at least officially) engaging in every profession there is. We are increasingly recognized as individuals in our own right with the right to pursue our interests and happiness.

Sitting at my laptop, typing this out in 2019, I am in awe of the women who first took it upon themselves to say, ‘this is my right and I shall fight for it.’ Can you imagine how difficult it was for them to go against centuries of “tradition”; to stand up against the stereotyping of women as inferior in intellect and abilities, to throw off deeply ingrained social conditioning which taught them that asserting the right to their own happiness was selfish and unnatural? Think of the ridicule and the social stigma they must have faced when they first decided to protest. Yet, they went ahead and won us, through a slow and painful process, the rights we enjoy today.

Yes, we enjoy those rights, and unfortunately, we also take them for granted. I have had so many heated discussions with women (in some cases, very professionally successful and liberated women in their own right) who have run down feminism as ‘overreactions’ by hysterical women who are making mountains out of molehills. The irony seems to be lost on them. Here they are working at careers of their choice, after acquiring degrees at universities which would not have admitted them even 80 years ago, and making financial decisions without having to ask anyone in the world apart from themselves for permission. Thanks to the first feminists who fought and were sometimes imprisoned for their fight (look up the suffragettes) for their beliefs. Check your privilege, ladeeez!

Of course, I’m sure it is not news to anyone that reads this that feminism is nothing but the belief in the equality of the genders, and the desire to see a world where men and women share all of society’s resources and opportunities and responsibilities in a more equitable manner.  

Regardless of what you call yourself, if you believe we should have equal treatment and believe that there are still miles to go before that is achieved, we are on the same side. 😊

Yes, we do have miles to go, because though officially men and women are now on a level playing field, in reality there is still a yawning gap in many things we do. There is the pay gap. Men will automatically be paid more for the same amount of work and qualifications. Now that the issue has been raised, many people have become more aware of this tendency and those who are committed to the cause are working towards bridging the pay gap.

There is also the glass ceiling. Only a tiny percentage of women are leading companies or countries due to unfriendliness in work and social cultures across the world. Part of this unfriendliness is contributed to by the pervasive sexual harassment that occurs in public and private spaces, by strangers and trusted people alike. This handicaps all women from exploring their full potential. One of the greatest and most unfair ironies is, society will question a woman who has been harassed, rather than the harasser. “Why were you alone in the boss’s cubicle?” “Why were you working so late?” “Why did you let a male colleague drop you home?” are the questions asked when a girl is molested rather than asking the simplest and most obvious question to the male perpetrator, “Why did you molest her?”

Luckily, we live in a time when the winds of change are sweeping across society. The “MeToo” movement is a social media phenomenon, but it has finally sent the message that it is the harasser who should be shamed and penalised rather than the victim. Women everywhere are finally accusing their harassers, and making them pay for treating them as mere playthings.

The perception of women is evolving in other ways as well. From the sole role of mother, wife and caregiver; we have added many more facets to ourselves. I hope in another few decades, women can pursue their ambitions and happiness without feeling even a shred of apology or worry; and truly fulfil the dreams of our feminist forebears who risked everything to begin to demand our rights as equals.

That is when women can say in truth, ‘We have evolved to our greatest potential. We are empowered.’

My Book!!!

Well, hello there. This blog must feel like I just visit it for booty calls, since my last post was in early 2015 and I now decide to give it some attention only to announce that I just published my book on kindle.

YES, I did! Don't believe me? Here it is:

https://www.amazon.in/Kathputli-Ushasi-Sen-Basu-ebook/dp/B01MSX89MH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481517548&sr=8-1&keywords=kathputli+book

People who've read it have enjoyed it. Of course, there will always be two people who have a different opinion. Why don't you see which category you fall into?

And let me know!

Hooray, again!

I hope to be here more often from now on. Especially since I have a book to peddle. :D Haha!

Are we safe anywhere?

I’ve been in a cynical, depressed kind of mood today, people. I keep saying to myself, what’s the point? Look at this Salman Khan thing. The man goes scot free (yes, yes, suspended sentence of 5 years, boo-hoo for him) because he’s a famous actor and because the person he killed was a nobody. Now if Salman Khan had managed to run over Shah Rukh Khan, I’ve a feeling things would have run a very different course.

Squabbles are erupting online on the rights and wrongs of it. But bottom line is, he’s been granted bail and is now happily ensconced in the lap of his family; having thumbed his nose at society and all its rules.

Some people are saying, so many hit and run drivers (the funny part is, few people dispute that it was Salman Khan behind the wheel; despite his devious attempts to implicate his own driver) escape prosecution, why should poor Salman be the scapegoat? Or, why in the world do homeless people sleep on pavements and make things difficult for drunken drivers?

A person, yes, poor Noor Ullah Khan, died. However much you argue and excuse and rationalize; shouldn’t there be some kind of accountability for that? And yes, all the other murderers out there should be brought to book as well, not only poor ol’ Salman bhai. (Watch where you step the next time he decides to do a spot of drinking and driving; see how wronged you think him when you’re being mowed down.)

Similarly, all the loose, simply moronic opinions about rape bandied about by people who think they are safe from any such attack; all boiling down to the seductively simple “it’s always the girl’s fault, somehow.” She shouldn’t have been out so late. Without a man to “protect her”. WITH a man (what a slut). She shouldn’t have been wearing that. She shouldn’t have been in that part of town. Or, the best yet – it wasn’t rape.

So many people simply LEAPING to see the rapist’s side of things, refusing to see that yes, some things are black and white. Simply right and simply wrong. Some things are that simple. Because the moment we start seeing grey shades of “mitigating circumstances” everywhere -- where does it all stop? And though most of the people I know are mercifully schooled in political correctness; privately everyone believes there are extenuating circumstances for absolutely everything.

Until it happens to YOU.

The examples I give here are of ‘have-not” victims. So, we comfortably think, as we settle back on our satin cushions, this could never happen to us. But in a world where EVERYTHING can be rationalized away, how safe are we from being the next victims, really?

Tomorrow, You -- tall, strapping, fit upper class male -- are jogging down the street with your earphones in your ears; and someone jumps you from behind and does unspeakable things to you, simply because he can. What stand would you like for society and the whole law-enforcement machinery to take? It was wrong and your perpetrator will be caught and punished? Or, why were you there? Why were you dressed so expensively? If you weren’t listening to music couldn’t you have heard him coming? Why did you fight back? Maybe you did something to tempt your attacker? Let’s FACE it, weren’t you a little bit culpable?

If you cannot TRUST society to take a firm stand that crime is crime and victims should be defended, what is the point of being part of society? Isn’t everything we do, based on this trust? If one cannot trust the people around you not to attack you every time you step into the street, how is one to function? Is one an idiot for buying something on the trust that it is genuine? Can one drop one’s child to school everyday, unless one has a little bit of faith in human goodness that he will be looked after even though his parents aren’t watching?

Our whole human existence runs on trust.  And it is the state’s function to reinforce that trust (with the threat that abusing that trust brings punishment, very few questions asked). If not, all is chaos. And we might as well all disappear into the woods before we start sneaking into each other’s houses and murdering people as they sleep, (“she was offensive about my décor yesterday, and it annoyed me.”) if that is the way we are headed.

This image of an anarchic world may seem alarmist to you. But in my opinion, it all starts with people shrugging their shoulders and saying “it was the victim’s fault for being there. He/she was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”, and ends with -- the law backing such people up.

In such a world, where can you be safe?

The Problem with Facebook

(This was a piece I wrote for a friend's pujo magazine last year. I think enough time has elapsed for me to put this up on my own blog without any objections. What's up with the formatting?) :)

I was asked to write a piece for your Pujo magazine, but I kept putting it off. Today on the last day before my deadline expires, I am ashamed to say that more than writer’s block, Facebook is to blame.

Facebook is really the bane of my existence. Free time is at a premium -- being the mother of a 3 year old. Still the urge to steal a peek at my phone for my Facebook fix is like an itch at the back of my mind; burning, burning, until I scratch it. I am glad to say, when I directly interact with my daughter (which is most of her waking hours), I refrain from giving into the itch; hating the thought of being one of those parents who have their noses pasted to some screen or another, while their poor children clamour for attention. But the moment I hear a soft baby snore, or when she is fruitfully engaged in singing ‘Old Macdonald had a farm’ to her teddy bears for the 25th time on a loop, I confess to sneaking off with my phone, putting my feet up with a delicious sigh of gratification and logging into Facebook.

But like any other addiction (I have another one – chocolate) once you have glutted yourself on Facebook, you are left with a curiously empty, useless feeling – leaving you wondering what the big deal was about.

Because really, really; what possible joy can a person get from all the obviously posed, carefully selected and (often photo-shopped) “candid” pictures of her friends? The latest is everyone making a face into the camera – “Look at us, we’re such whacky, fun people! Don’t you wish you were closer friends with us?”

What pleasure can one get from reading the carefully constructed status updates about how wonderful their lives are? Or, by looking at how wonderfully disciplined their kids are because…look how well they pose! And not a single runny nose in sight! Like an angel in perfect health!

Far from joy, it is more like self-flagellation. You log out and wonder, why don’t WE ever go to the Fiji Islands? Why don’t I have the figure to wear that gorgeous black dress? Why didn’t I think of taking pictures of my writing out that check to an NGO a month ago?

Apart from causing a severe case of heartburn, it is a phenomenon that brings out the very worst in people. This is the platform for otherwise cleverly concealed character flaws to be taken out for a bit of exercise and fresh air.

I have a very conservative “friend” count of 400 people. Of whom I am barely on actual speaking terms with 20. (I have been sent “friend requests” by neighbours in my complex, and have accepted their requests with a warm rush of affection thinking, “She likes me after all! I thought she hated me! Now we can be friends!” And you make plans of tea parties and outings to Coorg in your mind, until you encounter the same neighbour near the gym of your complex and she walks right past you as your cheery ‘hi!’ dies on your lips.) Of those 400 “friends” (And I use the term in the extremely loose, FB sense) I have:

1. 20 exhibitionists: Putting up pictures which really, really, REALLY should’ve stayed locked away on their laptops forever. Or status updates about how MUCH they love their spouses, their kids and their pets in toe-curlingly embarrassing language. “I wuv you, my peekie boo!”
2. 50 whiners: They will whine and cry and complain every hour, on the hour about…everything. “I was doing wheelies on my bike on a crowded road when all of a sudden I hit this car from nowhere. I broke my leg (and sent all the occupants of the car to hospital) please pray for my speedy recovery…why is my life so hard??? What is more annoying is how many people will rush to sympathize (“You poor baby! What kind of a country is this, that one cannot do stunts on a crowded road in peace?”), I wonder what instinct propels them to it.
3. 20 Sycophants (wish there were more) also known as the ‘Likers’: They will shower you with compliments, and just when your self-esteem begins to rise you are hit with the horrible realization that they compliment everyone indiscriminately, in hopes of a quid pro quo on their own page. They are under the mistaken impression that likes and comments can be exchanged and hoarded like currency, and guard and count every one of them as zealously as a miser with his gold.
4. The out and out liars (about 10, mercifully). They will lie to get attention, sympathy, likes and comments. They will make extremely tall claims for those 20 “Congratulations” comments and 100 likes. Well knowing that there are many who have seen it and know that they’re lying about getting the Nobel Prize for Astrophysics, or being voted the 15^th Panchen Lama by a deputation of visiting monks.

Whatever is the hot topic at the time, especially of the tragic persuasion, they will claim to have experienced it; so that they can divert some of the ongoing sympathy on the issue.

They will post nauseously sentimental (same as group 1, but with a twist) status updates about a toothless brother (I love my toothless brother so much, I can’t bear it), to draw the “aww, you’re such a good person that you love your brother despite his not having all his teeth” crowd. They seem not to care that half their friends list knows that let alone a toothless one, the person concerned doesn’t even have an average, non-tragic, uninteresting brother.

5. And last but unfortunately the least -- the barely-there Facebookers. I have begun to envy this lot so much I can’t tell you. I had a friend who has gone straight off Facebook and stayed there. I often fantasize about doing the same thing, just to get away from the aforementioned lot.

In fact, you know what? I think I will; since all these types bother me so much. It’ll probably save me enough time to read at least five more books (good) a month and eat countless bars of chocolate (not so good).

But before that, let me check my Facebook account one last time and count how many likes I garnered for the attractive picture I posted of myself from 15 years ago. (but THEY don’t have to know that!)

Have a wonderful Pujo everybody!

In defense of the ugly.

Three year old Mia loves the radio and constantly demands it be switched on so she can sing and dance along. I enjoy it as well, since I find current popular music sing-along-able again; unlike even a year ago when all that hip hop and trance made me feel victimized (“is he yelling at me? What did I do?”) and dated (“This must be a young-person song.”).

Her “favourite” (she has about 22) is “badaarex badaarex, no trouble”. This is not, in fact, a jingle for a laxative but her interpretation of Meghan Trainor’s song, ‘All about that bass, about that bass, no treble’. I think it’s pretty catchy too, and initially thought it had a message that matched my own convictions. But I’ve heard it so many times by now, that I’ve started wondering if I really do agree with it. Yes, yay for women with big asses, hooray that men sometimes like plump girls (what upright citizens such men are!), and all that. On the surface this is a much better message to girls than endless songs with names like “Let’s Do It Doggie Style and Then If You’re Lucky I’ll Spank You”.

But it gets me thinking: we are still reassuring ourselves about our appearances on the condition that men like us that way. Not to mention how disturbing it is that a mother would comfort her presumably fat-bottomed young daughter with assurances of “men like a little more bootie to hold at night”.

Name one song where a male singer moans about having a big bum or being overweight; and suffers a consequent crisis of confidence about his sexual appeal. Something along the lines of “That Hottie Ain’t Gonna Let Me Hit That Because I Ain’t a Skinny Thang.”

I’m not blaming the creators of the song, they’re addressing a real issue with all us girls and women. My problem is why we have this issue in the first place.

It’s not only music. Look at movies. Or at least the more conventional, popular sort of cinema not starring Dame Judi Dench in the lead. The heroine will meet her man with a soft light irradiating her features, her hair billowing in an invisible zephyr; and the hero will blink a few times, so dazzled he is by her beauty. He will tell people or the woman herself at a later point of the movie with a beatific smile; “THAT was the very moment I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, because she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen…”

Really? Really? Where is the connection? It is rarely when the hero sees her helping a blind guy across the street, or because she’s hilarious and makes him laugh; or because she’s good at what she does (all criteria for the heroines to fall for the hero, by the way.) Even if she is shown doing any or all of these things; the hero will only fall (or realize that he’s fallen) in love with the woman when her hair is well-conditioned, her skin is doing this bizarre shining thing and she’s preferably wearing something low cut.

That’s when the slow motion kicks in and the face sucking ensues. Why? Is beauty the only quality men look for in women? And this is not always a type of beauty that can be directly related to good health or fertility; a desire for which we are told is biologically hardwired into men; since the demand for sickly stick-insect women is a common cause for angst among more ‘traditionally built’ women.

Wouldn’t something like being a good human being, or a good companion be a better indicator of who the hero “KNEW” he HAD to spend the rest of his life with? Why don’t any of the heroines EVER say, “he was the cutest guy I’d ever seen, so it was imperative I spend every day with him until I died.”

You know why? Because it’s a stupid thing to say, that’s what. But somehow, when the man says it, it’s completely understandable -- because beauty is such a supreme achievement, such a product of extreme hard work in a woman. It is not at all an accident of nature that your nose lines up in a pleasant way with your mouth, which is at a suitable distance from your chin and so on.

I know it sounds like sour grapes…it probably is, but it doesn’t make what I say less true.

You would think books would be slightly better. Literature being, nowadays, more of an acquired taste. Regrettably, for a female character to be understood, her looks are to be dissected exhaustively. More often than not, she is beautiful. If not; a big deal will be made of how, even though she isn’t conventionally beautiful – a big mouth or curly hair often being the rather pleasing culprits – she is beautiful, none the less; which the hero will tell her at some point much to her surprise and gratification. It is a complete cop-out by an author if ever I’ve seen one.

If the book goes so far as have an honest-to-goodness plain (never ugly) female protagonist, her romantic interest will still think her the most beautiful woman in the world. Because after all---a man cannot want to be with her unless deluded into believing this. Or he is conveniently struck blind so that he is spared the pain of watching an already plain woman degenerate into middle-aged ugliness, like Mr. Rochester.

Rarely is the main female character (in a romantic scenario) ugly and/ or with a physical impairment like a limp -- though you will find literature simply littered with such male characters. Case in point is JK Rowling’s new Cormoran Strike series. He is called “pubehead” because of the unfortunate texture of his hair (on his head) and has a prosthetic limb which frequently gives him trouble. Enter the breathtakingly beautiful platinum blonde assistant who helps him occasionally when his leg lets him down. She is so luminous a specimen that no disguise can mask her beauty, leading to all sorts of tricky situations.

Was making the primary female character beautiful so much more important than her being an efficient undercover sleuth? I lost a great deal of respect for the author after reading that part, let me tell you; though I am a loyal fan of the Harry Potter series and its unfortunate looking female character Hermione. It is unfortunate that Warner Brothers sold out and got a pretty girl to play the character even though they were quite satisfied with Ron looking like an overgrown rabbit.

Shrek was an endearing exception, though I doubt Fiona would have been allowed to settle down with someone who wasn’t an ogre. If a woman is ugly she should AT LEAST marry someone equally or more ugly than she. It’s only right.

It worries me that my little girl is exposed to this toxic attitude. (Along with far worse, more blatant sexist biases; but since we are all aware of those they are far less subliminal and can be tackled effectively.)

The politically correct across all media will mouth the ‘just be yourself’ tag; but it’ll usually be meant for the chubby boy with the glasses rather than his female version. For girls, it’s “be yourself”, as long as you look good. If you’re a chubby girl with glasses and weird hair, please don’t be yourself…cue music for makeover scene, followed directly by the desired boy gulping like a fish and paying her attention.

Of course, if one puts one’s mind to it there are plenty of exceptions, like Little Miss Sunshine or Juno among recent movies. Much of Jane Austen (bless that woman) and plenty more. But unless you are super selective of what you read, hear and see -- the more urgent message being pounded into the heads of anyone with two X chromosomes is if you’re plain you better get prettied up, if you’re beyond- redemption-ugly you don’t deserve love, and ergo, be forever relegated as a side character in a song, movie or book about someone else.

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, why am I beating artists up, when all they do is reflect life in their art? Or at any rate, what most people think life should be like, and wish to see that in what they read, see or hear?

While I myself am greatly appreciative of beauty; indeed, take pride in my daughter’s cuteness and occasionally try to de-ugly myself before meeting a large gathering of unsuspecting people, it saddens me that rather than it be one of many attributes a girl can or cannot acceptably have, like a talent for dance or an ability to wiggle her ears – good looks is THE first and last thing people will look for in her all her life.

And so it is, that perfectly good women are socially ignored or passed over for their more aesthetically pleasing counterparts. Despite sometimes (not always, of course, I know plenty beautiful AND wonderful women), their having more to offer than the latter.

I think it’s a shame, that’s all.

The Travelling Circus on Day 9 and 10 in New York with Satarupa

For the NY leg of our trip we decided to dispense with a mobile because a basic connection would have cost us a 100 dollars, and what did people do a decade ago when they travelled without cellphones? They survived. So we made a few calls to family from our hotel to tell them we had got to NY alright, and stepped out lightly every day, unencumbered (except for the great big luggage train of a travelling circus that comprised Mia’s things.). Our satisfaction at having gone back to Nature was somewhat tempered on the day we had to meet Satarupa, my friend who was nice enough to take a 3-hour bus ride from Baltimore and stay at a hostel in Manhattan, just to meet us.

The plan was simple enough, as thrashed out over the hotel phone and email. We would meet outside the Staten Island Ferry terminal at 12. By 12-10, we were looking hopefully at anyone Indian-like and female-looking. By 12-15 we were muttering darkly about our lack of a phone; and what madness it was to step out of the hotel without one. By 12-20, Jeet had jogged off to the terminal in search of a payphone, while Mia and I continued to man our posts in hope of contact. Not surprisingly at 12-21, Satarupa walked up to the terminal, looking around for us. Mia and I yelled to catch her attention, frightening a few passers-by. At 12-23, after a quick hug and a formal introduction between Mia and Satarupa, I jogged off to retrieve my husband from the depths of the enormous Staten Island ferry terminal. I jogged back 10 minutes later, not having found him. Jeet returned after a further 10 minutes, having stood in a long line for the public phone, which I supposedly could not have missed.

Turns out, after being dropped off by the bus a few minutes later than scheduled, Satarupa had passed us at just the moment we must have both bent over Mia; like a scene in a bad, slapstick comedy. She’d missed us completely and circled the terminal before coming back to where I saw her eventually.

I have no idea how anyone met anybody else at pre-determined times and places before mobile phones allowed us to check every movement. “Where are you now?” …“Look up, I can see you walking towards me.” “Where are you, I can’t see you?” “Put the phone away and Look UP you idiot!”. Suffice it to say, we’ve completely lost the ability now.

Now that we were all present and accounted for, we finally lined up for and boarded the enormous ferry, along with a sort of United Nations of tourists. It was a beautiful day, and Satarupa offered to keep Mia entertained while we went out on deck to watch the Manhattan skyline and (in her words) "Liberty Mashima” slip by. I had always wondered at the yellowness of the flame, but it was all made clear to me when the fire in the lady’s torch seemed to burn hotly in the distance.

After we were disgorged back onto the mainland we returned to our bench and tried to put away an ENTIRE pizza among the three of us. It did not end well, with all of us feeling bloated and awful, and 1/5^th of the pizza dropped shamefacedly in a bin. I still can’t look at a pizza without feeling an awful burp welling up inside of me.

We walked to Wall Street and tried to get a picture with the NYSE bull. Some tourists were taking saucy pictures with the (extremely well-endowed) bull’s nether regions, others were hoisting themselves up onto the bull by the horns in a shocking display of would-be vandalism. We asked Satarupa to take a quick, very far-away picture of us waving near the stomach of the bull, (the only unmolested part of the poor boy’s anatomy) and we escaped, not wishing to be around when one of his extremities snapped off with a resounding crack.

We headed on to see the breathtakingly beautiful new World Trade Centre, looking like a sharp slice of sky plunging into the clouds. We watched the sombre visitors to the memorial at Ground Zero, the many grim policemen and their sniffer dogs for a while, before directing our feet in the direction of Times Square.

Times Square, again, was something I’d seen a zillion times in movies or newspapers. That did not prepare me for how mind-boggling the sight was. And it wasn’t even night, but a gently fading twilight. This was Capitalism in all its flashy, larger-than-life glory. Satarupa and I sat on the red steps amidst the flashing neon screens and milling crowds and chatted for a while, while Mia (who has a passion for climbing steps) was escorted up and down and up the stairs by her long-suffering father.

We couldn’t come away without visiting Toys R Us, though none of us were really in the mood for it. I could see it must’ve been a magical place for older children; but after a quick purchase of an “Abby-abby” (angry bird) beanie cushion for Mia; and a fleeting look at the enormous Ferris wheel within the store, we gladly made our way back to the quiet, darkened sanctuary of our hotel room.

After many months of restraint, a crib post about rape in India.

We vent and we vent and we vent, but it’s just so much hot air blowing in the wind. The more we talk about the rapes, the more ludicrous the “theories” get, and the more I find myself raging on people’s FB statuses with long-winded comments. I realized, to make myself feel better, I should write down most of what I feel about this issue and let it join all the innumerable other blog posts, articles, tweets, and status messages about rape in India swirling about the worldwide web.

First of all, we Indians need to divorce sex from rape. Very often I see that people can’t see much of a difference, which is where all the talk about whether SHE was drunk (the lady molested by a huge mob and videotaped after she walked out of a pub), what SHE was wearing, what SHE was doing, what her character was like (our honourable Chief Minister’s comment that the victim was a prostitute) arises. Rape is rape. No woman invites rape because it is, to make an understatement, mentally and physically acutely PAINFUL.

Let’s cut through all the “was she a good girl?” bullshit by taking a woman on the extreme end of our moral spectrum. A rape of a prostitute is still rape, because it has happened without her consent. It doesn’t matter whether she was walking down a lonely street at the time, in an advanced state of inebriation, and in revealing clothes. If a woman is attacked and raped, no amount of harping on why she was there and how she looked at her aggressors before the attack can change that fact.

A normal man might desire her, a disgusting man might approach her for negotiations, but it’s only a man who is not quite right that will think of raping her. Can you see the difference here?

I have seen a lot of ranting about how porn and the casting couch and a culture of trophy wives all cause rape. The irony is these writers are falling into the same trap as the extremely conservative, by confusing sex (even the most unsavoury kind) with rape. I don’t deny that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society that objectifies and commodifies women in this way, and its woman-hating nature is expressed in its most extreme form as rape. But I don’t see a direct connection: because in my mind, one is still the selling of sex for money (gross as that is) and the other is rape.

Others (in so many words) seek to vilify men for desiring women in the first place, to which I say can we please stop running around like headless chickens and FOCUS.

Secondly, most people (shockingly—so many women I’ve spoken to!) confuse a lapse of judgement (a woman getting into a car with three male acquaintances, for example) with ‘getting what was coming to her’. “What could she expect?” they say, and dismiss the rape off-hand. Are we then saying that all men are potential rapists who are only waiting to be presented with an opportunity by careless women? Is that how low our opinion is of our male relatives, friends and colleagues? And are we saying that a woman is equally if not more culpable in her violation, if she doesn’t cringe and look over her shoulder whenever she is around men?

Which of us pass the test? Have we not all been out past ten pm? Yes, on many, many occasions; often without male bodyguards to “protect our virtue.” Have we not worn provocative clothes? Of course! Since anything a woman wears is provocative to a rapist because he’s not looking at what the woman is wearing. It is seriously time our police stopped asking the question. The idea that a gang of five; who have the criminal intent and savagery to rape a woman after tying up her male companion, and then make her clean up the crime scene; would have walked away if she was wearing a sari is preposterous. I don’t even know how people can believe this.

Many women, in fact, are so sure they will be subjected to an agnipariksha if they come forward, that they decide against further torture for something as unlikely as justice. Women I know have whispered behind their hands to me, doubting the motives of rape victims saying,” why would she announce such a shameful thing to the world? She must want money and publicity!” The result of which you can see n the most recent Mumbai rape case, where it has emerged that the same group of men have raped before and had thought this one would go unreported as well. Perhaps if the previous rape victims had not feared social stigma and come forward, our brave photojournalist would have been briskly going about her work today, finishing up on the assignment that took her to the godforsaken scene of the crime.

So, you’re saying, you talk big, but what are you actually DOING to change this culture?

Admittedly not much. Jeet and I tried to start a petition to make self-defense classes compulsory for girls in schools – no one signed up, I wonder what the problem was.  I argue with whoever expresses the aforementioned opinions to me. However awkward the conversation is. If I have a son, I will not teach him that sex is bad, desire is bad and thereby repress it in such a way that it suddenly expresses itself in a horribly deviant way.

Of course, no parent wants a libertine for offspring but the former must learn to acknowledge that normal young people will have sexual feelings. If Indian parents carry on like having a girlfriend/boyfriend is a crime, they will continue to confuse romance, sex, and rape in the minds of India’s sons.

I have a daughter however, and I’m not going to lie, until I see this shift happen – I will advise her to throw away all her fundamental rights as an Indian citizen and cower at home, protected first by her father and then by her husband; because society doesn't really care about her.

Day 2: Diya, Shaun and Covent Garden

Day 2:

Diya, my friend from University, and her diminutive husband Shaun, took a train to London from Sheffield to attend the races at Ascot and visit the perambulating Basu family (us). We agreed to meet at the British Museum at the sensible hour of 12 PM, because we were getting over our long journey, and Mia was still very under the weather from her cold.

We reached at 12-30, anticipating a lot of tsk-ing about Indian Standard Time, only to hear Shaun had fallen ill and that they would be delayed.

One doesn’t wait around with a toddler straining at the leash. (Purely a figure of speech; though I got over my horror at the idea of child leashes once Mia developed the habit of dashing off the moment you let go of her. Walk a mile in a parent’s shoes, and all the things that shocked you seem sensible very soon.)

So we decided to begin our tour of the sprawling British museum sans our friends. The Pompeii exhibit was the reason why Diya and Shaun had proposed meeting here in the first place, so we headed there first. Tickets were sold out till 4 PM, so we decided to explore the rest of their extensive collection instead. To quote an Englishman I spoke to there, “Everything that we stole from the rest of the world.”

This was a week before the MoMA episode, so we innocently believed we had Mia’s vote for this course of action.

We ended up quickly rolling a loudly wailing stroller from one hushed, venerable room to another, as though the target was to have been in every room rather than concentrate on the artefacts. Luckily, photography was allowed here; and Jeet took enough pictures for me to pore over at length back in Bangalore and consider myself satisfied that I really had been to the British Museum.

Shaun and Diya arrived when we were in the gift shop, by which time Mia had given up on us and gone to sleep. We quickly decided to head to a pub to have a pub lunch (and perhaps some tea for Poor Shaun). In quick succession we rolled a sleeping Mia through one door of The Lolloping Lion, then The Prancing pony, The Sleepy Hunter, The Ugly Duckling and the Frolicsome Ferret and out the other as all the tables were taken. We finally found a café run by a battalion of Russian-accented bodybuilders. We decided we would let Diya do the ordering because we didn’t speak Russian-English or Bodybuilder.

Lunch of excellent lasagne and coffee done, Shaun went off to keep his date with the museum while the rest of us struck out towards Covent Garden. I have rarely encountered a more charming spot; with its bazaarish ambiance and the relatively inexpensive little curios. This time we brought away a stubby, disgruntled-looking Queen Victoria about the size of my thumb. (Yes, yes ‘Anglophile’, etc…point me to such an adorable little Tipu Sultan or Aurangzeb who looks like he had a bad fish for lunch, and I‘ll be glad to add to my collection.)  

We located the Tintin shop, and took such a while deciding between the Tintin figurine in a space suit and Tintin and Snowy looking amazedly at an enormous mushroom that Mia decided to hurry us up by trying to grab all the bow-bows (figurines of Snowy) she could see. “She’s not very well and it’s nearly naptime…” I explained as I restrained my flailing offspring. The butch lady at the counter raised her eyebrows in a ‘I-really-don’t-give-a-crap, if-she-breaks-it-you-bought-it’ look. Tintin with the mushroom thingy it was then and out we hurried, where Mia reverted to patient tourist baby mode (albeit a slightly snotty one). 

Even though we’d had a full meal about five minutes ago, Diya announced we should go to one of her favourite places in Covent Garden, a place frequented by the British since Arthurian times, praised by Shakespeare in Corialanus, and Jane Austen in Emma. The Masala Zone. Though I sneer at most Indians who land on foreign shores only to frenetically ask around for the nearest dal-chawal joint (We were approached by two such individuals outside the Staten Island Ferry in New York, looking decidedly malnourished); We had a good chinwag over the excellent chaat platter and masala chai; and all four of us licked our spoons clean. Mia did such a thorough job with her spoon that I worried about erosion.

Unfortunately Diya and Shaun had to catch a train soon after; so after a few hurried pictures together and hugs we made our way back to the lovely home of our hosts – tired but happy.

Day 9: The Museum of Modern Art in New York

Day 9, MoMA, New York.

Jeet had visited the MoMA when he’d gone to New York the previous year. He averred that I must see it since I’ve always been a sucker for museums (I spent two days at the Salarjung in Hyderabad; dragging a very helpful but flagging Maya from room to room.). It would solve the problem of the incessant drizzle; and we figured since Mia was fighting fit and phlegm-free at last; she would be more receptive to culture and intellectual nourishment than she was at the British Museum a week earlier.

Hope springs eternal in a parent’s breast.

After having gawked at the Fifth Avenue shops (the buildings and the entire avenue apparently designed for extremely fashionable giants), and Rockefeller Centre, we started looking for Moma. We asked a few cops who said they didn’t know. A big guy with tattoos stood on a street corner selling souvenirs. We asked him where it was, and just as he shook his head regretfully that he didn’t know; an artistic-looking guy with a mane of white hair, who was hurrying past, stopped and said, “it’s on the corner of 5^th and 12^th”, and pointed back in the direction we’d come from.

We retraced our steps and stood dithering on an inside street. A Jeffrey-Archer-type gentleman in a suit and briefcase stopped and asked us, “Do you need directions? Can I help you?”

I could’ve hugged him. How nice can people get? I stop and give directions only if people ask me. I would never dream of actually asking people who look mildly confused if they need help! For all he knew those were our natural expressions. (To be honest, that IS mine on most mornings. Jeet and Mia look fairly together at all times. But the Nice Guy couldn’t know that.)

MoMA was really crowded, but the layout (possibly because it was much smaller than the British Museum) was easier to negotiate. We started at the top, and I spent a thrilling 5 minutes gaping at Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

We quickly agreed that since Jeet had seen it all before, he would look after Mia and I could browse the walls in peace.

We had not accounted for the fact that our daughter had decided she would not have another museum inflicted on her without a fight.

Left to myself I happily pottered from one wall to another. I noticed an incredibly huge bouncer-type person striding purposefully towards somebody out of my line of vision. “Poor wretch” I smirked to myself as I turned towards a beautiful Cezanne.

“You can’t keep the stroller there! You have to take it with you!” I peered around a painting, and  saw that my husband had given in to Mia’s pleas and let her trot about the floor while they waited for me, leaving the stroller next to a row of seats. Once the scary man had moved on, I went over and agreed to roll the empty stroller around with me like a crazy bag lady looking for a dumpster. Jeet followed Mia around at a swift trot as she hippety-hopped through the rooms.

It was an admirable arrangement while we looked at the paintings. When we tried to stuff her back into the stroller for the installation art exhibits; she simply stood up and tried to walk around with the stroller strapped to her back;  like a cute, pink-green-and-brown tortoise.

So she skipped through the teetering art exhibits; and my already fraying nerves stretched taut at the thought of a pile of crap (I’m sorry, that would be “installation art” – spell-check isn’t as good as it used to be), valued at a sum equal to the GDP of a small third-world nation, crashing to the floor after Mia hippety-hopped too close to it.

We must’ve set some kind of Guinness Book Record getting through each floor (of course we couldn’t simply leave!). We would cry “Done!” and dash to the elevator with a sigh of relief before Mia could touch anything.

On the last floor, (the ground floor, since we were working our way down.) I was finally beginning to relax. Just as we entered a room of photography exhibits, a huge guy with the neck and shoulders of the NYSE bull raised his black-suited arm and beckoned towards us. Visions of exhibits collapsing like dominoes behind us as we proceeded -- unaware and smiling-- from room to room, flashed through my mind.

“Save yourselves!” I hissed to Jeet. “Make sure Mia gets her driving license before her 20^th birthday.” I squared my shoulders and walked purposefully up to him. I peered up at the ebony mountain in what I hoped was an innocently enquiring fashion. A mother would do anything to protect her young, even if they are wanton hippety-hoppers.

“I was just saying ‘Hi,’” he explained, gesturing again. “A LOT of people seem to misinterpret it when I do it.”

“Oh haha, imagine that…” I laughed weakly.

“See? Your daughter gets it.”

I turned to see Mia give us a cheery wave, looking for all the world like her mother didn’t just have a brush with Gitmo for destruction of American property.

I called them over and the big man coo-ed and clucked over Mia like a big, fat hen.

“Bye, bye” he crooked his fingers in the same gesture. Mia waved back. “See? SHE can tell I’m waving.”

“I guess she’s the only one without a guilty conscience,” I said, and we sped off.

Jeet and I agreed we’d shown Mia enough museums for the time being. She can visit the next one once she gets her driver’s license.

Of Ka-kaas, bow-bows, miaow-maows and Phishees.

Day 6: London Zoo

We decided to take a cab to the London Zoo because it was steadily drizzling, and none of us felt up to our usual gymnastics on elevators and escalators with the stroller in tow. Besides, we wanted to remind ourselves of how the city above-ground looked like, because really, the bowels of the earth look very similar whichever country you go to. (It’s black and whizzes past.)

We were quite thrilled at how bad the traffic was (just like home!); and were further rewarded by glimpses of a lot of places we might’ve visited had we enough time.

Once we got there, I asked the lovely lady in a headscarf at the counter if the animals come out in the rain. She didn’t make any false promises but told us a lot of them had shelters you could see into. Well. That just had to be good enough for us. We consulted the map and decided to go into the aquarium first. I wondered aloud to Jeet if Mia would have fun, if she would connect the images of animals that she saw every day in her books with the real thing. Perhaps we shall roll an uncomprehending toddler from enclosure to enclosure, and eventually beat a hasty retreat after she gets fed up and cranky like she did at the museums. (Horrifying descriptions of which are coming up soon.)

“PHISHEEEE!!!” the words reverberated off the walls of the aquarium. “Phishy, phishy, phisheeee!” Several fish ceased operations and looked over their shoulders at the racket. I saw a distinct expression of alarm on a passing squid. There were about 30,000 different types of underwater animals and Mia greeted each individually.

The aquarium was a resounding hit; so we looked forward to how the petting zoo would be received. I had no intention of letting Mia touch any of the animals. (Little Mr. Snot-Boy had done enough to sabotage our trip, I didn’t need pig-induced allergies to aggravate matters.) Fortunately, she seemed to share my opinion; and examined the enormous, hairy pigs rooting around in their enclosure with a dispassionate eye. “Bow-bow.” She declared dismissively.

The goats were disappointing bow-bows too. The camels were, in her opinion, amusing bow-bows.

She firmly disagreed with me when I said the lovely Sumatran tigers were miaow-maows. “Bow-BOW!” she corrected me loudly. (We were not in the petting zoo anymore, in case you were worrying.)

Coming from the land of tigers, and thus an automatic tiger-expert; I struck up a knowledgeable conversation with the zoo-keeper in charge of the big cats. “Excuse me, do these tigers come from India?”

“No, these are Sumatran tigers, they’re smaller and more orange.”

Yes, exactly, I nodded sagely. “The tigers I see in India are much larger, and less orange. Well, I don’t exactly see any walking around you know…just national parks and places.”

She was the fresh-faced, blue-eyed kind of animal expert you always see on the discovery channel. I felt the need to impress. “So,” I narrowed my eyes shrewdly, “do you conduct any breeding programs?”

She enthusiastically explained the various programs they have undertaken. “But.” She continued, “we put them in different enclosures except when our female comes in season because they’re essentially solitary animals. Our male feels the need to keep trying, and our female gets very irritated.”

“Ah,” I said faintly, an appropriate response eluding me. I wondered whether the tigers enjoyed being gossiped about in this fashion, and hurried on to visit the aviary.

A cry of “ka-kaa”, “ka-kaa” would erupt from the stroller whenever we spotted a bird. Mia looked around the moist tropical domes with rapt attention, as ka-kaas danced across our path or flapped overhead.

Further on, the pygmy hippopotamus looked depressed as it inched along. I could empathize. Everyone peering at it and laughing about how fat and funny-looking it was. Mia looked confused and a little upset, like she didn’t know which of her four categories to slot it in. She had the same reaction for the gorilla, who was so human-looking that she probably wondered why the hairy guy was sitting in a tree, eating leaves.

We had had some trouble finding the gorilla enclosure, though we seemed to pass endless monkeys. (Finally some miaow-miaows in a sea of bow-bows, according to our young biologist.) We approached a group of young men in the khaki zoo uniform, who were standing around talking. “Could you please tell us how to get to the gorilla?” we asked desperately. One guy slapped another on the back, “Here he is!” he grinned.

“I mean the one in a cage.”

“This one just escaped!” Twinkling green eyes and a sense of humour. I resolved to be a zoo-whatsit in my next life. However, armed with directions (“It’s right there! You can't miss it...”) we had to satisfy ourselves with a much hairier specimen -- our last call before putting the zoo behind us to visit an old, old friend who lived in London.

Travels with Jeet and Mia -- III

Our recent travels, in no chronological order.

Day 1

The trip started off pretty badly with our neighbour’s snot-nosed boy coming over to wish Mia goodbye before we set off the next day. Very neighbourly and all, but when my daughter developed a veritable river of phlegm and an accompanying inability to sleep on the 10-hour flight to Heathrow airport; I could cheerfully have punched his mother for being so irresponsible.

We were jet-lagged, and run ragged from worry and Mia’s fretting; but we cheered up enough to admire the picture-perfect houses and spotlessly clean streets as we headed out from Heathrow in a cab. “Where are you from?” the friendly driver had asked me, as he helped us with our luggage. “Bangalore” I told him. “And that is in…?” "India." 

“India! Yes.”

Travels with Jeet and Mia - II

Our recent travels, in no particular order.

Day 8

On our second day in New York, we were in the midst of doing the must-do things that tourists must do in New York. We had armed ourselves with an enormous red umbrella with the words Hotel Vetiver emblazoned across it, which was not embarrassing at all. I carried it because Jeet was in charge of carrying the stroller; baby et al; up and down steep, slippery and never-ending steps on the subways, and coaxing it to behave even on the flawless pavements we walked on those two weeks. In the wrong hands, the stroller often had a habit of planting both wheels in opposite directions, and obtusely refusing to budge, or at least in the direction intended. So I would shoulder the heavy baby bag, which I packed every morning with every conceivable thing Mia could need in the course of our perambulations – thermometer—check, 2 litres of water—check, eardrops and long abandoned teething ring, just in case she needed it atop the Empire State Building -- check and check. Later, after lugging this impossible bag around for about a week, I decided we would just have to be daredevils and lighten it by almost half its weight. The curious crick in my neck vanished. The umbrella, due to the drizzly weather in New York, stayed.

On Day 8, we had executed our daily, complicated manoeuvre of: First person swipe metro card, open emergency door for stroller, quick! push Mia through, (while the door alarm wailed), slam the door, second person swipe card, check if we had left anything behind the gates; and board our train. This was Mia’s moment of glory. She would sit in her stroller and smile and wave at the nearest fellow passenger, and persist until her target cracked a little smile. Often in our miles and miles of travel by the underground train in both London and New York, we would find the people seated opposite us first glance in her direction, then smile, then wave. If they guffawed I would quickly check to see what she was up to, and more often than not found her skirt over her head; her ultimate party trick.

Once we got off at our station, I turned to a passer-by to ask which exit to take for the Empire State Building. “Here, I’ll show you” another person going past offered. He took the detour to the lift for our convenience, and while we rode up he said, “I was born in Brooklyn, and I’m 53 years old now, but I’ve never gone to the top of the Empire State Building yet.”

He pointed it out to us in the pouring rain. We waved our thanks and I told him, “You really should go!” and off we went at a brisk trot, the spokes of the enormous umbrella poking every New Yorker within available distance.

I don’t know if it was because of the umbrella, but we totally missed the Empire State Building. After walking what seemed like a really long while we looked up.

“Oh good, it’s stopped raining!”

“Er…where did the building go?”

So I rolled up my umbrella, and leant on it thoughtfully; Jeet took off his glasses and wiped them in a contemplative manner, Mia affected her haughtiest expression and sucked on a finger ruminatively. We were distinguished visitors from overseas enjoying the New York sidewalk, not three clueless tourists who’d managed to lose the Empire State Building.

A middle-aged guy went jogging past. “Excuse me, my good man” I called out in my fruitiest voice. “Mayhaps you know where the Empire State building is?”

He looked at us like we were crazy.

He pointed back to a spot in the sky a 100 yards behind us. “It’s right there! You can’t miss it!”

“Apparently one can,” I gently corrected him. ”WE just did.”

Travels with Mia and Jeet.

An account of our recent travels, in no particular order.

Day 5

Back to London

The day we came back to London, we were locked out because it was the middle of the week and unlike us, some people had work! While Jeet jogged off to get the key from our host at work; Mia and I settled down to wait in the picturesque park just around the corner from their house in Chelsea.

At least I thought we would settle down in the park, a heartwarming tableau of a mother smiling serenely down at a peaceful, cooing baby in her stroller, surrounded by the flowers and sylvan green of the park. Aah, passers-by would think; how sacred and good the bond of mother and child! How peaceful it would be to just sit and watch them awhile...

 What transpires is always vastly different from the ideal. Mia set up a clamour that she wanted out of the stroller right then -- she had some sarcastic pigeons who needed to be taught a lesson. After some hurried negotiations, we agreed that she could chase them but only until the gravel path after which she would turn back. Sadly one and a half year olds are notoriously untrustworthy, and broke her word (“Baudeyee”) immediately.

The next 45 minutes was a regrettable loop of her running too far afield, and me, torn between our luggage near the entrance and my pigeon-chasing offspring, trying to catch up with her while keeping my eye on our suitcases. I wonder if onlookers who hadn’t noticed the bags thought it curious that I ran while I looked over my shoulder. If they did they made no comment, thinking it to be a sensitive issue. The moment I would catch up to Mia, and carry her back to the stroller she would let out a yell much like a factory siren announcing the call to work. Shattering the calm of the wet, weekday afternoon and shocking the other babes and mothers who, much to my envy, sat tranquilly feeding the birds or just concentrating on looking angelic. I could almost sense the other babies chortling about us behind their dimpled fists, (“Savages!”) as I trudged back with a yodelling Mia under my arm. However the moment she was back in the seat the pigeons would strut by her stroller in a most patronising manner; which would begin the whole cycle again. So I gave her, for the first time in her life, quite a LOT of chocolate and pigeons ceased to have the same power over her.

“ Cochleat” was the word of the week.

Jeet came back in 45 minutes; and everyone in that park drew a sigh of relief.

Testing the waters

I had a satisfying conversation after a very long time with some people. I was so happy with the conversation in fact, that it set me thinking about everything that is wrong about MOST conversations I have (That’s me—the good things remind me of the bad things), and I realized that these conversation were less than satisfactory for any of many reasons.

No 1 on my hate list are people who can’t stop talking. Even when they stop to draw breath or shovel some food in their mouths, they’re planning what to say next, and will respond to your attempts at speech with a glassy stare. There are one or two people I’m particularly thinking of as I write this, pathological talkers who, to make matters worse, have nothing much to say.

No 2 on my hate list are people who make an effort to meet you only to stay bent over their phones while you talk to the top of their heads. If you reprimand them, they say something like “No more coffee for me, thanks!” and go back to their phones.

Pet peeve 3 are people who consider a conversation more like a swordfight than an amiable exchange of ideas. The thrust-parry-thrust of the verbal duel is so tiring in fact, that after a while you opt to retire very, very hurt; rather than dream up further insulting things to say to the person. Before the next encounter of course, you stock up on as much ammunition as possible; but oddly the insults fizzle out when you finally get to deliver them. “No, YOU”RE stupider!” or are so shockingly venomous that you regret it the moment they cross your lips. “Well I may be fat, but at least my mother loves me…sorry sorry SORRRYYYYYYY!”

I’m sure there are more, but I don’t really want to become like pet peeve No 1.